Peter Rhodes on passing over, avoiding drama and a nation losing interest in trains

“Pass,” or even worse, “passed over” have crept not only into common speech but also into journalism. Let's be frank. We do not pass. We die. Or fall off our perch. Or pop our clogs. Or kick the bucket. Or peg it. Couldn't be simpler, right?

In the furore following a British tourist scrawling graffiti on Rome's Colosseum, I recall some years ago a First World War memorial in Flanders, a wall inscribed with the names of the dead. A visitor, presumably with connections to one of the Tommies, had highlighted a carved name using a black felt-tip pen. A private tribute but a public desecration.

The mass closure of rail ticket offices, revealed last week, ought to enrage the entire nation. Not so far. There was a time when trains were baked into the life and soul of the British, and we loved them. Today, expensive, unreliable, strike-ridden and competing with cars and coaches, they are a minority interest. It is estimated that in a typical year almost four in ten Brits don’t take a single train journey, and only nine per cent make more than 20 journeys.

Don't you get the impression, with the endless shambles of HS2 and the pathetic delays over its Euston terminal, that we are a nation simply losing interest in trains?

A reader makes the point that if Britain quits the European Convention on Human Rights as part of its strategy to reduce migration, we will be on a par with that infamous non-member, Russia. He suggests the slogan: “Leave the ECHR! Be Putin's Friend!'

But unless we get a grip on migration, an alternative slogan might be: “Let's build millions of homes for foreigners.” Not exactly a vote-winner.

In trendy universities and in the woke public sector, people are encouraged to use preferred pronouns. But recent research among employers suggests it can be a handicap for job seekers. One boss said his company was “not interested in the drama that a person who thinks they are a 'they/them' brings with them.” Harken to the cry of industry: We make widgets; we don't do drama.