Here’s a selection of the best of the Peter Rhodes column taken from the Express & Star for the week ending October 10.

I FELT a certain sympathy for the earnest Radio 5 reporter examining the origins of the credit crunch who found herself asking a redundant plasterer if he had seen the writing on the wall.

BRITAIN has solemnly signed up to an EU agreement to reduce carbon emissions by 80 per cent from the 1990 level by the year 2020. Which sort of suggests that we have already made great progress. Not exactly. Friends of the Earth reported last year that emissions were higher than at any time since1997, and still rising. An 80 per cent cut looks absolutely preposterous but, hey, it’s a good sound bite.

ERNIE Chambers is that rarest of things, an American politician who does not believe in God. But the US courts recognise God and that was enough for Ernie to launch a lawsuit against the Almighty. He wanted a permanent injunction forbidding God from sending any more floods, earthquakes and “terroristic threats”. The action failed when a district judge ruled that the plaintiff must have access to the defendant in order to serve court papers on him. And as God has no address, the judge threw out Ernie’s case. Trust an omnipotent deity to wriggle out of it on a technicality.

A READER reports a notice, without commas, on a farm building in Herefordshire. It announces: “Organic potatoes call in.”
He reports that he watched the entrance for a while but did not see any potatoes call in. It reminded him of the sign ‘slow mud’ and he asks: “Have you ever seen fast mud?”

BY COINCIDENCE, another reader also writes in support of the comma, having just seen a performance of the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, The Pirates of Penzance. The hero Frederic sings: “I, sore at heart.” If the singer ignores the comma it becomes: “I saw a tart.”

YES, I know I should be outraged at the news that our MPs are to get 24 days off at Christmas. But if the past few weeks of financial turmoil have proved anything, it is how utterly irrelevant the average backbencher is when the manure interfaces with the ventilation device. We are, to all intents and purposes, not a parliamentary democracy but a constitutional dictatorship. And we didn’t even vote for this dictator. Seven days at Christmas, 14 days, 24 days? Does it matter?

A motorist’s diary:
0630: Fill up car.
0830: Petrol prices go down.

THE TREASURY is borrowing £200 million a day, a 60-year record. Seriously, does anyone really want to win the next General Election?

THESE collective nouns (keep ’em coming) are getting very clever. I particularly liked:
* A plethora of lispers
* A tenet of palindromes
* A hotbed of quilts

A PARTY? With Peter Mandelson? On a Russian billionaire’s yacht? What could possibly go wrong?

NOT quite metricated. The Times features a picture of a tiger, “about two metres long and more than 14 stone in weight.” So what’s that in centigrade?

A VISITOR to this country (I am assured by a colleague) knocked on a farmhouse door to obtain some of the “range eggs” they were advertising at the farm gate.
“Two quid a dozen,” said the farmer.
“But the sign says they’re free,” said the puzzled visitor.

STILL on country eating, are eight legs of venison too dear?

RESEARCHER Eva Murzyn from the University of Dundee believes that older folk dream in black-and-white and younger people in colour. The explanation is that we old ’uns were raised on monochrome television while later generations watched colour sets. I have my doubts. As you get older, dreams get less exciting. These days, my nocturnal fantasies tend to come from the Screwfix catalogue and are therefore in colour. Especially the click-fix laminate flooring section. Oh, rapture. I can hardly wait till bedtime.

* Has this whetted your appetite for more of Peter’s gems? Make sure you read his column every day by picking up a copy of the Express & Star.