Best of Peter Rhodes - March 28
Here's a selection of the best of the Peter Rhodes column taken from the Express & Star for the week ending March 28.
Here's a selection of the best of the Peter Rhodes column taken from the Express & Star for the week ending March 28.
MY LOCAL butcher is offering beef produced by "four generations of happy farmers." That must be some sort of record.
AS PART of Whitehall's campaign to encourage Britishness, the Union Jack will soon be flying at all public buildings, including Jobcentres. Actually, it would not be a bad idea for Jobcentres in Wales, Ulster and Scotland to fly the English flag of St George. It would remind them where the money's coming from.
THE UNION Jack will also be permitted at hospitals, and may be flown at half-mast when someone dies. That'll cheer up the new arrivals.
WHATEVER happened to the Data Protection Act? Any scratty wheel-clamping firm can supply a vehicle number to the DVLA and pay for the personal details of the owner. Then, out of the blue, you receive a threatening letter, like the one sent in by a reader. It announces: "Having missed the discounted period with which to pay your fine," you now owe them £120. If you don't pay in seven days, it will rise to cover court, admin and bailiff's costs. My reader hasn't a clue what "offence" he is supposed to have committed and says he never received notice of any fine. This is already classed as extortion in Scotland and is illegal. How much longer will Parliament allow English drivers to be tormented by this sort of nonsense?
THIS week's internet survey showing how men are turning into metrosexual wusses, scared of bossy women and using cosmetics, is nothing new. Thirty-odd years ago I was a young feature writer, sitting next to the women's editor, a terrifyingly self-confident Lancashire lady. When a sample of that unthinkable product, a moisturiser for men, arrived in the office, she insisted I should road-test it. Some days later I told her I had been using the moisturiser and was most impressed. She looked at me in disgust and snarled: "You great wet nellie." From that day to this I have never touched the stuff. Or at least never admitted it.
THE GIPSIES who set up camp in Warwickshire paid £12,000 for the 2.5 acre plot. They then divided it up into 15 plots which they sold for £20,000 each. That's a cool £300,000. If you seriously think this issue is all about poor homeless folk desperately seeking somewhere to live, look at the figures and think again. Any chance of the taxman getting involved?
I AM most grateful for the occasional e-mails drawing my attention to websites which appear to have been created without much thought. In the latest crop I smiled at an art designer's website: www.speedofart.com and the Italian electricity firm powergenitalia.com.
THE GLASS is rising, the wind is easing and the Birmingham Navy will soon be heading off for the coast. Their preferred vessel is something shiny with a very pointed end and a big engine. For navigation they use an A-Z, for a tow home they call the lifeboat . How do you spot a member of the Birmingham Navy? One definition struck me this week as I trolled through an American boat builder's brochure. He claims that one of his little yachts sailed "from England to Sweden across the North Atlantic." A true member of the Birmingham Navy sees absolutely nothing wrong in this statement.
YOU land on Mayfair. You have to pay £300. A reader asks, was Monopoly the inspiration for wheel-clamping?
ONE daft complaint about a TV advert has been dismissed but another could be along any time now. The Twining's Tea commercial features Tyrone, a fit young black guy who appears to be employed in the tea shop by Stephen Fry. To Fry's obvious irritation, Tyrone has clearly been showing the female customers rather more than his teapot. It is an ad positively seething with innuendo about gays, bi-sexuals and women. From this rich mix of impropriety, one viewer piously complained that the ad stereotyped young black men by suggesting they were sexually promiscuous. The Advertising Standards Authority has dismissed the complaint. But why stop here? This ad also stereotypes middle-aged-ladies and camp old tea-shop owners. But worst of all, it commits the unforgivable sin of suggesting that what really attracts women is youth. Bring on the anti-ageism police.
"PITY he didn't thank America," snarled one US contributor to a chatroom after France's President Sarkozy thanked Britain for our wartime sacrifice. Maybe Sarkozy is biding his time before thanking the Yanks. After all, America turned up three years late for the First World War and two years late for the Second.
AND YET sometimes they shoot too soon. In Missouri this week, Ronald Long was unable to make a hole in the wall of his house. So he used his .22 pistol. The bullet killed his wife Patsy who was standing outside. Why didn't Long use a drill? Because he didn't own one. He had a handgun in the house but not an electric drill. God bless America.
AS EXPECTED, the report into the collapse of Northern Rock shows that the so-called watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, was utterly, totally, hideously useless. God knows how such incompetence will be rewarded. Knighthoods, probably.
OUR changing language. Hillary Clinton, who said she dodged snipers in Bosnia when she did not, admits to a "mis-statement." Wow, look at your mis-nose, Pinnochio.
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