I know I am a bit of a dinosaur but there are times when the twenty-first century bewilders me with its inanities. Take reality television for a start – firstly, the very name is a misnomer because there is nothing real about this nonsense at all. As far as I can see it is akin to the medieval practice of putting people in the stocks or the pillory and throwing garbage or rotten fruit at them while they were helpless. It really is pandering to the basest instincts of ordinary people.

And yet these daft reality ‘shows’ seem so popular. I have occasionally watched an episode of one or other branch of this sadistic nonsense – purely in the interest of research you will understand – and it has always seemed utterly concocted from the first grinning face of the show’s host to the final hysterical sign-off. Between these two points, the participants, who clamour to be on the show and thus ‘on telly’ – the very pinnacle of human achievement according to the preening muppets involved – are urged to make complete idiots of themselves, and eagerly do so. 

I suppose the only saving grace is that most of these self-imagining ‘stars’ are so thick they cannot work out that they are being humiliated at all.  They fondly imagine that they are becoming famous – the other pinnacle of modern achievement. 

Those who live entirely in that world – the world of Big Brother, Towie and Love Island – sometimes come to realise just what rubbish their lives have become. Vicious bystanders hide behind their anonymity and scream foul abuse online – another appalling habit of modern society -and that is too much for many of them to take. 

Only the fragile plastic world of the phoney protects them and once that is removed, depression and despair may well ensue, as it did for Caroline Flack and others who, in a well of misery have taken their own lives. 

The British people used to value human dignity and up to a point I suppose that is still so, as we can see by the stoicism of those with homes ruined by flooding. But if a soaked sitting room needs a clean-up then so does so-called reality TV. 

Or we could just watch and copy Queenie and most – but not all – of her immediate family. Despite the knocks they have taken of late with divorces galore and the Duke of York and Royal Biscuit doing their best to break up the monarchy, in general they are a credit to the country.

In total contrast, the inanely posturing buffoons on the idiot box really are a national disgrace.

It would seem that the aforesaid Royal Biscuit is back in this country but without his tame Yank. He addressed some ecological tourist (a contradiction in terms I fear) gathering up in Scotland this week and started off by urging everyone to ‘just call me Harry.’

In many ways it is commendable that the Duke of Sussex only wants to be an ‘ordinary’ bloke.’ But there is ordinary and then there is ordinary, isn’t there?

There is waiting in the rain for a bus ordinary; there is can’t afford it until payday ordinary; there is worrying about getting the kids into a good school ordinary.

His kind of ‘ordinary’ seems to be living in a magnificent and horribly expensive waterside mansion in an exclusive Canadian enclave – something he almost certainly could not afford without his royal privilege and daddy’s cash. There is nothing very ordinary about that, is there?

And on the return journey from Scotland, he commandeered an entire first class rail carriage for himself and his bodyguards – who we are still paying for and will be paying even more for when the Canadians pull out. There is nothing very ordinary about that either.

 Harry’s quest for normality is touching but there is an uncomfortable undertow that makes it feel somehow disrespectful, not only to the monarch, but to us as well – the ordinary tax-paying people of Britain.

All I can say to Harry – see I have taken up his offer – is please settle down to reality. I am sure you are a very nice chap but I don’t want to pay through the nose for you to make money out of jetting around the world and lecturing us all. Either be a Royal and get on with your duties or disappear into the commercial world and make money for yourself without telling me how to live my life.

Come back to reality Dear Harry and try living in the real world for a change. You might become more likeable than the spoiled and petulant young man you seem to be at the moment for I fear you remind me horribly of those preening twits in the television reality shows.

Pangolins – or scaly anteaters as they are sometimes known – are small, harmless animals covered in overlapping scales. Completely harmless and extremely loveable, they have become the most trafficked animal in the world with thousands of them being illegally brought into China – where else damnit? – every year. Apparently they taste extremely good and the Chinese are convinced that their scales have medicinal value.

Like rhino horn, the scales are made up of keratin like our finger and toenails so that really is a load of nonsense.

I am surprised the British media have not latched on to the story – they are probably too busy with the Royal Biscuit and his shenanigans – but a link has been found by researchers in two separate studies between the deadly coronavirus epidemic sweeping China and the world and the consumption – or contact with – pangolin scales and meat.

The two studies were reported almost simultaneously by a South African publication and Xinhau News Agency in China.  The studies in question were carried out by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston as well as a team at the South China Agricultural University.

Both are the kinds of studies that in a normal world, would have gone virtually unnoticed. But at the moment, this is not a normal world: the coronavirus, if unchecked, has the potential to become a global pandemic.

