Best of Peter Rhodes - February 28

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

A READER recounts wearily how his 22-year-old colleague at work, vaguely aware of some anniversary, turned and said: "Who the hell is Charles Darwin?"

BLAME the schools? The bad news is that the biggest report into primary education for 40 years finds that a generation of pupils has been impoverished by schools which barely bother to teach history, science or the arts. The goods news is that the 2012 Olympic stadium is coming on really well. We can find £10,000 million for a fortnight of utterly pointless running and jumping but educating our kids is simply beyond us.

I DO not understand the difficulty in establishing, for expenses purposes, which of the Home Secretary's two homes is her main residence. Are there no shift records of her bodyguards? What of her mobile-phone records? Are several million CCTV cameras of no assistance? How curious that the limitless 24/7surveillance which observes the rest of us isn't being used to find out where Jacqui Smith rests her head.

POPES have a fairly limited choice of names. There have been 23 Johns, 16 Benedicts and Gregorys and 12 by the name of Pius. It is reported that, because of his management style, the current Pope Benedict XVI is known around the Vatican as Pope Invisible. Leaving the furore aside, what a cracking name that is. I would like it to be known that, in the admittedly unlikely event of my becoming the Pontiff, I shall take the name Pope Invisible I. As popes are infallible, anyone claiming to see me will, or course, be instantly excommunicated.

I WISH I'd thought of that. While the other actors speak broad Yorkshire, Lenny Henry uses his native Dudley accent in the Northern Broadsides production in Leeds of Othello: The Moor of Venice. As one sharp reviewer points out, this makes him the Dudley Moor.

JAPANESE nano-engineers are working on a wallpaper which will turn into a TV screen. Typical. The Brits have been referring to the telly as "moving wallpaper" ever since it was invented. Trust the Japanese to make the real thing.

A DOG lover and his money are soon parted. From Glasgow comes a report of a scam aimed at animal lovers with soft hearts, soft heads and deep wallets. It begins with a small ad advertising a dog free to a good home. Your only expense is the transportation and insurance costs. Several hundred quid later it gradually dawns that there is no dog. The Scottish Society for the Protection of Animals tells of one case where a man paid £1,436 "insurance" for a King Charles spaniel puppy. He became suspicious when the scammers told him the dog was waiting for him at "border control, Dumfries".

RAY Spice and his partner Sarah have lived happily in an eco-friendly Mongolian yurt tent on a Devon hillside for the past two years. Now, quite rightly, the local council has told them to take it down and push off. Planning law can be a pain in the neck but it is one of the few remaining glorious of post-war England. It has prevented a country of 50 million people from overflowing into one long urban corridor. There should be no exceptions to the rules, especially in the Green Belt. The unfairness, of course, is that if Ray and Sarah had been real Mongolians, they could have pleaded human rights, ethnic diversity and all that stuff. They would not only get planning permission but probably qualify for an EU grant.

AT THE other end of the accommodation scale are the architect and his wife in Grand Designs (C4) who created a vast arch of clay tiles covering a home so airtight that a cat flap was out of the question. They had a small baby and you couldn't help thinking that, within their hermetically-sealed heaven, one nasty nappy would spoil the whole day.

THE idiots who misgovern our land have produced a new sex-education leaflet which advises parents not to tell kids what is right or wrong in case this "may discourage them from being open." Ah, yes, openness is everything. Openness is 15-year-old girls proudly telling the world they are having a baby with their 13-year-old boyfriend with not a shred of moralising from either family. People who seriously think children can sort out their own ethical code should read Lord of the Flies.

THE DUCHESS of Cornwall is the latest celebrity to be seen waving an upside-down Union Jack, this time at a charity event in Hampstead. If the Windsors can't get it right, what hope for the rest of us?