Normal diplomacy doesn’t work on Donald the dotard
Our next prime minister needs to get one thing straight. If you want Donald Trump to respect you, don’t grovel to him. In fact, don’t even be nice to him. Insult him. It’s the only way. Trump is a school bully, and the only person a school bully respects is a bigger school bully. Look how he moons over Kim Jong-un. In 2017, the North Korean dictator released a statement to the world mocking Trump as a “mentally deranged dotard” whom he would “tame with fire”. Since then, Trump has happily shaken Kim’s hand, and hailed him as “very smart” and “a real leader”. Just a few months ago, Trump murmured dreamily, “I like him. Some people say, ‘You shouldn’t like him’. I say, ‘Why shouldn’t I like him?’”
Compare that with his treatment of Theresa May. Mrs May prostrated herself before Trump, rushing across the Atlantic the moment he took office to offer him a state visit with all the trimmings. Since then, Trump has trampled all over her.
Sadly, it looks as if our next PM will make the same mistake. This week, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt just about brought themselves to concede that it was “unacceptable” for Trump
to say his non-white political opponents should “go back” to the countries they’d come from (even though most of them were born in the US). But when asked if it was racist, the two men seemed petrified of offending him.
“Er … you know …” mumbled Mr Johnson. “This is the president of our closest ally,” pleaded Mr Hunt.
It was like watching a couple of mice try to tiptoe past a slumbering tom. Trump will never take them seriously if all they do is snivel and beg.
They should take a tip from Kim. Trump goes gooey for self-styled strongmen. He can’t do enough for them. Call him a fat tangerine racist with the brains of a Mcnugget, and America will be our colony by Christmas.
A dietician at the University of Nevada has said that trying to give up sugar can be like trying to give up an addiction to drugs. She isn’t exaggerating. I speak from experience.
Normally, I can take or leave chocolate bars and biscuits. But snacks aren’t the only things stuffed with sugar. Alcohol is, too. And when, a couple of years ago, I decided to take a break from drinking, I was taken aback by an unexpected side-effect. I was denying my body its biggest regular source of sugar. And it wasn’t happy. In fact, it was extremely displeased. So it drew up a contingency plan. Which is why, after a couple of weeks without a drink, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a monstrous craving for sweets.
It was bizarre. I’d never felt anything like it. Late at night, I would find myself digging furiously into the back of the kitchen cupboard, dragging out a forgotten tin of Christmas shortbread (best before date: two years earlier), and devouring its contents like a starved fox. One morning, before my commute into London, I bought two tubs of chocolate clusters from Gravesend Tesco Metro – and, by the time we’d reached the first station, I’d scoffed the lot. It was like the time Alan Partridge had a nervous breakdown and drove barefoot to Dundee while chain-eating Toblerones.
I conquered the craving eventually, but I’m afraid I’ve got no secret tips or tricks to share. It’s just a question of grim resolve, and sweating it out.
Someone should film a sugar addict’s version of Trainspotting. Instead of heroin, Haribo.
Even in the year 2019, breastfeeding in public apparently remains a contentious issue. At last, however, I have a proposal that should keep everyone happy.
Royal Dutch Airlines, also known as KLM, is the latest company to come under fire for its policy on the matter. In a message from its official Twitter account, it informed a passenger that, while breastfeeding “is permitted” on its flights, it “may request a mother cover herself while breastfeeding, should other passengers be offended”.
Naturally, a lot of people have objected to this. Asking a mother to cover herself with a blanket, after all, implies that breastfeeding is somehow shameful and wrong.
For companies, though, it is a quandary, because some customers still don’t want even to glimpse it.
Thankfully, there is a solution that should satisfy both sides’ wishes.
Instead of draping a blanket over the mother, drape it over the head of the person who complained.
England’s Jonny Bairstow hopes that Sunday’s World Cup triumph will inspire a new generation of young people to take up cricket. I’ve got good news for him. It already has.
This time last week, my five-yearold son had never played cricket. Nor had he ever watched it. In fact, I’m not sure he’d actually heard of it. But, inspired by England’s success, he and his friends at school have been playing it every day this week. And he loves it. It’s now his favourite game. Possibly his favourite thing full stop, if you don’t count bubble-gum ice cream and Despicable Me 3.
According to him, he’s very good at cricket, except for the bit where you have to hit a ball, but fortunately the bigger boys have found him a position better suited to his talents. “I’m the cricket-keeper,” he says proudly.
So pleased is he with his progress that he has even unveiled plans to turn professional. Cricketer is now his dream job, overtaking his previously stated ambitions to be either a policeman, a ninja, or a shopkeeper (“because they get lots of money”).
Apparently his more experienced friends have been bringing him up to speed with the nuances of the game. Some of their information, however, may not be wholly reliable.
“My favourite cricket team,” he announced at bathtime the other night, “is Manchester City.”