The news that a global health emergency such as this can be traced back to consumption or handling of the humble pangolin (to bats, actually with pangolins as the vector) is staggering in its implications. And at the same time, a ray of hope for endangered species globally.

Previous outbreaks of disease have been traced to animals – Ebola to bats, SARS to Asian palm civets, MERS to camels. At the same time, most of the threats to endangered wildlife – and African wildlife in particular – come from China and the Far East where wildlife products are prized for their traditional culinary, status, and medicinal uses.

Rhino horn, ivory, abalone, tiger and lion bones and bear bile are just some of the sought-after products. But the pangolin trade is particularly destructive as it takes around nineteen hundred pangolins killed to produce one ton of scales. In 2018, forty-eight tons of scales were seized, the equivalent of ninety one thousand, two hundred pangolins – and a lot more would have slipped through undetected. Pangolin scales are a lot easier to smuggle than rhino horns or elephant tusks.

I must admit that China reacted fast to the news of the pangolin breakthrough: on 10th February, its legislature, the National People’s Congress announced it would update wildlife protection laws to ‘toughen the crackdown on wildlife trafficking.’ Xinhua reported that ‘the supervision, inspection and law enforcement should be strengthened to ensure that wildlife trade markets are banned and closed.’

Let’s hope they stick to their resolve once the coronavirus outbreak has passed.

It seems sad that it takes a global health emergency for the world’s biggest consumer of illegally trafficked wildlife products to take action. On the other hand there may finally be hope for that most endearing of creatures, the amiable pangolin.

Could it be a case of the Pangolin’s revenge?

Of all Bunter Johnson’s recent appointments, I feel that Home Secretary, Priti Patel has the right idea, but is being hampered by the cultural madness of modern Britain. At the moment, she is accused of bullying her civil servants. One of these paper pushers was terribly distraught after all-night meetings seeking to reverse a High Court ruling barring the deportation of twenty-five foreign criminals. In fact so distraught was this worthy that he collapsed and was found in hospital to have a sodium deficiency.

It was a stupid story but I found it hard to believe that civil servants were actually being forced to work beyond six in the evening. Poor lambs!

But Ms Patel faces far greater challenges than that provided by the disgruntled desk drivers in her department. Justice itself is falling into complete disrepute. Take the case of eighteen year old Ben Mathews, who was savagely beaten for no reason at all by a complete stranger.

Cut, bruised, bleeding and badly shaken, he went to the local police station, only to find that his attacker – an off-duty prison officer – was already there. The cops told Ben that they wanted the attacker to say sorry and take part in ‘community resolution.’

This meant that this pratwinkle would not receive a criminal conviction or even a caution, but all would be well if he apologised to the traumatised young man he had attacked. How can that be justice?

Ben’s mother told reporters ‘They wanted Ben to sit in the same room and talk to his attacker – he just couldn’t do it. He will live with the mental scars of this attack for the rest of his life.’

Of course he will, while the prison officer, who for some reason, cannot be named received a written warning about his conduct from the Ministry of Justice and was allowed to keep his job. With this absurd policy of ‘community resolution,’ he carries on without a stain on his record. This is justice?!

It seems that the notion that criminals are bad people who need to be punished and deterred has been abandoned. Crime is now officially a disease to be cured by ‘treatment.’ The criminals themselves are not to be blamed.

We’ve begun to see this in operation in all aspects of modern justice – disappearing police and courts, endless feeble cautions and unpaid fines, prisons which spit out their inmates weeks after they enter.

And, of course, more crime. Robbery and murder will in time grow as common as burglary and assault have become since we gave up detecting or punishing them. And then they’ll no doubt be eligible for ‘restorative justice’ too.

The police, like our immoral, greedy ruling class, no longer believe in right and wrong. They are paramilitary social workers who do not themselves blame criminals for their crimes. They see it as their job to negotiate neutrally between ‘offenders’ and ‘victims.’

The only thing they’ll really come down hard on is people trying to defend themselves or their property or those who do not share their own ultra-leftist views.

This is a national problem that is putting us all in danger. I don’t blame individual officers but if Priti Patel can somehow make modern police chiefs remember that their main job is to protect the public then I will certainly support her all the way.

I wrote about the lack of gumption in the Cambridgeshire police force the other day but they are in the news yet again.

