Let me start with the grand old man. One of the talks I give is entitled Never Too Old for Adventure and a small piece in one of the newspapers today rather reinforced this premise. Ninety-five year old Keith Stephens, who uses a walking frame, made a fifteen thousand foot sky dive with his carer Angelica Lundekesi. Angela later revealed that the pensioner was not at all scared – unlike her. Keith, who lives at Silvermere Care Home in Cobham, Surrey, raised £1,300 for cancer charity Macmillan for his feat at Old Sarum Airfield in Salisbury. Afterwards he said: “I thought it was super. It’s a good experience.” 

Keith was able to make the jump after convincing care staff that he was fit enough for the challenge. He also had to pass a medical to jump from that height – which is the highest altitude permitted in the UK. 

Carer Angela said: “He’s a bit of a daredevil and quite adventurous. Nothing fazes him at all.” 

Good for him. There is hope for us all with people like Keith about.

Unfortunately though, that bit of cheerful news was buried under the flood of negative articles about the coronavirus. There seems to be a sense of gathering panic among the people of Britain and I am sure this is fuelled by the media, who really do not want us to feel at all cheerful.

Yet the World Health Organisation – another august and overpaid body who don’t seem to achieve very much -have issued a statement saying that it is important we all keep a sense of perspective.

Since the virus arrived on the scene last December, around three thousand five hundred people have died from its effects, most of them in Wuhan where it originated. On its very worst day in early February, one hundred and eight deaths were recorded.

Tragic yes, but fifty thousand people die around the world every day from heart disease, twenty six thousand from cancer and three thousand or so from malaria. That is not to mention road accidents, murders and various other assorted causes of death. Even snake bites account for over a hundred and thirty deaths a day.

Surely it is time for the authorities – and the media of course – to calm down?

Yet even the coronabug seems to be a symptom of how modern society is getting its values and aims mixed up. I mentioned road accidents, which as a former copper I have always looked on as the most needless form of death. British laws on driving are relatively strict but they are being circumvented by clever lawyers intent on earning easy money at the expense of careful road users.

The law states that if a driver accumulates twelve penalty points on his or her licence, he or she is automatically banned from driving for at least a year. That is as it should be, particularly as most penalty points are awarded for exceeding speed limits. Yet now we learn that drivers with dozens of penalty points are remaining on the road due to a legal loophole.

It seems that magistrates can use their discretion to allow an offender to stay on the road if they believe it would cause ‘exceptional hardship’ to revoke their licence. What a load of fatswallop! The law is the law damnit and if you break it, you accept the consequences.

Yet one man with sixty-six points on his licence has avoided a ban, as have a further two men with sixty points. The next-worst offenders – all of them women – have kept their licences despite having between forty eight and fifty nine points each.

This ridiculous loophole in the law of the land has helped ten thousand five hundred and eighty nine motorists to stay on the roads when they should by rights have been banned. 

Road safety charity Brake has called for an urgent review of the ‘exceptional hardship’ nonsense. A spokesman said: ‘If drivers who rack up twelve points aren’t banned, it makes a mockery of the system.’ Of course it does.

There is no strict definition for exceptional hardship, which is judged on a case-by-case basis, but it could cover caring for a sick relative who relies on someone to drive them around. I am sorry but there are always taxis to be had and if you can afford to run a car, you can afford to take a taxi when it is needed.

John Bache, of the Magistrates’ Association, said: ‘The process for establishing exceptional hardship is robust and magistrates scrutinise each case very carefully.’

Rubbish Sir! I have personally witnessed many a magistrate swayed by impassioned appeals from shyster lawyers and have absolutely no faith in amateur judges, no matter how well intentioned they may be.

Those ten and a half thousand drivers who should have been banned are a danger to the rest of us. It is surely time for the government to be firm on upholding the law. So far I have been complimentary toward Priti Patel as Home Secretary but she needs to address this particular problem as a matter of urgency. If I am written off by a driver who should not have been on the road, I will come back and haunt her – as well as Bunter Johnson!

