Peter Rhodes on discrimination, dodecahedra, and who’s been tinkering with the winds?

A forecaster on Radio 4 announced the coming of milder weather thus: “Well, we’ve changed the wind direction ...” This needs investigating.

The Daily Telegraph has been looking at the proportion of BBC trainee journalists from ethnic minority backgrounds and mentions “positive discrimination”. I have no idea whether a shortage of white apprentices is deliberate BBC policy or simply the result of recruiting in London with its higher proportion of ethnic minorities.

But if achieving the “right” ethnic diversity is important so, surely, is recruiting a diversity of thought. For example, at any stage in the recruiting and induction process, does anyone at the Beeb ask these eager would-be purveyors of truth and enlightenment how they feel about Israel?

Anyway, if we’re seeking evidence of discrimination in the public sector, look no further than one of my favourite statistics – the curious and unexplained fact that while Britain has about 40,000 midwives, only 200 of them are male.

And I couldn’t help noticing on the website for The Centre for Ageing Better, a charity totally dedicated to fighting discrimination, that its staff, listed as “Our Team,” comprises 41 women but only 10 men. One for the fairness police?

A rare, ancient and bewildering object known as the Roman dodecahedron, unearthed near Lincoln last summer, is going on display in the city. The hollow, 1,700-year-old, 12-sided thingummy is one of only 33 ever found and despite much speculation, its purpose remains a mystery; toy, measuring device, religious artefact? Purely by chance, on the day the exhibition was announced, I bought a bizarre and inexplicable thingy which caught my eye in a charity shop. It is that brain-torturer of the 1970s, a Rubik Cube, and if you dug it up 1,700 years from now, you’d have no more idea what it was than today’s historians have about the dodecahedron.

My personal theory is that in about 300AD, when the world was young and languages were evolving, a scribe told his friendly local metalworker that he’d just invented a new word and wanted an object to go with it. A couple of days later the metalworker reported: “Salve, scribe, I’ve just finished that enigma for you ...”