A £400 Ridgeback Hybrid bicycle, stolen in Cambridge the other day would probably have been sold on for about £200. It belonged to A&E doctor Michael Brooks and it didn’t just vanish into thin air. A witness spotted it being taken from outside a pharmacy. The thief had ridden up on a battered old BMX, forced the lock on Dr Brook’s bike, and pedalled away. A straightforward criminal offence – or should have been and Dr Brooks had two big clues to offer the cops. The witness lived locally, recognised the thief and knew exactly where he lived. As well as handing over the full name and address, the doctor also gave officers the BMX so they could get the thief’s DNA. It was a classic case of ‘bang to rights’ and should all have been very straightforward to investigate.

But no: after seven days of silence from the police, a mystified Dr Brooks phoned them to ask what was happening. Sweet Fanny Adams was the reply although perhaps not put in those words. Yes, they’d had obtained a DNA sample from the BMX but they hadn’t been round to interview the suspect. Why would they need to ‘interview’ him I wonder. They had enough evidence to arrest and charge him, but for some reason the case had been officially closed. The evidence may have been handed to them on a plate, but they’d scraped it straight into the bin. 

Dr Brooks has had five bikes stolen now. No one has ever been arrested for it. One was nicked in full sight of his railway station’s CCTV cameras but police told him they had no time to trawl the footage. The doctor offered to do it himself but was informed that would breach data protection laws.

This is surely a crime in itself and one committed by those paid to prevent crime. Bike theft is an epidemic throughout the country but nothing is being done about it. Two forces – Wiltshire and Dyfed-Powys – recorded Two hundred and forty two bike thefts apiece last summer, but there was not a single prosecution between them. 

Homes, cars, bikes – the message from admittedly hard-pressed police to thieves couldn’t be clearer. Help yourself, Fellas. We won’t get in your way.

Sort it all out please Ms Patel. The efficiency of our police forces must surely be a priority. 

At last the damned silly awards season seems to be over, which should mean a welcome respite from celebrities lecturing us on how we are all wrong in matters like the environment, gender politics, sexual harassment, MeToo and MooToo – the oppression of defenceless cows for their milk, which believe it or not was highlighted by some twit called Joaquin Phoenix in his Oscar acceptance speech.

And of course there is the thorny issue of racism. It seems that we are all racist now whether we like it or not. At the Brit awards this week, a prize-winning rapper, known only as Dave accused even Bunter Johnson of being a racist.

‘It is racist, whether or not it feels racist, the truth is our Prime Minister’s a real racist,’ this worthy belted out in a ‘song.’ And we have to believe it because this numpty said it was so!

Well I for one am fed up with being ‘guilty’ of everything under the sun, just because jumped up ‘celebrities’ say I am. This ‘woke’ generation with their burnished morals and burning zeal to expose any instance of modern oppression and right every historical wrong in the dankest corners of society is rather beginning to pee me off I’m afraid.

Yet there is one area of widespread persecution and criminality in the UK on which they all remain silent – the abuse of white working-class girls by Asian grooming gangs.

Why is that I wonder? Over recent years, hundreds of vulnerable girls have been traumatised, broken, abused, raped, left unable to get on with their lives – but no high-profile crusader speaks up for them. No actor dedicates his or her trophy to them, no duchess pops a concerned head in to see if they are okay. No one is starting a hashtag or opening a pop-up shop or pleading for justice for them.

In fact, few celebrities have anything to say on the subject, even though this week saw more convictions of Asian men – of mainly Pakistani descent – for what have become known as grooming gang offences. Usman Ali, Banaras Hussain, Abdul Majid, Gul Riaz and two other men were jailed for a total of fifty-five years for what the judge called ‘vile and wicked’ repeated sexual assault and the multiple rape of two under-aged white girls.

These offences took place in Huddersfield, but we have seen it all before – in Rochdale, Bradford, Rotherham, Oldham, Halifax, Nottingham, Telford, Newcastle, Derby, Bristol, Birmingham, Peterborough and elsewhere.

It is a complete disgrace – yet don’t expect the ongoing trauma suffered by these girls to get a mention when there are far more fashionable causes to get angry about.

Causes such as the transgender social justice initiative – whatever that may mean in plain English – currently tearing the Labour Party apart or the insistence by some that the Grenfell tragedy is a race issue. For God’s sake! If you really want a race issue, consider a report published last month into a grooming scandal in Manchester, which concluded that fifty-seven young girls have been exploited by up to a hundred Asian members of a gang, despite the fact that police and social workers knew exactly what was happening.

And in Oxford this month, three Asian men were jailed for a total of forty-nine years for raping and sexually abusing a schoolgirl, the third trial in a series of linked cases going back many years.