Inspired by Screeching Greta, nearly three-quarters of eight to sixteen year olds in this country are worried about the environment, with some parents even getting professional counselling for their kids’ ‘climate anxiety.’

Serves them right I’m afraid. They are so busy trying to convince the rest of us that the end of the world is night that they are frightening themselves to death. The snowflake generation is melting faster than the polar ice caps and while these eco warriors as they grandly entitle themselves are allowed to get away with virtually anything in the name of climate change, the situation is only going to get worse.

MPs have been awarded a three point one per cent pay rise, taking their salary to £82,000 and that does not include their allowances for housing, gold-plated final-salary pensions and expenses.

The armed forces, teachers, prison staff and police officers all got less than that, without the perks. The pains of a decade of austerity seem not to have been visited on our MPs. Perhaps they should spare a thought or two for their struggling constituents before digging their sticky little fingers in to the public purse yet again.

Bunter Johnson – bless him – explains his absence from the flood disaster zones, saying he was told by emergency services they would have to down tools, distracting them from their job of helping people.

Yes I can understand that, but he should remember that the Queen was given – and initially heeded – that advice after Aberfan, later recalling it was the greatest regret of her life. 

Think about it Bunter.

It occurs to me that if we had not discovered that the coronavirus existed and so had not descended into a floundering panic about it, it would be doing far less damage than it is.

Yes, some people would have fallen ill and died, but they always have and always will. This is not the Black Death damnit and we might be better off if we stopped behaving as if it was. 

The most dangerous and frightening political leader in our part of the world is Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan. Not only does he ceaselessly stir the pot of war in Syria, making it almost impossible to end that conflict but he is now making criminally cynical use of migrants. 

To get his way in Syria, he deliberately encourages these poor people to head for the Greek frontier in a blatant, almost medieval piece of blackmail. There they are routinely arrested, beaten robbed and turned back but Erdogan doesn’t care.

In his own country he has destroyed formerly free media and independent courts, and flung scores of journalists into prison. Surely he should be condemned in the loudest possible tones by the British government?

But no, this dictatorial clown is Britain’s Nato ally so Bunter and Co dare not undermine him. Instead they whitter on and on about Vladimir Putin instead. 

But I did read a lovely quote from Vlad the Hulk this week. He said, ‘To forgive a terrorist is up to God, but to send them to God for forgiveness is up to me.’

We could do with a few more strong leaders in the world I fancy – even if that does mean not bothering too much about ‘human rights.’

Oh God, I have received yet another petition urging me to support a total ban on trophy hunting. I’m afraid I am not going to sign it, despite being informed that it is supported by a number of ‘prominent personalities.’

‘Why would anyone want to destroy something so beautiful, then stuff its poor lifeless body to keep as some kind of macabre trophy?’ This came from Bunter Johnson’s popsy, Carrie Symonds not long ago. She went on, ‘A trophy is meant to be a prize, something you’re awarded if you’ve achieved something of merit that requires great skill and talent, Trophy hunting is not that – it is the opposite of that. It is cruel, it is sick, it is cowardly and I will never, ever understand the motivation to do it.’

Actually Ma’am, ethical hunting requires a great deal of skill and talent as well as a huge amount of stamina! Ms Symonds is not alone I’m afraid. Lately, it feels as though there isn’t a TV celebrity who doesn’t feel outraged about shooting big game. Since its formation just over a year ago, the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting has amassed a list of supporters that reads like the guest list for a BBC Christmas party. Lorraine Kelly, Carol Vorderman, Nicky Campbell, Michael Palin and Ed Sheeran have all pledged their support. To be fair to Sheeran, he has actually been to Africa. He made a film in Liberia which one African commentator deemed to be ‘the most offensive and stereotypical fundraising video of the year.’

The trouble with all this righteous rage is that big game hunting, or trophy hunting is far from a simple story. Hunting is an industry that for instance brings each of Namibia’s eighty-two community-owned game conservancies an average income of well over five million pounds every year. And according to government figures, the sector has created fifteen thousand jobs including trackers and skilled taxidermists. Even more interesting for the vociferously anti- hunting ‘celebrities,’ Namibia is a country where wildlife is booming, with the rhino population growing six per cent a year and elephant numbers doubling since 1995.

