Peter Rhodes on Putin's billions, the best way to settle Brexit and Poldark's puzzling seasons

I AM grateful to the reader who suggests a simple way to break the deadlock over Brexit. Penalties.

AS the clamour for a second EU referendum continues, history repeats itself. There was an assumption before the 2016 Referendum, that Remain would win. There is an even stronger assumption today that, having had all the facts and figures sensibly explained by the great and good, the Leave voters would now meekly vote Remain. I wouldn't put money on it.

AND it might not just be the Leave voters of 2016 who dig their heels in and vote for Brexit again. A few days ago Channel 4 News interviewed folk at random including one who said this: "I voted Remain but now I would vote Leave because I hate being bullied." I bet he's not alone. The spectacle of unelected EU officials sneering at Britain and the finger-wagging from the likes of Blair, Mandelson and Adonis, has done the EU no good at all. Anyone who thinks the Brits can be driven back to the polling stations and forced to vote the "right" way does not know the Brits. The second-referendum lobby has not even considered the possibility that the Leave vote next time might be even bigger. It's high time they did.

WHY did Putin look so superior and the "miss-speaking" Trump seem so cowed and confused at Helsinki? Leaving aside the rumour that the Kremlin has blackmail-grade material on the US president, consider the money. Money defines Donald Trump. He lives and breathes the stuff. The reason he treats European politicians with contempt may be that he knows he is richer than all of them combined. And then suddenly he is confronted by Vladimir Putin who is not only smarter, harder, fitter and infinitely more experienced in global politics but richer than him. Nobody knows how wealthy Putin is but by some estimates he is the richest man in the world. The Russian president could buy and sell Trump, and clearly unnerves him. Their meeting was like an eager but baffled old dog trying to make friends with a young, bored and extremely dangerous cheetah.

A READER admits he's puzzled by the seasons in Poldark (BBC1). One moment they're picking apples, the next it's summer flowers. He says: "Time does seem to be going backwards. When do the dead characters come back to life?"

IT is strange how film makers muck about with the seasons. In that fine 2007 movie Atonement, British soldiers are seen making their way towards the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation while walking through fields of stubble and picking apples from the trees. In May?

MEANWHILE, despite all those dire warnings that the stern new MoT test would take thousands of old bangers off the road, my ancient diesel has sailed through. I am now thinking of changing cars. It's a choice between poisoning 50,000 people a year (diesel) or ratcheting up global warming (petrol). There is only one way to decide. Penalties.