Peter Rhodes: Swimming with the frogs

THE unspeakable leader. The official election leaflet has just arrived from our local Labour candidate. It contains not a single mention of Jeremy Corbyn.

LOTS of visitors to the Chelsea Flower Show went home clutching brochures for “natural swimming ponds.” This is the cool, green alternative to a chlorine-drenched swimming pool in your back garden. For between £60,000 and £90,000 the contractors will dig a hole, waterproof it and give you a place where you can swim among the newts, frogs and dragonflies, and sneer at your less nature-minded neighbours. I have a pal who made himself a swimming pond long before they became fashionable. It involved a weekend with a JCB and cost a lot less than sixty grand. His wife swims in it almost every day of the year and he has recently dragged an old dinghy onto it where one can sit at sunset and, while wobbling gently, put the world to rights with a G&T and a frog chorus. Bliss.

ANOTHER innovation at Chelsea was a solar-powered barbecue. Using folding mirrors, it focuses the sun's rays on the cooking area. And all it needs to cook your food to perfection is “enough sun to cast a shadow.” Ah well, back to the drawing board.

TALKING of sun, I have a particular interest in this week's weather. For the past ten years, I have run a sailing rally on the May-June bank holiday week. It must be the ficklest of all weeks. At past rallies we have had blazing sunshine but no wind. We have had too much wind and not enough sun. We have had 48 hours of constant rain. But this rally, if you believe the forecasts, will be warm and dry with good, moderate winds. What could possibly go wrong?

AS night follows day, the Manchester Arena bombing has raised the issue of capital punishment. I have absolutely no moral issues with the death penalty; the problem is getting juries to convict. The reluctance of jurors to convict murderers was one reason Britain abandoned the death penalty in the 1960s. Imagine how much harder it would be in today's softer times. Try finding 12 good men (or women) prepared to send a fellow citizen to his or her death. It would probably never happen – and think of the consequences if it did. Some years ago I interviewed a CID superintendent who was retiring. He said in his 30-odd years of nicking the worst of villains, he could think of only one whose crime was so vile and unforgivable that a jury could be guaranteed to send him to his death. And that solitary offender happened to be black. Imagine the political fallout. And imagine the furore today if the death penalty were reintroduced to deal with terrorists, and the only people ever sent to the gallows were Muslims.

THE insurance industry is patting itself on the back for cracking down on bogus whiplash injuries which cost the industry (that is, you and me) millions of pounds a year. The question is why insurance companies took so long to get serious. At the last count, bogus claims were adding about £40 to the average driver's premium. Was it easier to soak the innocent than chase the wicked?