Earlier this year, just over the border, President Masisi of Botswana came in for a personal attack from Joanna Lumley who insisted that he keep in place the ban on hunting elephants. For a bit of context, Botswana has a stable population of a hundred and thirty thousand elephants. In other words, they are thriving at the moment. It is because of this burgeoning population that the decision was made to allow a number of elephants to be shot. This wasn’t just to bring in cash either – it followed a consultation that found rural livelihoods were being destroyed by elephants trampling over farmland and coming into conflict with people. A team had been set up to usher them away, but inevitably the damage is done before they arrive. A number of villagers have died while trying to protect their crops.

Why should Lumley take the lives of elephants over people? And isn’t this white privilege at its worst? In some parts of Botswana almost fifty per cent of people live below the poverty line, so it is easy to understand why, to ordinary citizens, Lumley lobbying the President to keep a hunting ban in place was classic western arrogance.

However much you love animals, it’s really worth trying to look at African conservation issues from an African point of view. Last year, Prince William came in for some stick after official footage was released showing him visiting conservation projects in Tanzania and protesting against poaching. The video featured just one black person, whose contribution was an adoring appraisal of William’s leadership skills. Mordecai Ogada, an ecologist who specialises in community-based conservation, suggested the film conveyed a damaging narrative: ‘The message that goes out is that African wildlife is in danger, and the source of the danger is black people.’

Dr Ogada has a point. The source of the problem lies in the Far East and not with black people at all. And isn’t it a little rich of Prince William and his pals to decide to save African wildlife from poachers when British high society in the last century, spent decades profiting from pillaging African ivory? Add to that, the fact that this noble twit thinks nothing of hunting bears and other European wild animals while gunning down helpless game birds in the name of sport and it all seems somewhat hypocritical.

Another outspoken and ignorant numpty, Ricky Gervais suggested on a 2015 radio programme that rather than hunt animals, why don’t we say, ‘for ten thousand dollars you can hunt a poacher?’ Great idea Ricky: kill Africans for trying to protect themselves and benefit from their own wildlife. Yet I am sure he does not regard himself as in any way racist.

The irony of a trophy hunting ban – one that’s lost on its celebrity followers – is that the best way of preventing poaching is to sanction controlled hunting. I tried to explain this recently in my novel, Ivory Challenge, but not everyone seems to agree with me. Let’s go back to Namibia – the mantra there when it comes to big game is that ‘if it pays it stays.’ In other words, local communities look after wildlife because it is legal to sustainably monetise it. In Kenya and a few other countries, hunting is illegal and poaching is rife. There is bleak logic in the fact that if poor and hungry people can’t charge tourists to cull certain animals, they will simply slaughter them and make money from selling their body parts.

In fact, only a few hours ago, I watched a BBC programme about the trade in tiger carcasses that is carried out in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam and controlled by China. It is a brutal business and mirrored in South Africa by a similar trade in lion bones. World governments and even CITES (the United Nations Convention into Investigating Trade in Endangered Species) are all too scared to stand up to the Chinese and wildlife trafficking – not only feral cat bones, but ivory, rhino horn, abalone and pangolin scales – is escalating to an alarming degree.

Come on, Ms Symons and Ms Lumley, as well as all you other mewling ‘celebrities,’ protest with the Chinese representatives and forget about the people who bring in a great deal of money to impoverished countries for the privilege of taking home trophies of their hunt.

Remember Cecil the lion – of course you do. How can anyone ever forget him. This animal was legally shot by a Minnesota dentist and the ensuing public outcry from people who did not know Africa at all virtually forced the dentist out of business.

But Cecil was a lucky cat. Dr Palmer’s crossbow bolt saved him from a far worse fate. Let me just tell you briefly how lions live and usually die. Male lions in particular become old very quickly. They enjoy a brief period – usually around two years – as pride leaders with all the attendant privileges. This is when they are in their prime between five and eight years old.

