Express & Star

Peter Rhodes on "challenges" in Albert Square, magnetic personalities and another miscalculation by the Master Race

Read today's column by Peter Rhodes.

Published
New Zealanders united

OUR changing language. Confronted with the massive £86 million bill for a new EastEnders set - currently £27 million overspent - a BBC spokesman says: "there have been challenges along the way." I suspect they are keeping another useful word in reserve. Soon the BBC will tell us: "We have been on a journey."

IT is sensible to be aware of extreme right-wing violence and to prepare for some appalling New Zealand-type outrage. It is also sensible to keep things in proportion. Over the past two years in Britain, terrorism inspired by extreme Islam has killed 34 and wounded 237. In the same period, violence blamed on the extreme right has killed one person in Britain and injured nine. Nobody should blame the cops, MI5 and Parliament for basing their priorities on what has actually happened rather than what somebody fears might happen.

MEANWHILE, the chief effect of the Christchurch massacre is that many New Zealanders feel an empathy and one-nation solidarity with their Muslim neighbours that they never felt before. The killer set out to sow division but created unity. It has always been a problem for the Master Race that their master plans never go quite to plan.

ON a sunny day in 1992 I enjoyed a boat ride around Hong Kong to gasp in wonder at the building of HK International Airport. Using massive earth-moving machines, the construction teams were slicing the top off a mountain on Chek Lap Kok island and smearing it into the bay to make new land. Much of Hong Kong has been reclaimed from the sea which explains why the trams, which once ran along the promenade, are now hundreds of yards inland. The locals are past masters at turning water into building land, so I wasn't surprised at this week's news that one of the biggest artificial islands in the world is to be created there. The energy is astonishing. While they build cities and unveil a global airport, we haggle about a third runway at Heathrow.

AN innocent abroad in '92, I pointed out to a couple of high-powered Chinese businessmen that when Britain handed over HK to the Chinese in 1997, China would actually be getting back a lot more land than it lost to the Brits 100 years earlier. I was informed that, for the sake of diplomacy, this was an issue best not mentioned.

SCIENTISTS in Tokyo believe some humans have the ability to detect magnetic north, just like homing pigeons. Not this human. When they handed out magnetic competence, I must have been at the back of the queue. Put me in any place you choose, town or country, spin me a couple of times and I am instantly,hopelessly lost.

I COMFORT myself with the fact, very useful when sailing, that I have an uncanny ability to know exactly where the wind is coming from. It's a genetic gift. Or as we call it in the family, big ears.