The best of this week’s Peter Rhodes column from the Express & Star.

WITH so much Euroscepticism in the air, young folk sometimes ask us old folk why, back in 1975, we voted for the Common Market.
Simple. We were for the Common Market because both Enoch Powell and Tony Benn were against it.

MORE on maths. A reader recalls that in 1963 his teacher announced that before long the class would be tackling long division of tons, hundredweights, pounds and ounces. A groan went up until the teacher pointed out that it would be no harder than the long division in pounds, shillings and pence which the class had been doing for the past year. The children were aged eight.

A REPORT commissioned by David Cameron and written by a venture capitalist recommends that unproductive workers should lose their right to claim unfair dismissal.
At present, observes the money-man, some workers are able to “coast along” knowing they are almost impossible to sack.
Interestingly, this hard-nosed view from the City came in the same week that a pundit explained to Radio 5 Live listeners why many investment banks still employ so many bankers on enormous salaries and bonuses, even though there is hardly any trading going on.
The problem, he explained, is that somewhere among those thousands of employees are the one or two who will make your next billion. The snag is that no-one knows who these future money-spinners are.
If you needed a definition of “coasting along,” here it is, in all its pinstriped, red-braces glory.
The moral, Mr Cameron, is that if you’re hunting down slackers, don’t look in the factories, foundries and council offices. Start in the City of London.

TWO more useful definitions for our time:
Abdicate: to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Gargoyle: olive-flavoured mouthwash.

I HAVE been watching For Your Tomorrow, Don Clark’s superb new documentary on the Burma Campaign.
Nearly 70 years on, memories of the jungle war still reduce strong men to tears.
Eighty hours of patient, painstaking interviews have been edited down to a gruelling succession of powerful snapshots of the “Forgotten Army” of British and Indian lads who fought their way from Imphal to Rangoon and destroyed the Japanese Imperial Army.
Sir Jack Hayward recalls the steady destruction of his air-cargo squadron, with parts of aircraft scattered all over the jungle.
One old soldier tells how a party of his comrades advanced and were blown to pieces by their own artillery.
Another recalls how he was ordered by an officer to put a wounded Japanese soldier out his misery. He went forward to do the deed and is eternally thankful that the enemy soldier died before he had to pull the trigger.
This is warfare at the nasty end, fought not by heroes but by ordinary blokes ordered to do unspeakable things in impossible conditions.
If you have an opportunity to see it or buy a copy, do. Details on http://www.foryourtomorrow.com/

ANONYMOUS is the new film based on the leaky old theory that the plays of Shakespeare were actually written by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.
This theory tells us that only an educated aristocrat could have written such gems.
Bunkum. In real life, you will find comprehensive kids who write like angels and Oxbridge graduates who can’t string two words together.
Will Shakespeare, the glove maker’s lad from Stratford, had a talent for writing just as others have a talent for music or dance. No mystery, no conspiracy, just Will power.

BEFORE commenting on any bonkers-juror story, I have to point out that the one and only time I served on a jury I was greatly impressed.
We were 12 good men and true and delivered a not-guilty verdict which greatly irritated the prosecuting barrister. I treasure the memory of her throwing down her papers in disgust. I only wish we’d had the opportunity to tell her that her prosecution was rubbish.
However, not all jurors are bright. This week comes news of convictions which had to be overturned after a middle-aged juror was discovered to have texted her fiance who was in the court’s public gallery.
It is not that surprising. Some idiots are so addicted to texting that they do it while driving. Sadly, there is no way of sifting out the dimwits in advance, so it should be standard practice for jurors to hand in their mobiles at the start of each session and collect them at the end of the day.
It won’t happen, of course. Human rights, innit?