But their halcyon days quickly come to an end. Wearied with advancing age and continuous fighting for their kingship, they are driven out by younger males, sometimes after a brutal battle which leaves the exile with torn muscles, crushed bones or festering sores that will not heal. Alone and without the hunting prowess of female lions to help him feed, the big fellow rapidly loses condition and is soon reduced to scavenging or eating lizards and beetles in attempts to survive.

Sometimes they resort to hunting porcupines and end up with quills through their paws and faces which make it impossible for them to eat at all. Their end is slow and terrible.

One way or another, the king of beasts slowly becomes a barely walking skeleton. In the end he just staggers from shady spot to shady spot and is probably lucky if hyenas tear him apart while he still lives. If that does not happen, he will grow weaker until he is unable to get up at all. Then it is a matter of waiting for the vultures and the ants or whatever finds him and eats him slowly. Dehydration and shock will take the last of life from the luckier ones.

I have lived much of my life among lions and although I do not regard myself as an expert, I give talks on how they live. I watch the horror in the faces of my audiences when I explain the true facts and show them photographs to back up what I say. It is not what they have seen when they watch lion documentaries or animated children’s movies. Nor is it what they hear from the celebrity brigade in their crusades to stop hunting.

Reality is very different to fantasy I’m afraid and the problems are not as simple as those who have only seen lions on television imagine. For one thing, human beings have broken the ecosystems that once enabled Nature to regulate itself. Not even the largest wildlife parks can sustain the giant-scale cycles and migration patterns which make self-regulation possible.

Animals at the top of the food chain multiply until there are so many that their numbers simply have to be reduced. Mankind has made it impossible for nature to do this. In so doing, we have inherited a huge responsibility. If we can’t create game parks as big as entire countries, we will have to do the necessary – that means reduce the numbers in a way that makes economic sense. You don’t do that because it is pleasant. You do that because it is necessary.

Despite what the emotional ‘celebrities’ and do gooders may think, Cecil was a lucky lion. He was old but still mobile and if there had been no hunter to end his life, he would have endured a huge amount of suffering.,

Petitions to ban hunting or ‘celebrity rants’ from the likes of Symonds, Lumley and Gervase will achieve nothing to help lions in the wild, Nor will dropping pennies into collection boxes to save the Cecils of this world.

The hunters, whether you like them or not are the ones dropping real dollars and writing genuine cheques that do not only save Cecils but all the warthogs, wildebeests and little creatures that the sentimental warriors customarily ignore.

A vote against hunting is a vote for destroying sustainable conservation of wildlife. The real world is bigger and far more violent than cat’s sandbox. It is up to us to try and preserve it and we cannot do that by banning hunting..

Over the past few decades, no Government department has failed more miserably than the chronically dysfunctional Home Office. It has long been a byword for mismanagement and warped priorities and a number of Home Secretaries have railed against it while in office.

Way back in 2006 the tough-minded Labour Home Secretary John Reid described the organisation as ‘not fit for purpose’ and those words still ring true. In its central duties of protecting the public and upholding Britain’s borders, it is a disgrace. Yet the mandarins refuse to embrace genuine reform, as the experience of Priti Patel demonstrates. Since this energetic and outspoken lady was appointed Home Secretary, the Home Office establishment has systematically tried to undermine her, particularly through poisonous briefings. 

At the weekend, this hostility came to a head with the resignation of the department’s top civil servant Sir Philip Rutnam. In an unprecedented and unedifying statement to the media, he attacked Patel, claiming that her conduct included ‘shouting and swearing, belittling people, making unreasonable and repeated demands.’

As he embarks on legal action for wrongful dismissal, it now seems clear that he aims to bring her down and opponents of the Tory Party are revelling in the turmoil. They believe that both Patel and her tough line on immigration are doomed, but they should not be too smug. In any forthcoming fight, neither Sir Philip nor the Home Office have much credibility. He is a classic Whitehall figure with a deeply unimpressive record. 

As the senior official at the Department for Transport, he presided in 2012 over the West Coast Main Line franchise fiasco, which a subsequent review found to be littered ‘with deeply regrettable and completely unacceptable mistakes.’ He was also criticised for the ballooning costs of HS2 and flaws in the Network rail improvement programme. 