Naim Khan, Mohammed Nazir and Raheem Ahmed – all in their forties – were found guilty of thirty-five offences against the girl when she was aged between thirteen and fifteen.

‘My life has been destroyed,’ the poor kid said in her victim statement. In many of these cases, the victims were not believed at first, only to be later left with shattered lives, eating disorders, depression, PTSD and drug dependence.

It is not helpful some say, to think of this national scandal in terms of race because white men are abusers, too. Indeed they are, but on this scale? Operating with such impunity in so many cities? No I don’t think so.

The harsh fact is that these girls and their families have been let down and that there is still little evidence of efforts in British Pakistani communities to confront the problem. The authorities are reluctant to do their jobs for fear of appearing racist but if these victims had been black schoolgirls, targeted by gangs of white men, there would have been rioting on the streets.

This twit Dave or his soul brother Stormzy would be belting out their so-called songs and castigating us all yet again. There would be uproar among the glitterati and twitterati. Perhaps the Royal Biscuit and his Yank, Lily Allen and Oprah Whatever-her-name-is would be sending messages of sympathy as well.

When he was a Labour MP, Tom Watson’s Midland constituency was in the heartland of grooming gang territory, but he never got involved in the scandal. He cared about abuse cases, of course he did, but only if the abusers happened to be members of a Tory paedophile ring – which, in the end, turned out not to exist and were the ramblings and imaginings of a known fantasist.

Meanwhile, the abuse of hundreds of girls went on unchecked. The problem is that they are the wrong kind of victims and the wrong kind of offenders – resulting in few declarations of solidarity from feminists or celebrities and little acknowledgment of their plight elsewhere.

All the so-called stars are too busy being ‘groovy’ to concern themselves with troubled, white, working-class girls from failing families whose tormentors happen to be embarrassingly and overwhelmingly of Asian origin. Their bare-faced hypocrisy is sickening to put it mildly.

There has been quite an outcry over the fact that Bunter J and his popsy have been enjoying a few quiet days in a country mansion while hundreds of people have been flooded out of their homes. I confess to being a little surprised at his reticence. For someone who has such a long track record of shameless self-promotion, he’s been remarkably restrained since winning the election.

By now, I would have expected the old Bunter to have been filmed standing majestically on the prow of a boat floating down the River Wye, like that famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware. But he has resisted the temptation and let his ministers, the fire brigade and all the other relevant authorities get on with their jobs, while making money available for flood relief. To me at any rate – and I know from experience how publicity-hungry politicians get in the way of emergency services – his reluctance to be involved has been commendable, especially given the grandstanding of some of his predecessors. 

Just imagine if the Blair Creature was still in charge. He’d be helicoptered around the country, ostentatiously consoling flood victims with all the sincerity of an American television evangelist.

Anthony Blair was a master when it came to turning someone else’s misery into a photo-opportunity. If he’d been in No 10 today, he would no doubt have taken it upon himself to issue a tear-stained tribute to the presenter Caroline Flack, who killed herself this week, ‘She was the People’s Presenter.’ I can hear him saying it damnit!

Gordon Brown wasn’t much better. For a while, immediately after he took over from Blair, Glum Gord decided to run the country as a one-man band, trampling over his subordinates as he stampeded towards the nearest television camera. During a suspected outbreak of foot and mouth, he even called a snap press conference about five minutes after a sheep sneezed in Lanarkshire to announce he was taking personal charge. No wonder that emergency went on so long. The man couldn’t organise the proverbial brewery party.

Perhaps though, Bunter probably should pay a state visit to a few of the worst-hit areas. Sufficient time has passed to deflect any accusation that he is indulging in Blair-style knee-jerk exploitation and one man he could call on is Vic Haddock, who has been washed out of his home at Ironbridge in Shropshire. 

Mr Haddock runs a canoe hire business on the Severn. He doesn’t blame Boris, but he would like to find out precisely who is responsible for the lack of effective flood protection. He hopes the Prime Minister might be able to help, but he makes no capital out of his current predicament.

‘We live by a river,’ He told the Press. ‘I bought this place of my own choice, my own accord. I’m a staunch supporter of Boris. I’ve supported him, now come on Boris, come and support me. I’ll buy you a pint.’

A sensible fellow but it sounds as though he might appreciate a bit of moral support from Bunter J. The prime minister would at least get a warm, if wet welcome from Mr Haddock. Elsewhere though he might find himself under fire, especially from folk not especially well disposed towards the Conservatives.

