Best of Peter Rhodes - June 26

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

YET another good reason for taking an axe to the public sector. It's the latest ad for a £70,000 "head of business development" to "lead the Trust's business development agenda, maximising the Trust's opportunities in highly competitive and dynamic markets". At London Ambulance Service, for goodness' sake.

WE HAVE seen the abbreviation for Members of Parliament so often that we take MPs for granted. Was there ever a time, in ye olden days of pedantry, when it was MsP?

A FRIEND was nicked for exceeding the speed limit on the 50mph section of the M6 by seven miles per hour. On my guard, I drove home at exactly 50 mph. And because this was 5mph slower than all the other vehicles, I had a rabid French juggernaut 10 feet off my bumper for two miles before he roared past. Speed is dangerous. Especially when it's not the same speed as everyone else.

WELL done, Lord Carlisle, whose report on misuse of the terror laws makes two vital points:

* Stopping and searching people who do not fit a terrorist profile is an abuse of their civil liberties. In other words, if you're a little old lady from Worthing, the Old Bill has no right to search you in the hunt for al Quaeda bombers.

* We Brits are still allowed to photograph police officers, because the ban only applies to images which are likely to be of use to a terrorist.

So far, so good. The snag, as any citizen or press photographer can testify, is that the law on the streets is not the law as laid down by QCs in Westminster. The law, for all practical purposes, is what some stroppy cop says it is.

THE BOY Miliband apparently claimed £50 on his expenses for a video showing him line-dancing, to use on his website. What an astute grasp he has of the British character. How we adore and admire politicians who can shake their skin-tight Wranglers to the hoo-haa hustle, applejacks and the lightning polka. Yee-ha, as they say in Whitehall.

A FEW weeks back, I suggested a City pundit's view on Five Live, that the banks would "soon be up to their old tricks" had the ring of truth. Sure enough, the Royal Bank of Scotland , rescued with £20,000 million of public money (and how long can it keep that preposterous title?), is blowing about £300,000 on entertaining its guests at Wimbledon. Triple Pimms all round, chaps.

"BELLY Button is Key to Scar-Free Surgery," declared a headline this week on a report that keyhole operations through the navel may soon be used in NHS hospitals to remove gallbladders, cysts and appendices (which looks ridiculous but is the correct plural form of appendix). It may be a medical marvel but it leaves me feeling extremely queasy. You see, as a very small child I was once told: "Don't fiddle with your belly button, you'll come undone." It is surprising how such things stay with you.

SO FAREWELL, the transparency. Also known as slides, they were little, plastic-framed images slipped in a magic lantern and projected on to a white screen. Kodak announced this week that the last slide film, Kodachrome, is being scrapped because of competition from digital cameras. For those generations that never enjoyed a slide show, it went like this:

1. Great excitement when father's slides arrive back from the processor.

2. Father painstakingly loads all 36 slides into the projector magazine.

3. Smallest brother picks up magazine. All 36 slides fall out. We all learn some new words.

4. Father wrestles with white screen in corner of the room.

5. The projector is switched on. Bulb explodes. Father searches through every cupboard in the house before driving into town for a new bulb.

6. The show begins. Unfortunately, the image is half-off the screen. Father tries to adjust it. Screen collapses, nipping his fingers. More new words.

7. Much amusement when all lettering on one slide is back to front.

8. Big row. Mother asks how dare Father snap her in swimming costume?

9. Magazine jams, slide melts dramatically. Small fire begins.

10. In rushing to the projector, Father catches foot in flex. Projector flies off stand, bulb explodes, slides fly everywhere.

These days the kids stick a DVD in the telly and watch it. I tell you, they do not know what they are missing.

I HAVE no idea how many Muslim women in Britain wear the burkha. It is certainly not the100,000 claimed this week by one of the battier tabloids. But whatever the current figure, you can bet your life it would double overnight if our Government followed the advice of France's President Sarkozy and tried to ban burkhas. Bans mean confrontation, causes and martyrs. The wise alternative is the one Whitehall has always deployed against the Welsh nationalists: let them do whatever they want and give them whatever they ask for. Eventually they get fed up.

OFSTED says children as young as four should be given "group therapy" to improve their behaviour. We used to have that. A whole group of us would get the slipper.

MEANWHILE, that great Italian treasure Silvio Berlusconi, embroiled in endless allegations involving parties and girls, denies that he has ever paid for sex. The permatanned prime minister tells a magazine that he cannot see the point in a relationship "when you are missing the pleasure of conquest."

What is the Italian for "stop digging"?