Rhodes on beer, insulation and dealing with protestors on gantries

With so many micro breweries competing for customers, you can't put a price on a good trademark. I've just enjoyed a dark ale rejoicing in the name of Stouty McStoutface.

The editor-in-chief of The Guardian has received a £150,000 pay rise, boosting her salary by 42 per cent to £509,850. She won't be Left behind.

A few days ago, in that much-resented annual ritual, I dutifully paid my £159 for a new TV licence, in the sure and certain belief that Auntie Beeb would spend it wisely on cutting-edge broadcasting and Gary Lineker. Later that day it was announced that the BBC will be paying massive damages to a former royal nanny who was grossly libelled in the making of a BBC documentary about Princess Diana. That's the way the money goes, eh?

After last week's Blowlamp Britain, I simply do not believe the claim that well-insulated houses are warm in winter but also cool in summer. In Greece or Morocco where they know about heat, they do not stuff their attics with rolls of insulation. The only reason that a draughty, north-facing room at Chateau Rhodes is bearable in a 40C heatwave is that it's a perishing cold room in midwinter.

Extinction Rebellion protesters smashed windows at the London headquarters of Rupert Murdoch on the grounds that his papers' coverage of the heatwave was not sufficiently alarmist. They put up posters announcing: “40 degrees = death” when the evidence around us was that 40 degrees, while uncomfortable, was survivable. The more they exaggerate, the less anyone will believe them.

Meanwhile, reports that Just Stop Oil protesters closed parts of the M25 by climbing on to the overhead gantries are not strictly true. It was the police, not the protesters, who closed the motorway. These middle-class activists are grown-up and perfectly able to make their own decisions. They should be left on the gantries or glued to walls until they come down of their own accord. I recall a fire officer many years ago describing his policy on dealing with cats up trees. Do nothing until you have given them three days to climb down.

That policy was based on bitter experience of turning out the brigade's most expensive kit, only for Tiddles to descend the moment the cherry-picker appeared.