Margaret Thatcher found that out during the 1980s. The Iron Lady enjoyed rushing to the scene of every IRA bombing and train crash to console the victims. I’m sure she meant well, but not everyone was pleased to see her.

Private Eye magazine even produced a ‘Thatch Card’ which readers could carry in their wallets, like blood donor cards and hand to medical staff if they were ever admitted to hospital following, say, a nasty motorway pile-up.

It read: ‘In the event of an accident, the holder of this card wishes it to be known that he/she does NOT wish to be visited by Mrs Thatcher under any circumstances whatsoever.’

Bunter doesn’t incite the same kind of visceral hatred that was directed towards Thatcher. He generally manages to put a smile on the faces of even those who would never vote for him. A lot of people would welcome cheering up right now and I reckon Bunter should be the one buying a pint for Vic Haddock

I’m sure Mr Haddock wouldn’t even mind rowing Bunter to the pub.

I have just returned from ten very soggy days of house sitting in the Cotswolds and for once, even the Princetown weather seems almost benign. At least we are not likely to be flooded.

But the world outside still seems to be a troubled place. The royal family keep trying to tear themselves apart. Prince Andrew’s shenanigans continue to shock as it is now revealed that he is/was friends with and accepted lavish hospitality from yet another serial paedophile. The Royal Biscuit and his Yank have been preparing to make squillions with their ‘Royal Sussex’ brand company, but thankfully Queenie seems to have put a stop to that and over the past month or so there have been a string of divorces among minor members of the Firm.

Lisa Nandy, the prospective Labour leader has said that she would support a vote to abolish the monarchy and at the moment, I don’t suppose poor old Queenie would mind.   

Then there is the coronavirus or whatever fancy name they are calling it now. What a shambles it is proving. Russia seem to be the only nation showing any common sense by banning anyone arriving from China. If this virus is as deadly as it is purported to be, then surely draconian measures have to be taken, regardless of anybody’s human ruddy rights. 

And I see that the Extinction Rebellion lot are up to their tricks again, this time in Cambridge. The local branch of these nutcases took offence at Trinity College’s decision to sell farmland near Felixstowe, which developers want to turn into an industrial estate.

To punish the college, the anarchists invaded Trinity’s lawn, ripped it up, carted the mud off to a Barclays Bank branch, and chained themselves to an apple tree, waving the usual flags and chanting the traditional inane slogans.

They claimed this was an ideal way to protest against the ‘destruction of nature.’ How ridiculous is that? Are Cambridge colleges not allowed to sell their own property? Should all industrial estates be shut down, despite the local economic damage? Is tearing up a lawn the best way to defend nature? Isn’t it simply a childish act of self-promoting vandalism, for which the perpetrators should be prosecuted? 

For me, the astounding thing is Extinction Rebellion – and they can’t all be morons – seriously believe such antics advance their cause. In fact though, like their attempts to block highways, and airports, this sort of stunt simply turns ordinary people against them. One poll for the Cambridge Evening News’s website found a staggering ninety four per cent of local readers thought the protest was ‘nothing more than vandalism.’

So much for raising environmental awareness.

And as so often when virtue-signalling brats decide to lecture us all about their consciences, it is hard to miss the smell of hypocrisy. When the spokeswoman for these people, Sarah Lunnon went on the radio to defend them, she reportedly travelled to the studio by car. But shouldn’t she have walked or taken a bike? Shouldn’t her half-baked comrades tear up her lawn, too?

And as on previous occasions, the protesters seemed not to care that they were putting public services at risk. Contrary to their dishonest claims, at least one ambulance was forced to turn around when faced with XR’s roadblocks, and there have been accounts of other ambulances making long detours. Britain has seen antics like these before, from the radicals of the 1960s to the Greenham Common women in the 1980s. Self-appointed activists and posturing protesters will always be with us. Every generation has them. The real question, therefore, is not why XR are so stupid but what on earth were the Cambridgeshire cops doing?

After all, they had plenty of opportunities to stop the vandals. Yet they stood idly by and watched. These latter-day Dixons of Dock Green actually made the protesters’ task easier by putting up roadblocks to deter the traffic! What madness is that? At first, police spokesmen claimed they could not intervene because the Human Rights Act guarantees the right to peaceful protest. Does that not sound horribly familiar? But it is complete nonsense. Since the law forbids people from obstructing the highway and damaging private property, the constabulary would have been perfectly entitled to step in.

In a video released on Monday, Superintendent James Sutherland admitted that the issue was not ‘black and white.’ The police could have intervened if they thought the protest threatened public order, Superintendent Sutherland said. But he went on, ‘it’s a peaceful protest, there’s no disorder.’

