Peter Rhodes on macho chat, urinal conspiracies and the rising toll of “smart” deaths

Do you get the impression that Auntie Beeb's radio announcers are wearing black veils and armbands as they report on the fallout from Brexit? The funeral tones of some BBC staffers make Neville Chamberlain's doom-laden 1939 speech (“Consequently this country is at war with Germany”) sound positively upbeat.

I was wrong about smart motorways. In September I suggested it would take a spectacular multi-death road accident to make politicians scrap this ill-fated project. Not so. The innocents have died in ones and twos. I suspect the toll is steadily approaching a figure discussed behind closed doors in Whitehall some time ago and filed away as Secret. It is the number of deaths considered acceptable in exchange for the increased capacity of smart motorways. Such a figure must exist because no government department would ever embark on a road scheme without a risk analysis. But what's the figure?

Meanwhile, the AA has said it will not attend breakdowns in smart sections and the entire smart project has been put on hold for a major review. Action, at last. At the time of writing 38 people have perished on smart motorways in the past five years, which suggests Whitehall's secret figure may be 40.

In the heyday of the Greater London Council, there was a steady stream of fake news about its latest wacky Leftie plots. I recall a claim that the GLC wanted to replace all urinals in London with WCs to prevent men “conspiring” against women. This always struck me as a bit unlikely. Of all the people to strike up a conversation with, let alone plot a conspiracy, the stranger in the next urinal is probably the dodgiest. Golden rule: just look down and avoid eye contact.

And yet, though the urinal yarn was probably false, some women do have an issue about men excluding women from conversations by talking about blokey things. In a recent interview Ann Francke, head of the Chartered Management Institute, urged bosses to be aware that men discussing sport in the office can lead to more laddish behaviour and even to boasting about sexual conquests. Francke says sport talk, and what follows, can make women feel “left out.” Maybe so.

But if it's any consolation, there is no more pathetic sight than a man who lives and breathes football finding himself in conversation with other men who know nothing about football and couldn't care less. “So Wolves, where are they based, then? Wigan?”

Meanwhile, back in the urinals, a rumour turns out to be true. Some urinals really do have the image of a fly etched on the porcelain. According to one myth-testing website, “the fly was originally introduced at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, where by improving the aim of males it supposedly reduced spillage by 80 percent.” Supposedly? Who got the job of measuring it?