Best of Peter Rhodes - March 14

Here's a selection of the best of the Peter Rhodes column taken from the Express & Star for the week ending March 14.

A NUMBER of readers have pointed out that Margaret Hodge, the government minister who last week accused the Proms of not being "inclusive" enough, is usually followed by her parliamentary description (Labour, Barking).

A FRIEND'S car was broken into one night and £1,000 worth of property stolen. He phoned the police to be told: "We'd like to send the scenes-of-crime people around, but they finish at 9pm." Mind how you go.

RAF WITTERING has ordered its personnel not to wear uniform off-duty after abuse from local yokels. So what's new? I was in the TA for 15 years and when my little signal troop encountered Joe Public on exercise, the reception was usually cool and occasionally hostile. I never resented it . Deep in the British psyche is an admirable and thoroughly healthy distrust of authority in general and the military in particular. In 1819, after the "Peterloo Massacre" in Manchester where soldiers killed 11 demonstrators, troopers of my old yeomanry regiment were chased through the streets of Warwick by furious crowds. It is a myth that the British love or even respect Tommy Atkins. But it was noticeable during the Falklands War that the national mood changed dramatically. Suddenly, people would wave and smile at our convoys and give us the thumbs-up. The war did not last long. Neither did the goodwill. Politicians may thunder about the "right" of soldiers, sailors and airmen to wear their uniforms in public but for most squaddies, alone or in twos and threes, it simply isn't worth the aggro. And the bottom line is that it is better to live in a country where civilians can abuse servicemen in uniform than the other way around.

HERE we go again. An American lawyer who lost £500,000 gambling is suing seven casinos for allegedly failing to spot her compulsive behaviour and intervene. Really? And at which roll of the dice would she have welcomed being chucked out of the place?

WORK on building the 2012 London Olympics main stadium in east London will start next month, three months ahead of schedule. Any bets on when they find the first old German bomb?

FROM the Olympics Charter: "Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement."

Unless, of course, you happen to be one of the 3,000 VIPs at the 2012 event. This gilded elite will be chauffeur-driven across London in limousines, using dedicated road lanes which will be closed to other traffic, in much the way that Soviet dictators used to travel. The athletes? They go by bus.

LET'S get this right. Fiona MacKeown and her kids normally live on benefits in a caravan in Devon. But she's on a six-month holiday in Goa with her boyfriend and seven of her nine children. One of the kids, 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, allegedly out of her mind on LSD and ecstasy, was brutally murdered while the rest of the family were off on a trip. Mum says she doesn't blame herself. Curious. I'm sure most mothers would be absolutely racked with guilt.

SO WE'RE going to get ID cards. But we won't have to carry them. And it'll cost £19,000 million. I like to think I am too dim to see the logic behind all this and that the Great Brains in Whitehall know exactly what they are doing.

ESSEX County Council thinks it may be able to save half of the county's 30 post offices faced with closure. And good luck to it. But taking over a post office is one thing. Running it as a profitable business is quite another. Especially when the dead hand of bureaucracy gets to work.

Little Widdle Post Office before municipalisation: One postmistress, one postman, one van, one black -and-white cat. Total budget £60,000 pa, plus Whiskas.

Little Widdle Post Office after municipalisation: One head postperson, one deputy head postperson (ethnic awareness and multicultural outreach), one assistant postperson (third-age and disability), onother assistant postperson (health and safety). Three vans. One garage manager. One black-and-white cat. One Siamese cat (maternity cover). Seven feline welfare officers. Three letterbox-hazard advisory officers. One postman. Total budget £3.8 million.

THE hospitality tents at the Cheltenham Festival blew down and all that wicked gamblingand drinking was off for a day. Clearly, God is a Methodist.

ONLINE gambling has finally arrived in my e-mail box. An American company is offering unrestricted access to 60 internet casinos – plus a free £500 to get started. Remember the motto of gambling in cyberspace: Lose your house, with your mouse, in a day.

A READER supports my unfashionably treasonable view that, whatever Gordon Brown says, the Brits have never had much affection for soldiers, except in time of war. "I grew up in a garrison town," he recalls. "When one Scottish regiment moved into the barracks they caused a lot of trouble. Not one of them was over 5ft 6ins and we called them the Poison Dwarfs."

I NOTE that the world's big banks have just pumped £100 billion into the global financial system. I keep checking my bank account. None of it has arrived yet.

* 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.