Not-so-thin blue line, rail ordeal and ascent of Boris and Hillary
Monday, July 25: Jayne Dowle
DO you remember the two fat coppers skit on The Fast Show? They spent their days sitting in a police car scoffing hamburgers and were so obese that they couldn’t chase criminals.
It was quite funny at the time, but it’s not amusing any more. The latest news from the National College of Police is that almost 2,000 police fitness tests were failed by officers in England and Wales in the space of 12 months.
The test, which must be taken by any police officer who might be required to handcuff or restrain a suspect, was taken 93,956 times from September 2014 to August 2015, and 1,863 individuals failed to make the grade.
And guess what? The lowest pass rate was South Yorkshire police – five per cent flunked it.
Tuesday, July 26: Andrew Vine
THE 16.18 train from Sheffield to Leeds probably isn’t any more of an ordeal than any other busy service in Yorkshire. But it’s an ordeal, just the same. Every time I step on to platform 1B to catch it, there’s a crowd waiting.
Come rain or shine, on any weekday, there are easily enough people to fill four carriages. It’s completely predictable.
And equally predictably, a twocarriage train always trundles into the station and the regulars roll their eyes.
Wednesday, July 27:
Bernard Ingham
IT has become the iron law of British governance that we only have a Department of Energy when there is a crisis.
It is curious way of safeguarding the nation’s needs when you force yourself to knock together a new department when trouble is at its height.
I know because Lord Carrington rang me at 5.15pm on January 8, 1974, to ask if I would be his Press secretary just after his appointment to lead a new Department of Energy in the midst of an oil, coal and political crisis.
Ye Gods! What a way to run a railway.
Thursday, July 28: Alex Wright
THE watching world may have been stunned by the appointment of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary, but could it be that his bold, outward looking, charismatic approach is exactly what Britain needs right now?
At a time of economic uncertainty following the Brexit vote, we need a Foreign Secretary who can be a cheerleader abroad, selling Britain as a brand and convincing others that we have no intention of retreating from the world stage.
He speaks several languages, was born in the United States, spent much of his early life in Belgium and his ancestry is of Turkish, French and Russian-Jewish origin. In other words, he’s no “little Englander”.
Friday, July 29: Bill Carmichael
HILLARY Clinton is the Democratic nominee in the presidential election and, because she up against Republican Donald Trump, she should be hot favourite to become the next President.
Although Clinton’s triumph can be seen as something of a dynastic coronation you would still expect the self-described “progressive” movement to cheer this moment of gender equality from the rafters. But not a bit of it. In fact at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this week every time Hillary Clinton’s name has been mentioned a substantial section of the crowd – young women especially prominent – have erupted in boos and jeers.