Mark Palmer

A poll has confirmed what most people know already – personalised number plates are vulgar, divisive and a complete waste of money. As my friend William Sitwell wrote in the Telegraph: ‘Having a personalised number plate is a self-proclaimed label of rich, smug self-satisfaction and bad taste.’ I could not agree more. The only problem is that I am the proud owner of a personalised number plate and wouldn’t part with it for all the money in the world – or, rather, let’s say it would have to be at least six figures with a two at the start.  That’s because 1CMG has been in my family for 60 years.

The final straw was seeing Jeremy Hunt wearing one shortly before the summer recess – and not just when riding his bicycle. He was actually walking down the street with the thing strapped to his back. Yes, of course, it is practical, but the now ubiquitous mini-backpack is so hideous that it belongs in the same category of naffness as men who wear flip-flops outside their own home or when not staying in a rented villa on the Costas. Once the preserve of hippies in the 1960s or gap-year students in the 1980s, these far smaller versions of backpacks (or what used to be known as rucksacks) have infiltrated modern Britain with hardly a nod in direction of style or decorum.

The government’s battle cry in the fight against the pandemic is ‘Follow the science’. But it is hard to see the science behind the disastrous and potentially crippling 14-day quarantine rule which came into effect on Monday — or, rather, failed to come into effect in any meaningful sense of the word. It’s not been made available or published anywhere, and even the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, politely refrained from giving the ruling his endorsement, saying it was a matter for the politicians: ‘They make the policy, and they make the timing decisions.

Here we go again. Just when it seemed that the rancor might abate and wounds might start to heal, along comes another express train of controversy to divide Britain. Brexit has been replaced by Megxit (as the tabloids are calling it) following the bombshell announcement by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex that they want to ‘step back’ as senior members of the royal family while continuing to have their cakes and eat them — or, rather, ‘work to become financially independent.’ Suddenly, those who strive tirelessly to rid Britain of its monarchy altogether have been galvanized. So man those ramparts! Re-arm! Let the venom flow once more! Some on the left are even calling for a referendum on the matter.

The late Frank Johnson — former editor of The Spectator — had a thing about London City Airport. ‘I never want to fly from anywhere else,’ he would say, often after returning from Germany, a country he loved, not least because of its Wagner connections. He was right, of course. Even today, more than 30 years since its official opening, flying out of City is a completely different experience from any other airport in the UK. Size matters, of course. It’s merely the 14th busiest airport in the UK, just ahead of Leeds Bradford and below East Midlands. It only has one 1,500-metre runway and the terminal has a distinctly pop-up feel to it.

You never know who you might meet on a river cruise. It was my 89-year-old father-in-law, Noel, who first recognised a tall, professorial man only a few years younger than him remonstrating with an uninterested official at Munich airport about a pre-paid taxi to Passau, where we were due to board our ship. ‘That’s Humphrey Burton,’ said Noel. ‘We worked together at the Beeb, though he was far more important than me.’ Noel is forever modest but you could argue that Burton was the Melvyn Bragg of his day — a description I later put to him but one from which he recoiled not exactly in horror, but certainly in mild disgust.

King’s Cross station at 10.30 p.m. is not a happy place. Most commuters have long returned to their centrally heated homes, leaving the concourse free for the homeless to roam randomly in search of a few coins from stragglers. I was there to catch a late train to Potters Bar last week and almost missed my Cambridge--bound service due to the numerous men and women who approached and asked for money. Some looked dishevelled, disturbed, miserable; others were polite and seemed resigned to rejection. I keep thinking about one man in particular. He said he was an ex-soldier — a ‘veteran of conflict’, as he put it — and that he had not eaten all day. It was chilly but he was wearing shorts and had a soiled blanket over his shoulders.

No one likes uncertainty and in Britain we’ve got more than our fair share. But spare a thought for South Africa, where the uncertainty is in danger of morphing into national paralysis. ‘What are your plans for the future?’ I ask a friend who lives near Durban. ‘We have no plans. We might be packing up next year and heading out.’ A lot rests on next year. The general election appears to be set for May and with every day the pressure on President Cyril Ramaphosa increases. The 65-year-old millionaire is stuck between the rock of his more militant ANC supporters and the hard place of those impatient for root-and-branch change.