Express & Star

Mark Andrews on Saturday: Lord Lucan, a traffic-free city, and a bony Brexit issue

Read today's column from Mark Andrews.

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A new 'square' would be created off Victoria Street in Wolverhampton. Photo: Wolverhampton Council

That’s it then. All done and dusted as of 11pm last night. Everything settled for the foreseeable future, it’s now time to look to the future as we mark the dawn of a new era. But enough about the football transfer window, what about Brexit?

I think now is the time for the Government to make a bold gesture, to flex its new-found muscles with a dramatic piece of legislation to assert our independence from Brussels. What we need is a new universal standard for shirt bones.

You know, those annoying little strips to keep the collars straight. It never seemed to be an issue 20 or 30 years ago, but now no morning is complete without having to sift through an assortment of different shapes and sizes to work out which one fits whatever I am wearing on the day in question. Fat, thin, long and short, some made from copper, some from plastic, others from stainless steel. Stovel & Mason alone do at least two different sizes, 5.5 and 6.0, which is presumably the length in centimetres. Although why a 200-year-old shirt-maker on Jermyn Street feels the need to embrace metrication is beyond me.

Anyhow, a new British standard, where one size fits all, would save time, and therefore make us more efficient and productive as a nation. It’s what we’re fighting for.

What Brexit looks like

And one thing we can all be glad about is we will no longer have to endure pundits trotting out that tiresome old cliché ‘what will Brexit look like?’

Well now we’ve seen the pictures, and it looks like pretty much any other Act of Parliament. A big pile of legal documents written on parchment.

Scotland Yard detectives are investigating tabloid claims that Lord Lucan, missing since 1974, is now living in Australia. According to reports, the police are ‘taking it seriously’. I’ll bet they are.

I mean, given the choice between investigating a burglary in Brixton or a fugitive peer on Bondi beach, which would you take the more seriously?

Lord Lucan

Wolverhampton Council has unveiled its bold new £20 million vision of a traffic-free city, with people basking in the sunshine around a fountain outside Lindy Lou’s, vast expanses of block paving, streets lined with independent craft shops, and a 1940s-style Citroen van selling avant-garde street food. Do the people who come up with these ideas ever actually walk around Wolverhampton, or do they just assume it is probably a bit like their favourite spots in Nice or Florence?

If these plans come to fruition, I think we can be pretty certain that the reality will be more like a handful of people sheltering from the rain in shop doorways, while others scoff their ketchup-smothered burgers from Mr Sizzle. And maybe a few students demonstrating their great wit and humour by pouring bubble bath into the fountain.

All, of course, surrounded by dozens of boarded up shops because nobody can park there any more.