Peter Rhodes on computers, confusion and how war-fever can spread like wildfire
Researchers have found that some car-insurance firms charge up to 30 per cent interest on customers who can't afford the whole premium at once. So the poorer you are, the more you pay. Another good reason for nationalising the entire motor-insurance racket.
It may be dawning on the Millennials and Generation Z kids that if things get sticky with Putin, at some stage in the future they may receive a buff envelope marked OHMS inviting them to a war. The prospect of calling up thousands of young Brits for military service has been floated in Whitehall, probably to see how the Great British Public reacts.
My guess is that there wouldn't be much enthusiasm. An old soldier once told me that when army reservists were called up for the 1956 Suez Crisis, half the mobilisation letters were returned with “B****cks” written on them. And yet strange things can happen when the drums begin to roll.
