The world turns just the same

Widdecombe

AS I plough through the papers for January, a month I lost in its entirety to Big Brother, I reflect that nothing much has changed. The first thing I did when sitting down to catch up with the news was to google Hafizullah Husseinkhel. He was the Afghan interpreter who, despite glowing testimonials from our boys on the front line and from his commanding officer, was due to be deported from the UK to Austria, the first safe country he had arrived in when fleeing the vengeance of the Taliban.

I could find no new report on his case so I assume it is stuck in the usual queue at the Home Office while he shivers with uncertainty and wonders at the treachery of Britain.

The Conservative Party is still fighting over Brexit, the Labour Party over Corbyn and the Lib Dems over Farron’s conduct of the last election. More men have been acquitted of rape after police failed to examine text messages and more women have resurrected trivial sexual conduct from the past. The man who started Operation Midland with his wild allegations of child murder at sex parties is still anonymous. There has been a reshuffle but most of the big beasts are still in the same posts. The EU continues to bluster and threaten. Harry and Meghan continue to make wedding plans.

Indeed, I began to ask myself whether I should simply assume no significant change and throw away the January papers but I kept hearing references to something called “the Presidents Dinner” and thought I must see what it was all about. Had Trump entertained some significant statesman?

It turned out to be yet another story of men behaving badly as the drink flowed. Plus ça change…

PETER RABBIT CRITICS SHOULD HOP IT

IS IT April 1? A new film about the charming Peter Rabbit is facing calls for a boycott because in one scene the bunnies attack a man with blackberries to which he is allergic. He then becomes decidedly ill. This apparently is offensive to allergy sufferers because it mocks them.

“Anaphylactic shock is not funny,” rages one snowflake. No, of course it isn’t. Nor is being pelted with hard objects, shot, blownup, beaten or anything else which regularly appears on screen.

Being chased by a chap who wants to make a pie out of you isn’t funny either but I seem to remember it was a fate regularly endured by Peter Rabbit.

Picture: DAVE BENNETT / GETTY MRS Daniel Craig, otherwise known as Rachel Weisz, says James Bond should not be played by a woman and Judi Dench, who used to play M, agrees. So do I. Having a female Bond would be as convincing as a male Virgin Mary in a nativity play.