Peter Rhodes on a swinging pendulum, tanks on the lawn and history repeating itself in Kabul

In the 1990s, on a press trip to Vietnam, I walked into the presidential palace in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and straight into a host of memories from history.

For those of us on the trip old enough to remember, this was the setting for our daily TV diet back in 1975 where the North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates and parked on the lawn as the US-backed South finally threw in the towel. On the roof of the American embassy the last Yanks scrambled for a seat on the fleeing helicopters. Huey helicopters were pushed off the flight decks of aircraft carriers to make room for more to land. Humiliation didn't begin to describe it.

The enemy roared into town. The losing South Vietnamese soldiers were rounded up and sent off for re-education. A few years later the tourists began to arrive. Inside the palace, trippers could pose for their photo sitting in the president's chair.

Today, no matter how the White House massages the facts about Afghanistan, a defeated government once propped up by US firepower is crumbling, the Yanks are quitting and, barring a miracle, the Taliban's tanks will soon be parked on the presidential lawn in Kabul. History seldom repeats itself exactly. This time, don't expect any tourists for a long, long time.

Is the pendulum swinging in the woke wars? As you must have noticed, over the past few years the world has been getting very odd. Britain has been leading the way in adopting rules and regulations framed by tiny, noisy minorities which the vast majority disapprove of. Democracy, the rule of the majority, is turned on its head.

Take last week's report of LNER apologising for a conductor's warm and friendly Tannoy greeting: “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls” after a single person, a union official, complained thus: “As a non binary person this announcement doesn't actually apply to me so I won't listen.”

But this quite unnecessary apology, this sacrifice at the altar of woke, is outweighed by two encouraging developments. Firstly, Alex Chalk the prisons minister has called time on the trendy modern practice of prison officials referring to prisoners as inmates, residents, clients or supervised individuals (why not customers, patrons or guests?) Chalk takes the view that they are in prison, therefore they should be called prisoners. Sorted.

Give thanks, too, for another assault on daftness as the Government sets about reversing the deeply unpopular policy of gender-neutral toilets in public buildings. I have never met a single person who thinks males and females sharing bogs is a good idea. It is an offensive, intimidating and disgraceful practice, enforced in the sacred name of equality by people who don't understand the difference between being equal and being identical.

People in need of a loo are entitled to equality in dignity. Above all, that means privacy.