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

MEANWHILE, back in the art examination:
“The Mona Lisa was the most beautiful woman ever to be laid on canvas.”

WELL, fancy that. An academic survey into dancing asked more than 13,000 people to judge the quality of their own dancing. Without exception, everyone aged 20 or over, both male and female, rated their dancing as “better than average.” Take your partners for the self-delusional tango.

WITH  a national debt of £185 billion, where are we supposed to find the money to keep the three murderers of the postmaster’s son, Craig Hodson-Walker for the rest of their natural? This disgusting trio went to raid the post office at Fairfield equipped to kill, and that’s exactly what they did. Within the lifetime of many readers, thugs like this were hanged, and good riddance. Hanging  is a cheap process involving one length of hemp rope which can be used time and time again. In this age of enormous debt when recycling is our watchword, hanging has never looked more attractive.

OF COURSE, some people argue that hanging is incompatible with a civilised society. But then so is the abiding, harrowing image of a fine young man bleeding to death in his mother’s arms on the floor of an English post office.

I HAVE a lot of time for Peter Tatchell, the all-purpose campaigner for everything from gay rights to green issues. A lot of public figures pretend to be brave but Tatchell has real moral and physical courage. He puts himself in the way of harm and has paid the price. To the shame of Belgian  police, Tatchell was beaten up and knocked unconscious by Robert Mugabe’s bodyguards in Brussels in 2001. Six years later he took another blow to the head when he was beaten by neo-Nazis in Moscow. Now, at 57, Peter Tatchell has declined to stand in the next General Election as a Green Party candidate in Oxford, owing to brain damage. You have to admire his honesty. If he’s not up to being an MP, then how about a peerage? He would be a better Lord than some of the time-waster currently parading in ermine.

ONE OF yesterday’s newspapers carried an interview with a BA employee who preferred to remain anonymous and was therefore quoted as “A BA airsteward”.  If they do strike, he will presumably be known as a selfish BA airsteward.

IF YOU have never attended one of these massive, multi-national conferences, you will be utterly bewildered by this week’s scenes at Copenhagen. I have covered three similar events. Mere words cannot convey the adrenaline-flushed mood.  Surrounded by rumour, gossip and the ever-present threat of protesters invading the inner sanctum, you quickly come to believe that you are at the focus of the world. In this febrile atmosphere, protesters believe they can work wonders. Hacks are convinced they have the greatest scoop of all time. Normal, rational, politicians kid themselves that they are no longer the Honourable Member for Little Flushingham but  the Saviour of the Universe. And it’s only when you get home from the Planet-Changing Event that you discover no-one gives a damn and they’ve all been watching X Factor.

“WHILE the system is ridiculous, it seems to work.” Ben Elton on the monarchy. The British constitution, summed up in nine words.

GORDON  Brown is said to be planning an early General Election. A couple of weeks ago, David Cameron told me he thought it would be March 25. I cannot understand the eagerness of both Tories and Labour to win this one. If you could just close the filing cabinets, hand over the keys to Number 10 and walk away from a national debt of £185,000 million,  wouldn’t you?

I SCOFFED last week at the Millennium Bug which, 10 years ago this month, was supposed to destroy computer systems, but did not. A reader writes to insist that the bug did cause some problems. He recalls getting a renewal notice from the RAC reminding him that his membership would expire on February 16, 1901.

“THE hidden psychological triggers that trick us into over-eating.” Headline in one of the tabloids on festive eating. See?  It’s not that I’m a glutton. It’s all those psychological triggers. Pass the crackling.

“IT is not a U-turn,” says Ed the Minister for Balls, describing his U-turn on his scheme to vet adults working with children. Not only is it a U-turn but it  is yet another example of government by headlines. It has much in common with Sandwell Council’s  recent U-turn on the £75 fine for the lady who fed the ducks which was promptly withdrawn when the Express & Star  got involved. Government by headlines works like this:
1. Bonkers law is introduced.
2. Media produce examples of just how bonkers it is.
3. Bonkers law is withdrawn.
4. Shifty-looking minister says it was never his idea anyway.

AND in the biology exam:
“The largest mammals are to be found in the sea because there is nowhere else to put them.”

BY THE time we meet again, it will all be over for another year. Have a very merry one.