Taking over the Home Office in 2017, he was soon embroiled in the Windrush debacle, where the Government threatened scores of British citizens with deportation over lack of documentation about their status. Yet it was the Home Secretary Amber Rudd who had to quit. Somehow Rutnam managed to weasel his way out of it.

His defenders now act as if the Home Office is an efficient organisation whose smooth functioning is put in danger by the reckless antics of Patel. In truth the department would seem to be a complete shambles and in need of urgent repair. The Home Secretary may be impatient with her officials, but she has every right to be. If they do not want to be hectored or sworn at, they should start implementing the Government’s policy instead of thwarting it at every opportunity. 

The former head of the civil service Lord Macpherson complained this week that the Tories ‘used to want to preserve our great institutions. Now they are hellbent on destroying them.’ But the Home Office is nothing like a great institution damnit! On the contrary, it continually lets down the British public. Awash with progressive ideology and political correctness, it is reluctant to maintain British borders or punish criminals. 

For more than a decade, mass immigration has been running at over six hundred thousand every year. At the same time, thanks partly to enfeeblement of the Home Office, crime is soaring – up seven percent in the last year alone, with violence up by twelve percent.

Priti Patel is hardly the first Home Secretary to feel despair. Michael Howard, appointed to the job in 1993, once spoke of his dismay at his first briefing from civil servants, who showed him a graph of inexorably rising crime into the future as though nothing could be done about it.

An adviser to David Blunkett, who became Home Secretary in 2001, said that the place was ‘a giant mess,’ a point reinforced by a scathing report in 2006 from the National Audit Office, which stated that the department’s accounts could not be verified because it ‘had not maintained proper financial books and records.’

In yet another shambles, Blunkett’s successor Charles Clarke was forced to resign after incendiary revelations about the Home Office’s pathetic failure to deport a large number of foreign criminals. 

Tellingly, it showed far more zeal in 2008 after leaks of documents to Tory frontbencher Damian Green that exposed the ineffectiveness of border controls. Displaying a robustness that it rarely showed towards criminals or illegal migrants, the Home Office launched a heavy-handed investigation that resulted in the arrest of Green. No charges were brought against him either.

Theresa Maybe survived so long as Home Secretary partly through her subservience to officialdom. However the consequences for crime and immigration were disastrous. Whatever the moans of the mandarins, change is desperately needed. 

Hopefully Ms Patel will be the one to bring it about.

It is now officially known as Covid 19 which presumably makes sense to somebody. Presumably the easily remembered name Coronavirus was a little too cuddly, suggesting it might have mutant strains called colavirus and fantavirus. It is obviously causing a huge problem and ministers and NHS chiefs are right to take sensible precautions.

But are they being sensible at all? Apparently Bunter J and his medical boffins will announce detailed plans today, but despite all warnings, I have been summonsed to my local surgery tomorrow for a routine blood pressure test. What madness is this? My blood pressure is high but it has been that way for twenty-five years. Why am I being asked to expose myself to a far more deadly – if we are to believe what we read – lergy than high blood pressure?

It seems to me that there is no joined-up thinking here. Schools are closing across the country, but last Friday thousands of kids were allowed to play truant so they could huddle together in Bristol to hear that silly little Greta child screeching about how the earth is on fire – oblivious to the torrential rain which turned College Green in the centre of the city into a quagmire.

She even got a police escort in an electric car, for heaven’s sake. What if one of those children was a ‘super-spreader’ carrying the coronavirus? Then we’d have a real epidemic on our hands.

I am not suggesting that we ignore the threat, even though my natural inclination is to ridicule the predictable knee-jerk reaction to these health scares, but surely we are entitled to a bit of common sense from those making decisions – or is that too much to ask?

I voted for them in the last general election and they seemed to start well, but my faith in Bunter Johnson’s government is beginning to waver. Before they came to power, one of their pledges was to stop prosecutions of soldiers who served in Northern Ireland during the so called ‘troubles.’

