Lowest of the low: Peter Rhodes on serial burglars, applauding Churchill and making money from addiction
OUR changing language. According to police, a gang of violent burglars in the Black Country ‘scope areas for homes that could be potential targets’.
SCOPE? The trouble with this word is not that it means nothing but that it can mean several things. You can scope a property using binoculars but you can also scope it through online research. Joe Public, on being warned of ‘scoping’, may start keeping an eye peeled for dodgy-looking blokes with field glasses when he should be removing images of his possessions from Facebook.
MIND you, if I were in charge, burglary would vanish overnight. This is because I’d have serial burglars taken into a field and shot. Why? Because they are the lowest of the low. They are worse than most murderers, who usually kill in a moment of passion, and in my view worse than some paedophiles, many of whom clearly have mental problems. What is more, there is hard evidence that serial burglars kill people. Home Office figures show that old people who have been burgled are much more likely to die sooner than others of similar age. At best, being burgled causes long-lasting trauma. At worst, it shortens your life. Yet police forces everywhere increasingly treat it as a minor crime and when I suggest executing serial burglars, people think I’m joking. Absolutely not.
A READER contacts me with yet another report of a cinema audience applauding at the end of Darkest Hour starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill. I’m not surprised. These are self-selecting audiences with a pro-Churchill bias and, having heard of the reactions elsewhere, they are primed to clap. But there’s surely more to it than that. Britain is just about the only European country proud of its part in the 20th century. And despite half-a-century of post-imperial breast-beating and institutionalised shame, we are, in the main, a patriotic and sentimental nation. We saved the world. We are entitled to clap a little.
‘DRINK responsibly’ is the homily on every can or bottle of booze you buy. But according to Public Health England, almost a third of the booze consumed in England is drunk by just four per cent of the population. Which suggests that without irresponsible drinkers, the drinks industry would collapse. And the same goes for Britain’s ever-expanding gambling industry which grows ever fatter on the desperate punts of the hopelessly addicted.
A FORMER SAS soldier who took part in the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege is homeless and unable to get a council house. In contrast, one of the embassy terrorists, released from jail after 28 years, is said to be living rent-free in London. Surprised? Me neither. It is 100 years since the prime minister Lloyd George promised ‘homes fit for heroes’. It was a lie then and it’s a lie now.
HERE’s an odd analogy. That sparkling sketch-writer Quentin Letts says rebellious Ukip members “dropped an electric prong in the bidet. Brzzzzt! Madness. But terrifically enlivening.” Far too much information, Quentin.