Best of Peter Rhodes - May 23

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

SOME months ago it was whispered along Fleet Street that some of the expenses-fiddling in the Commons would end in resignations, police prosecutions and by-elections. At the time it all seemed a bit unlikely. Now, however, there is a very real possibility of a few Honourable Members trying to explain to a jury why their "forgetting" to declare payments is very different from your average chavvy benefits cheat.

ONE easy step toward cleaning up the system would be for MPs to submit their tax affairs to the same unsmiling and grimly efficient taxmen as the rest of us. At present they have their own tax inspectors, Messrs Blindeye and Whitewash. Okay, I admit we hacks are envious. Some years ago the system meanly ruled that newspapers bought by journalists as an essential tool of their trade cannot be offset against income tax. So every Sunday I pay for a fistful of weeklies out of my own pocket. Meanwhile, MPs get £400 a month tax-free to spend on food.

IF YOU ever thought newspapers had no place in this digital age, think again. No other medium on earth, no website, TV programme, text message or infernal Twitter could ever convey the scale of our MPs' misdemeanours quite so starkly or comprehensively as page after printed page of the daily press. This disclosure has been a great victory for democracy and no less a victory for paper, ink and the ancient art of reading. Maybe that's why politicians are perfectly happy to keep one-fifth of the population illiterate.

MY PRIZE for unbounded optimism against all odds goes to the advertising campaign designed to lure chic French tourists to Blackpool. They will at least find the smell familiar. Especially if they remember the old Parisian pissoirs.

FOLLOWING the letter from a reader who claimed to have become a great fan of genetically-modified food after enjoying a delicious leg of salmon, I noticed a menu offering loin of cod. What next, jellyfish spare ribs?

A FEW weeks ago the Met Office was predicting a "barbecue summer". We all assumed this meant hot and sunny. But now I think of it, most of the barbecues I've been to have taken place in driving rain. Maybe weathermen have a sense of humour.

OUR best barbecue was the one when the garden lights failed and all the cooking was done by moonlight. A number of guests congratulated me on the unusual, crunchy burgers. In the gloom we had failed to remove the little plastic-film dividers between the patties. Delicious.

GOLF fans are bitterly divided over the new style of driving perfected by Padraig Harrington. The 37-year-old Open champion takes a run-up at the tee and can whack the ball more than 400 yards. While traditionalists tut-tut, we non-golfers are mystified. Golf is surely the most illogical and absurd of all games. The aim is simply to get a small ball into a small hole and yet the method of doing it is utterly ludicrous. If someone wishes to make it even more difficult by running into the drive, wearing roller skates or performing every shot while standing up in a hammock in slippers made entirely of banana skins, good luck to them.

A READER who is a health-and-safety adviser writes to support the controversial decision not to hold a victory parade for Wolverhampton Wanderers. He says events attracting large numbers of people take months to organise. I can't help reflecting that in May 1940 more than 300,000 British and French soldiers were safely evacuated from the beaches and port of Dunkirk, with not a single health and safety expert in sight.

INDEED, after this week's court ruling that British soldiers are protected by the Human Rights Act, you can't help wondering whether the Dunkirk evacuation would ever have been allowed if the same rules had applied back then.

"Sorry, Mr Churchill, but some of these Little Ships don't have the requisite number of lifebelts and most of the skippers haven't done the stepladder course."

THE HISTORY of England is full of scenes guaranteed to bring tears of pride to your eyes. But is any image more potent than those serried ranks of ferociously brave Anglo Saxon housecarls on Senlac Hill, as shown this week in 1066 (C4)? They were outnumbered and doomed yet they beat their shield-wall with their war axes and yelled:"Out, out, out!" at William the Bastard and his invading Normans until the last blow fell. Which reminds me. The EU elections are on June 4.

THE intriguing question of what happens to failed professionals will not go away. You inquire, are:

* Failed shelf stackers restored

* Failed shoe shiners rebuffed

* Failed witches bedevilled

A reader also asks whether failed tailors have redress and if failed seamstresses are in discord

AND if a long-distance runner fails to cover three miles, is he beleaguered?

MY FATHER used to ask us kids a nonsense riddle: If it takes a man-and-a-half a day-and-a-half to dig a hole-and-a-half, is red cabbage greengrocery? This week workmen in Walsall actually filled half a hole because the other half of the pot hole in question was on private land. As you may have noticed in so many areas of life, what was nonsense yesterday is deadly serious today.

FATHER also used to tell us that you would never find the word "gullible" in any dictionary.