Terry Hallard is unique. He was at the Shoreham air show tragedy on Saturday. That was the worst air show disaster (they rank them; soon there’ll be a ’50 best airshow crashes’ programme on channel 4) since 1952 at Farnborough. And what makes Tel (I’m sure he won’t mind…) unique is that he was at that one too. Yep, he was 12 years old at Farnborough, when 31 people died, and he is now 75 and was there when 11 died in Shoreham.

So the question is: is Terry Hallard the luckiest man alive? Or the unluckiest man alive?? And for good measure: would you invite him round to your house for dinner? When he seems to have the rather odd superpower of making planes hit the ground very near him.

Another plane crashed yesterday too, a light aircraft in Quebec. That’s in Canadia. Not the good bit but the French bit.

So is this a sign that its p’raps not the time to get in anything that goes more than 3 feet off the ground, or do the statistics now fall so far against another plane crashing any time in the next 7 years, that there’s never been a better time to fly?

Whilst pondering that we need to discuss ‘ladies-carriage-gate’. Jeremy Corbyn sort-of proposed, more just kinda mentioned that for security and safety of women travelling on public transport, particularly at night or alone, they should have designated ‘women-only’ carriages on trains and tubes. Sounds reasonable. Yet the other 3 Labour leader candidates have lambasted this suggestion. Because a women’s carriage idea is ‘just putting a sticking plaster’ on the problem when what we really need is to educate men, particularly drunk men, that assaulting women, either physically or verbally, or even being suggestive or provocative, is simply wrong and must be stopped.

I don’t agree with the women’s carriage idea either. How you gonna pull women when they’re locked up in their own cage? But Corbyn’s idea, however flawed, is in fact an idea. And a pragmatic suggestion with immediate impact. One must feel that changing the entire male psyche of a nation who spend most evening in a state of partial intoxication may take a little longer to achieve.

Sticking plasters work, that’s why we have them. So, much as I don’t agree with Corbyn (ever!!!), I actually find myself disagreeing with his detractors more. Does that make me a closet socialist?

Happy thursday

A xxxx