Peter Hill
IAM sick to death of people asking me for feedback. Looking through my emails there are dozens from stores, services and suppliers asking: “How did we do?” There is usually a request to fill in a survey. I even got one from the dentist last week. I expect I’ll eventually get one from the undertaker.
Restaurants and cafés are another nuisance. Food has barely arrived before the waiter sidles up asking whether everything is, “Good for you?” fully expecting that you will say, “Fine, thank you.” Perhaps if every customer gave a detailed critique this stupid ritual would die out.
The feedback industry has mushroomed since the internet because when shopping online you have to supply your email address and contact phone number so you get multiple messages confirming your order and the various states of its journey to you, followed by demands to know that you are enjoying it after it arrives.
To save the trouble of asking, let me assure everyone that I will communicate the moment I find fault. Silence means that I am satisfied. q JEREMY CORBYN is not a bad man. He is just a simpleton. He reminds me of the idiot neighbour in my village who set off to work on a windy morning, turned around to light his pipe and carried on walking in the wrong direction.
Jeremy has always been heading in the wrong direction. He is a useful idiot for militants who want to destroy Britain and turn it into a socialist prison camp like Cuba or North Korea. They have pretty much wrecked the Labour Party and they are delighted.
The party’s voting system means that Jeremy could be leader for life. Someone very wise needs to take him on one side and persuade him that for the good of the country he should stand down and become one of those old-time hermits who perched on platforms. The Queen perhaps? q THE toughest problem in the Brexit negotiations will be how Britain can stay in the single market. Insistence on free movement of citizens will be the line in the sand for Germany and France and we can’t live with that. But do we need to be in the single market?
No we don’t. Trade is a twoway street and we buy a lot more from other EU countries than we sell to them. Britain is a huge customer. If they set up barriers they will cripple their own economies, the Germans more than anyone. Instead of arguing over details we should say that we are open for business with the entire world, take it or leave it. Call their bluff. Because it really is only bluff. q THE burkini originated in Australia. Not many people know that including me until just the other day. It was designed to prevent sunburn in that baking continent where skin cancer is a major worry. It is also excellent for concealing physical imperfections, famously worn by Nigella Lawson when she overdid the comfort food.
I first saw them in Egypt and thought they looked elegant and, anyway, hardly different from a wetsuit.
Raging about them seems silly. English women used to wear far more clothes when swimming and hid themselves in bathing machines – not all that long ago. There are far more awful things to worry about such as Tom Daley’s budgie smugglers. q THREE cheers for the end of the nanny state. Theresa May’s Government is gradually dismantling gratuitous guidelines such as how much sugar and salt we should not consume and now alcohol. Moderate drinking is now perfectly safe we are assured. Obviously.
She is also axing plans to install more mayors everywhere. Quite right. Why do we need even more layers of administration? She should get rid of elected police chiefs too.
And now that she has put the block on Hinkley Point nuclear generator (none has yet been proved to work) she should stop the pointless and massively costly HS2 rail project.
I wasn’t convinced about Mrs May but she sure seems to have a lot of common sense. q THERE are calls for our Olympic stars to be heaped with honours. But aren’t the medals enough? There is something not right about twenty-somethings being made knights and dames, awards more properly bestowed after decades of dedicated service.
Young people can do without being burdened with distinguished trappings. They need to party and enjoy the freedom of youth.
If honours are being thrown around like confetti everyone who bought a lottery ticket might as well get one for helping to pay for all our success. q POLITICAL correctness in British prisons, where fear of upsetting religious sensibilities has led to Muslims being allowed to run their own separate communities, is encouraging the spread of extremism, according to a new report.
Our prisons should be run like those in other countries, many of them Muslim, where the inmates must live with local laws and customs. Instead we allow the cons to con us. q I WAS so moved by threeyear-old Reuben HarveySmith, featured in yesterday’s Daily Express, whose legs and most of his fingers had to be amputated. The brave little soul had such a cheerful smile. Seeing his mutilated legs he said: “Poorly feet gone – get new ones.” Oh boy!