I am willing to bet that if I hopped over the fence and dug up my neighbour’s lawn or better still Superintendent Sullivan’s before dumping it in my local post office – we don’t have a Barclays – I would be hauled in front of a Beak before I managed to get back. Would the local Plod defend my human right to smash up his garden? Would they reroute the traffic to make my life a little bit easier?

Of course they wouldn’t. Unlike the Cambridge protesters, I am not a spoiled, entitled, middle-class brat. Quite apart from my own actions, would kids from a council estate get away with similar actions. Of course they would not.

The police were too craven to intervene because senior figures were frightened to stand against a ‘progressive’ cause. So desperate to appear ‘woke’ are modern coppers that this lot lacked the guts to enforce the law.

And this reflects a wider picture. Like so many public institutions, from our universities to the BBC, the police force has been contaminated with a lazy, uncritical, knee-jerk political correctness. Dare to question the fashionable transgender dogma of the day on social media and you can expect a visit from the local constabulary. Poke fun at the holiness of ‘diversity’ and you might be facing a night in the cells. But rip up your neighbours’ lawn? If it’s for ‘environmental awareness,’ (whatever that may be) then fair enough.

To me this is a perfect example of the growing gap between the vast majority of ordinary Britons who recognise cant, dishonesty and vandalism when they see them and the people who run our public institutions, whose instinct is always to grovel and appease.

But it has to be stopped damnit! If there’s one institution that cannot fall victim to the cult of hectoring ‘wokeness,’ it is the police. Their job is not to promote diversity, encourage inclusion, stimulate eco-awareness or any other of the lazy, second-hand phrases that pass for political discourse among the slow and simple-minded. Their job is to uphold the law and arrest wrongdoers.

If they don’t do this, they let us all down and are at serious risk of forfeiting public confidence. Faced with vandalism and disorder from fashionable eco twits, the police’s instinct seems to be to grovel. So how can we trust them to keep us safe?

No wonder, then, in Cambridge there is now talk of a ‘counter-protest’ against the XR extremists. For if you can’t trust the police, why wouldn’t you take the law into your own hands? That way, of course, lies anarchy so the local constabulary simply must get a grip.

Clean up the disorder. Arrest the vandals. Let ordinary residents get on with their lives and have some respect for people’s lawns. That surely can’t be too difficult, can it?

Yet again there has been an outpouring of whittering by allegedly sensible and enlightened people about climate change and what dangers it will bring to the planet. I don’t buy it I’m afraid. Yes, the climate is changing as it has during different periods over the past millennia but climate change is not the biggest threat to the environment – people are. The world’s rivers and seas aren’t choked with floating piles of rubbish, toxic chemicals and plastic waste because of climate change or global warming. They’re that way because we have nearly eight billion people crammed onto a planet that’s dying under the pressure of our greedy abuse. Two decades from now, the earth’s oceans will contain more plastic than fish. Climate change didn’t do that. Way too many people did.

Climate change hasn’t covered the world with concrete or replaced healthy ecosystems with housing estates and shopping malls – we and our ever-increasing numbers are the culprit. Climate change is only one of many symptoms of an out-of-control disease – human overpopulation. The irreversible environmental damage stemming from having too many people on a very small planet is already painfully evident. Our bloated population is diminishing our children’s futures in ways that have very little to do with the planet’s temperature.

I read today that the BBC are about to make a series with climate activist Greta Thunberg promoting her views. That should be fun! We will again be harangued by this little girl who has somehow taken the world by storm with her ranting. Will she offer any cures for the illnesses of the planet I wonder? Somehow I doubt it. So far, she has told us all what we have done and are doing wrong but has come up with no ready alternatives.

Bunter Johnson has decreed that sales of petrol and diesel motor vehicles will cease in fifteen years time. That seems wildly optimistic and completely unsustainable I’m afraid. There is hardly any infrastructure in place to keep the currently running electric vehicles on the road and in any case, the world will still be choked in plastic.

Our current environmental woes have almost nothing to do with the climate and everything to do with how we’ve been treating the earth – not just recently but for centuries. We’ve always abused the environment and managed to get away with it because our numbers weren’t significant enough to cause lasting damage. Now our numbers are out of control, and that presents us with huge problems.

In hindsight, we should have addressed rampant overpopulation shortly after the second world war when the global population was still around two and a half billion – less than a third of what it is today. But we were in the midst of post-war optimism and still believed in the delusion of ‘nature’s endless bounty.’ Nobody thought about the environment; all they wanted was more money and larger families.

