Peter Rhodes on rhyming with temperatures, a transgender tangle and chucking millions at mutilation

SOME time ago, as the Met Office gradually switched from Fahrenheit to Celsius (or centigrade, as we called it back then), someone came up with this snappy little rhyme to remind us what sort of temperatures we might expect in three seasons: "Five, ten and twenty-one / Winter, Spring and Summer sun." Hasn't really stood the test of time, has it?

FIVE degrees is now regarded as an ice age and the time to expect 21C is not summer but February. Clearly, we need a new temperature poem to take account of climate change. Over to you . . .

OH, dear. Here's yet more evidence that the world is turning into Life of Brian, as created by Monty Python 40 years ago. Consider Whitehall's latest plan to stamp out transgender discrimination. At present, women who self-identify as men (and have female body parts) are not invited for routine cervical screening. Yet men who self-identify as women (and have male body parts) are invited for cervical screening, even though they don't have cervixes. Which is nobody's fault. Not even the Romans'.

NOW, while the issue of cervical screening for men who possess cervixes is being righted, consider the expensive tangle over female genital mutilation (FGM). This, again, is the result of putting our passion for anti-discrimination above common sense. Under guidelines just announced, all secondary-school pupils in England are to be given lessons on the horrors of FGM. This would make sense if FGM were a nationwide problem. But it isn't.

AS the commentator Sarah Vine puts it diplomatically, FGM is practised in "specific and clearly identifiable backgrounds." It would make sense to concentrate resources on those communities and really achieve something. But, heaven forfend, that would smack of racial or cultural profiling. And so the money will be spread thinly all over England, as if FGM were as much a problem among the Methodists of Somerset as it is among some African communities in London. Even though we all know that the Methodists of Somerset do not practise FGM. Which is nobody's fault. Not even the Romans'.

TOLD you so. I suggested last week that a survey showing that half of Britons think the UK is racist actually proves that we are caring and concerned enough to worry about racism. Sure enough, a couple of days later another, much bigger, survey based on 500,000 respondents in 100 countries, found that Britain was "rather low" in the global league of prejudice and better than many other European countries. We may enjoy beating ourselves up but, by and large, the rest of the world rather likes us.

INDEED, a couple of nights ago on BBC World Service I heard an Egyptian academic singing the praises of Great Britain as a political, cultural and legal beacon for the whole world. It was almost embarrassing. After Suez, I'm amazed Egyptians even speak to us. They must be a very forgiving race.