Yet later this month, seventy-eight year old Dennis Hutchings will come to trial on a charge of attempted murder. The government are strangely quiet about it but surely this must be wrong? The IRA and other terrorist groups were responsible for well over three thousand deaths during that time while British military personnel accounted for three hundred and sixty one. Every needless death is a tragedy but surely there should be some balance in justice.

Mr Hutchings’s case follows the fatal shooting of a twenty-seven year old man with a mental age of between six and ten in 1974. After a three-month police inquiry, patrol leader Hutchings and two others were cleared of any criminal act. He was investigated again in 2011 and police concluded that ‘there was no ground for taking any action.’ However, despite that assurance, in 2016 he was charged with attempted murder. 

Meanwhile, over two hundred IRA suspects, linked to nearly three hundred murder investigations are exempt from fear of prosecution due to ‘letters of comfort’ given to possible terrorists, many who were on the run, by Tony Blair’s government in 1999. Blair justified the letters as crucial to keep the peace accord on track. 

Terrible things happen in any war, particularly guerrilla or terrorist conflicts. In the heat of the moment, fear, weariness and adrenaline combine to make killers out of the meekest of men, but it all happens in an instant and how men like Mr Hutchings are supposed to remember exactly what happened forty-five years later, I have no idea.

I do feel though that this farce of a trial is a disgrace to the British nation. Way back in the nineteenth century, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about how the ‘Tommy’ is despised in times of peace but is relied upon and courted when the fighting breaks out and ordinary folk need protecting.

Has nobody learned in two hundred years?

I have been fortunate in life inasmuch as I have never lost a child of my own. I have enormous sympathy for anyone who has and my heart goes out to them, but of late, we have heard a great deal about how stretched for cash and resources are the Metropolitan Police.

I can understand them feeling somewhat aggrieved at the additional costs of keeping the Royal Biscuit and his family protected, but they seem to lose sight of priorities. It has been nearly thirteen years since Madeleine McCann disappeared in Portugal. That was a terrible time for the family and the British people were largely full of sympathy. But twelve million pounds has already been spent by police searching for her, with another three hundred thousand last year. Now the Met has asked for more. Thousands of children go missing every year and their parents endure the same anguish that the McCanns have, but rarely – if ever – has so much money been poured into searching for one little girl. Painful as it is for Kate and Gerry McCann, there has to come a moment when the cash-strapped police force draws a line.

Quite apart from the regular preachers of the Woke brigade, it seems that dissent in any form cannot be tolerated nowadays. Let me give you a couple of particularly daft examples. A market trader in Loughborough was warned by the local council in 2017 that following a complaint, she must stop selling ‘offensive’ items on her stall.

The ‘offending’ objects were pottery mugs decorated with images of 12th Century monks, the Knights Templar. Because they had murdered Muslims during the Crusades, claimed the complainant, any Muslim shopper passing the stall might be offended.

When the stall-holder ignored the warning because she felt it seemed ridiculous – as it undoubtedly was –  the council withdrew her licence to trade anywhere in the town.

Meanwhile in Bristol, police officers painted their fingernails blue to highlight the problem of ‘slavery in nail bars.’ These were experienced coppers for God’s sake!

When this daft stunt attracted witty comments on Twitter such as, ‘What about nailing some criminals for a change?’ the pathetic senior officers of the Avon and Somerset Police reacted by issuing a statement saying: ‘If anyone found these comments offensive, please report them to Twitter. If you feel that you were targeted and are the victim of a hate crime, please report this to us. We take this issue extremely seriously.’

A few weeks later, the Church of England instructed its nearly five thousand primary schools that regardless of parental wishes, boys as young as five should be told that they were allowed to wear high heels, tiaras or tutus, and that girls should not have to wear skirts, so as to avoid offending ‘transgender’ children who might wish to change sex. 

When will the twenty-first century world wake up to what it is doing to itself? I forget who it was that originally said ‘ the law is an ass’ but he – am I allowed to say that I wonder? – would doubtless take that back today.

The average ass shows far more common sense than the average person, while our politicians promise the world but quickly forget their promises.

Perhaps Private Frazer was correct – we are all doomed!

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?