Nature’s bounty has almost run out I’m afraid and I would urge all climate-change ‘activists’ to direct their environmental anger at those who really deserve it. They can start with the economists, developers and politicians who blissfully believe that perpetual growth is still meaningful. They can then move on to the religious zealots who still spout the mantra of ‘man’s dominion over nature’ and abhor the idea of contraceptives. After that, they can apportion a hefty dose of blame to the world leaders who purposefully sidestep the overpopulation issue like the political hot potato it is. Why damnit?! Overpopulation is killing our planet and robbing future generations of the spectacular biodiversity and animal life that older generations took for granted. And finally, they can look in the mirror and ask themselves what they are personally doing (besides protesting in the streets) to make the planet a better place for all the life that dwells on it.

One of the British national dailies is running a worthy campaign to clean the country of its litter and I would suggest that Ms Thunberg – I see she is to trademark herself to prevent anyone capitalising on her name – and the Extinction Rebellion fanatics could better help the planet by picking up a few discarded plastic bags from time to time.

Are there any solutions to an overcrowded planet? Yes there are. Firstly, governments must stop getting side-tracked by the climate change industry and recognize that the problem is sheer numbers and blatant disregard for the planet’s health – not the climate. We as human beings must replace political and economic agendas with better education and more global promotion of family planning and government incentives to have fewer children – not more.

Unless this happens pretty soon, there will be no space left on the planet and then the ‘activists’ will have been proved right but for all the wrong reasons.

Promoting her new novel Grown Ups, best-selling author Marian Keyes says she only reads books by women as male writers and their lives are ‘so limited . . . it’s such a small and narrow experience.’  

Imagine if a man had said such a thing about female novelists!

I did not go to university – through choice rather than lack of opportunity but that is another story – but had I done so, I don’t think I would be boasting about it nowadays. Rather like the police I was so proud to be a part of, universities seem  to have lost their drive and their reason for being. They spend more time tending to political correctness and he complaints of ever more precious students than they do with providing a good tertiary education.

Take Oxford and Cambridge for example. These two institutions have long been regarded worldwide as great seats of learning and hitherto, only the best would be accepted. Last week however, it was reported that Oxbridge intends to have six and a half thousand more students from deprived backgrounds by 2025.

Since there are no plans to expand undergraduate numbers, these students will doubtless be offered places at the expense of very able, largely middle-class applicants. Can it ever be right to give a place to a less qualified candidate at the expense of an intellectually stronger student who has worked hard, and committed no greater sin than to be born into relatively privileged circumstances? I don’t think so. What on earth has happened to the concept of merit in this mixed up society?

And Cambridge University Students’ Union has said that having military personnel at their freshers’ fair is ‘alarming’ for attendees and could affect their mental health. Have these snowflake numptys any idea of what they will be facing when they get out into the real world?

Students voted in favour of banning societies from bringing firearms to the annual fairs after union welfare and rights officer Stella Swain suggested those with mental health issues could find their presence ‘triggering.’ If they have mental health issues, what on earth are they doing at Cambridge?    

The motion said that the presence of military personnel carrying firearms at the fair indicate ‘implicit approval of their use, despite the links between military and firearms and violence on an international scale.’

Ms Swain, who proposed the motion which passed with over fifty percent approval, said that the union was committed to demilitarisation efforts within the university, and therefore should not be a place for military organisations to recruit.

‘The presence of firearms and military personnel at freshers’ fair is alarming and off-putting for some students and has the potential to detrimentally affect students’ mental welfare,’ the motion said.  

Without the Armed Forces these students wouldn’t be able to study in any case. They would be under the rule of Nazi Germany and the only reason they are able to attend university at all is because of the sacrifice and bravery of the Armed Forces, many of whom would have come from Cambridge ruddy University!

But it doesn’t really come as a surprise. In 2018, the same union voted down a motion to promote Remembrance Sunday citing fears about the ‘glorification’ of conflict. 

When he came to power, I urged the detractors of Bunter Johnson – and there are many – to give the man a chance. One move he made last week makes me worry somewhat though.

On Monday afternoon, journalists at No 10 who were expecting a briefing on EU trade were asked to line up on one side of the entrance hall while a security officer checked them off against a list. Those that were acceptable to the powers-that-be were asked to cross over to the other side of the room. 

The remaining journalists – mostly, though not entirely, from organisations disliked by No 10 – were told to leave. This is surely censorship of the most blatant kind and whether it was encouraged or decided upon by Johnson himself or was the whim of his strange advisor Dominic Cummings is difficult to know.

