Peter Rhodes: Out with the buoys

I AM not the only desk-slug depressed by all the political parties promising to help “hard-working people.” Tom Hodgkinson says it's a complete turn-off. Mind you, he is the editor of The Idler magazine.

I SUPPOSE politicians have to pretend that all the good things they promise are going to the right sort of deserving folk. I believe it was Andrew Marr who said no political party would ever stand under the banner: “All power to the workshy.”

TALKING of work, it's a long time since I have laboured as I laboured on bank-holiday Monday. I was on course-laying duty, whizzing around a lake in a speedboat, placing huge inflatable markers in order that much younger, braver sailors could enjoy a day's racing. Each marker is placed precisely, using satellite gizmos and wind indicators. But in the end it relies not on microchips but on us old blokes hauling concrete anchors from 100 feet of water and dragging the markers to where they are needed. I used muscles I didn't know I had and it was great fun. My day out with the buoys.

IT sometimes seems that the chief purpose of universities is no longer to educate kids but to provide wacky tales for the tabloids. Take the annual conference of the National Union of Students where delegates were requested not to clap or whoop, as this could exclude deaf and disabled people. Instead, the latest politically-correct fad among the so-called Snowflake Generation is for “jazz hands,” the silent waving of many palms. But how many of today's undergraduates know how to do jazz hands properly? I can only refer them to YouTube where they will find old recordings of a BBC variety programme whose performers regularly ended their songs with a jolly flurry of jazz hands. It was called The Black and White Minstrel Show. Good luck with that, kids.

EVERY day, vets put millions of beloved pets to sleep with a single, painless lethal injection. The process is so gentle that owners often stay with their old dog or cat to see them drift away. For some strange reason the lethal injection used to execute criminals in Arkansas and some other US states is actually a cocktail of several drugs and the procedure seems to be routinely botched. As far as I am aware, no-one has ever explained why the vets get it right and the public executioners get it wrong.

THE very least you might expect when you sign up for cryogenic body freezing is that your cadaver should be revived hundreds of years in the future. By then, not only will your fatal disease be easily cured, but mankind will have progressed to a Utopia of eternal peace and harmony and you can look forward to many, many years of health and happiness. And then along comes Professor Sergio Canavero of Turin who says he expects to be able to “reawaken the first frozen head” and transplant it into a healthy body some time next year. So forget Utopia in some distant, perfect future. You'll wake up to the same old world, same old wars and same old politicians and you'll probably get home and find the same old tube of toothpaste.