Here we go again. After closing down Central London for a week or so earlier in the year, the Extinction Rebellion zealots are at it in five British cities this week. Yesterday, a caller to BBC Radio Bristol told the station that the Extinction Rebellion blockade meant he was stuck in traffic and unable to visit his father who was dying in hospital. One of the radio reporters confronted protester, Zoe Jones and played her the man’s phone call.

 Ms Jones said: “We’re incredibly sorry, we didn’t mean for our protest to affect your life in this way. I still believe we are doing the right thing but it’s incredibly difficult to hear stories like that. I’m glad that I heard it and it’s given me a more rounded view of the protest and the gravity of the situation that we’re in.”

Ms Jones added that the incident didn’t make her want to stop protesting for the foreseeable future.

She said: “I guess the reason why we’re all here is for our families.”

What idiotic self-justifying tommytwaddle! These people are disrupting hundreds of lives and will achieve nothing but misery for others. Ms Jones went on,

“I shouldn’t be here standing in the road and stopping people from getting to hospital to see their aged father who is on death’s door.

‘This shouldn’t be happening but we are here and this is the reality and we have to be here.”

She told the reporter she hoped she wouldn’t have to continue protesting for much longer.

“I sincerely hope that politicians listen to what we are saying and allow us to get back to work, allow people to get to their hospital appointments and to allow them to get on with their lives.”

Climate change has been affecting the world since Adam and Eve first thought about making cider, Ms Jones and with the world population expanding at its current rate, there is little any politician can do about it. If you and your fellow cranks all did one little thing to help, you might make an infinitesimal difference, but blocking traffic and causing a huge rise in exhaust gases while disrupting other folks’ lives is hardly the way.

I fear you will only antagonise people who would otherwise support your aims.

Theresa Maybe delivered her final speech as Prime Minister yesterday and not unexpectedly, hit out at other leaders both current and to come. Boris Johnson – I think it was aimed at him – was described as ‘pursuing ideological purity at any price’ and without naming names, others were described as ‘delivering too many empty promises and being unwilling to compromise.’

That is rich coming from the woman who repeatedly promised that she would get us out of Europe by 29^th March, repeatedly said that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal,’ then when she had negotiated a very bad deal that was scorned by all sides of Westminster, refused to compromise in any way.

I had high hopes for Mrs Maybe when she became Prime Minister but will breathe a sigh of relief when she leaves next Tuesday. She has to be the most inept political leader this country has suffered under in my lifetime – and I have seen a fair few of them come and go.

As a young Rhodesian, I served in the Gloucestershire Constabulary for seven years before going home and I was extremely proud to wear the traditional bobbies’ helmet. It was not particularly comfortable and dangerously awkward in a fracas but it was a symbol of all that we were and a point of pride to wear.

Now that very same Gloucestershire Constabulary are equipping their officers with baseball-style caps instead, thereby consigning 150 years of proud history to oblivion.

Apparently, this is to attract young recruits but has anybody given a thought to the dignity of policing? I doubt it. To see police officers walking the streets – on the rare occasions when modern bobbies do walk the streets – looking like workers from a hamburger shop is hardly going to worry the criminal fraternity.

The editorial in one broadsheet reckons that baseball caps are as un-British as baseball itself and more associated with criminals than guardians of the law. I am not a regular reader of that particular newspaper and don’t agree with much that they print, but on this occasion, I heartily concur!

I read that Customs officers in Nairobi have arrested a Chinese tourist attempting to board a flight for Shanghai with 510 genital organs from wild animals in his suitcase.

Thirty-seven year old Ming Zhang Wei was arrested at Jomo Kenyatta airport carrying two suitcases full of animal penises. Three hundred and nine of these were from zebra, forty-six from baboons, thirty-one from buffalo, twenty-seven from giraffes, fourteen from lions and twenty-one from flamingos.

It was the last item that made me wonder as to the veracity of the article. Can flamingo penises be detached? Anyway, if the article is genuine, there is only one possible punishment for Mr Wei.

Perhaps his can also be used for Chinese traditional medicine.