In the event, everyone present walked out in protest at what was considered an almost unprecedented act of censorship on the part of Downing Street. Nine times out of ten, when journalists grumble about the way they are treated by the authorities, I am inclined to shrug my shoulders, and not take their complaints too seriously, but this smacks of Kremlin or African dictatorship and makes me doubt the prime minister, even though he seems to have done alright so far.

As a scribbler, I am interested in semantics but I confess I needed to look up one particular word that crops up time and again in the daily newspapers. That word is ‘woke,’ which according to my dictionary means ‘alert to injustice in society, especially racism.’

I sounds very noble but so far as I can judge, woke culture seems to have overtaken and replaced political correctness. It is a kind of thought police cult whose devotees have given themselves the right to be offended to their core by anything they disagree with. Which is just about everything. 

Every time a woke spokesman (or more likely woman) says anything, it appears to be a wail of complaint because whatever they heard or read was either based on common sense or a traditional view. I was brought up to show tolerance for views different to my own and to try and understand the reasoning behind such views. Yet it seems that in woke culture a non-woke viewpoint is a source of almost hysterical denunciation.

And what is then expected is self-abasement, apology and retraction. The woke mindset seems to have invaded and taken over British universities too and the slightest variation merits ‘de-platforming’ – meaning that particular speakers have to be barred from addressing the assembled luvvies. Bring back national service for God’s sake. If any of these fragile snowflakes had listened to a drill sergeant on parade, I think they’d have died of ruddy shock!

And almost as bad as the woke brigade are the so-called liberals. They are anything but liberal damnit! Take for instance the rancorous impeachment process in America, which is led by so called Democrats Shumer, Schiff and Jerry Nadler. They represent a party that seems to me responsible for so many of that nation’s problems, but they do not like Trump and sound almost rabid in their denunciation of the man. Yet like him or not, he was fairly elected by the American people so surely deserves to be accepted as such.

After all, when Barack Obama somewhat surprisingly came to power millions of conservative American voters were concerned. The man was not even Christian in a deeply Christian country, but these folk didn’t react the way the current lot have reacted and are reacting to Trump. They buried their concerns and gave their support to a duly elected president which was as it should be.

While political opposition from his Republican opponents continued, it was conducted in a respectful and well-mannered way. Yet with the equally surprising election of Trump, a similar display of common decency and acceptance of defeat has been utterly absent from the liberal political leadership and the far too powerful American media. In response to his winning the presidency, he has been hounded, harassed and viciously vilified – and is still being vilified. In my long lifetime I have never heard any American or Western politician being so harshly and relentlessly attacked by his political opponents as has Donald Trump.

But it all rather mirrors what the liberal elite think of African history. Even today, a number of people seem horrified that I look on myself as African. I am the wrong colour to make that claim according to these so called ‘liberals.’ And let’s face it, the decolonisation process that swept through Africa a few decades ago was motivated by the liberal politicians of Western democracies who came to dominate the political landscape after WWII.  They successfully promoted the idea that all whites in Africa were racist oppressors and all blacks were innocent victims.

And to bolster that view, Chaka Zulu, a psychotic mass-murderer who terrorised an entire sub-region has been universally lionised while Cecil Rhodes, who as far as I know never killed anyone, who built roads, railways, bridges, hospitals, schools, universities and supplied the funding for the most prestigious scholarship of the modern era, is remembered as a heartless, avaricious, monster.

The same applies to two relatively recent leaders of my own country. Ian Smith, who was a good and honest man will go down in liberal history books as a racist tyrant while his successor, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, personally responsible for ruining a country and killing many thousands of innocent people will be remembered as a long serving black ‘leader.’

On the back of this and many other big lies, one of the greatest man-made catastrophes of all time has unfolded in sub-Saharan Africa. It has cost and continues to cost millions of lives in wars and endemic continental violence. It has flattened entire economies and left hundreds of millions of people trapped in a deepening poverty spiral. Cruel despots have amassed fortunes and continue to be accepted around the world as leaders while their people struggle to survive.

Yet despite all this, no member of the liberal establishment has ever had the courage to stand up and admit that they got it wrong. As with the woke brigade, if you don’t agree with them, you are just wrong.

Across the liberal spectrum there seems to exist an inability to accept any form of defeat, but more importantly there is also a frightening refusal to accept and acknowledge that they may have done something wrong and take responsibility for their actions. So the chances of finding solutions borne out of constructive discourse to world problems are frighteningly absent unless the rest of us fight back.