Express & Star

Peter Rhodes on fat squirrels, fake monuments and a slippery slope in the legal system

Read today's column from Peter Rhodes.

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Hunter Davies - hero

THIS sudden cold snap may be good news for grey squirrels. After a mild winter, with no snowdrifts or hard-frozen earth covering their caches of stored nuts, plus rich pickings at the bird tables, some of them are positively obese. Time to burn off some flab, lads.

ONE of my heroes, the writer Hunter Davies, has started a new regular column at the age of 83. And what a wonderful read it is. He accepts the pains and hospital visits of old age with dignity, humour and optimism. And with great frankness he relishes not only the arrival of his children and grandchildren on regular visits, but also the blessed peace when they go home again. There is a sort of rosy domestic convention that grandparents never mention such things. But when you get to 83 you can tell it how it is.

THE good news this week is that scientists have discovered that changes in protein levels could reveal the onset of dementia 16 years before the symptoms appear. But is that really good news, or might it turn out to be bad news? I was talking to a GP recently who is worried about the effects on patients' personal and financial affairs of discovering they are heading towards an unavoidable, incurable and distressing disease. As he put it: "The moment you're diagnosed with Alzheimer's, the first effect is that the care-home fees go up by £200 a week."

THEY say the road to hell is paved with good intentions and what better intention could you have than protecting women from abusive partners? The legal system can actually make the trauma worse by allowing abusers to cross-examine their victims in family courts. The solution, in the Government's new draft Bill on domestic abuse, is to ban such cross-examinations. Which sounds fine. Except that if politicians can scrap the ancient right of an alleged offender to challenge his accuser in a family court, why not in other courts? The law-makers must be careful that an act of kindness today doesn't turn into a slippery slope tomorrow.

THE best feel-good story of the week concerns a "Neolithic" stone circle near Aberdeen. It was examined by experts a few weeks ago and hailed as a 4,500-year-old monument. Er, not exactly. A previous owner of the farm has explained that he built it in the 1990s. As one official puts it: "These types of monument are notoriously difficult to date." Or maybe we see what we want to see.

WITH Brexit stalled, beware of those cries to "Give the people power!" by recruiting something called Citizens' Assemblies. Only bad losers need apply. The rest of us know that the 2016 Referendum gave power to the people. The problem, as far as the ruling elite are concerned, is that the wrong sort of people got the wrong sort of power, made the wrong sort of decision and must therefore be ignored.

  • Peter Rhodes will be speaking at Wolverhampton Literature Festival on Sunday February 3 at 11am. Admission free. Click here for more details.