Best of Peter Rhodes - Nov 27

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

MEANWHILE, at the biology exam:

Q. Give an example of movement in plants and an animal that cannot move.

A. Triffids and a dead cat.

THE Thierry Henry handball thing refuses to go away and the fury of some fans is startling. An incandescent reader reminds us that one sports reporter said Henry should "hang his head in shame" and suggests that if you delete the last four words from this phrase, the punishment is much better.

IS THE Army being used to its full in the Cumbria flooding? Between 1943-45, army engineers built 3,000 Bailey Bridges in Sicily and Italy, some over 1,000 feet long and sometimes under enemy fire. More recently, Royal Engineers have built Bailey Bridges in Bosnia in a matter of hours. So what's the problem in Cumbria?

THIS, from an authoritative report on how climate-change scientists view the Cumbria flooding: "They warn that, although no single event can be attributed to climate change, the warming of the atmosphere caused by greenhouse gases means such disasters will become more frequent." In other words, the science is so inexact that no particular drought, flood, cyclone or blizzard can be blamed on climate change. But that very vagueness means that, whatever the weather does, an accusing finger can be pointed at climate change. We haven't had such a useful, all-purpose public enemy since they burned the last witches.

HOWEVER, despite being a fully paid-up sceptic, I have not pounced on the emails stolen from climate-change scientists which are being brandished this week as proof that the whole global-warming thing is a fiction. On the face of it these emails, from the University of East Anglia, show figures being massaged to support the warming case and reveal unseemly joy at the death of one climate-change sceptic. But the hackers who found the emails have published only the ones that support their own case. So who's massaging what? My personal theory is that 10 years from now the phrase "climate change" will have quietly dropped out of use. But it's only a theory.

PETER Brierley's son was a soldier killed in Iraq. And when Mr Brierley met Tony Blair at the Iraq memorial ceremony in October, he famously told the former PM: "I'm not shaking your hand, you've got blood on it." According to one report, those 10 little words ensured Blair did not become President of the European Union. The French premier, Nicolas Sarkozy was apparently adamant that the EU could not have a figurehead carrying that sort of baggage.

PRINCE William and Prince Harry want to help underprivileged children and wounded servicemen. So, predictably, they have launched a charity. Britain needs another charity like a hole in the head We have more than 168,000 of the wretched things, each with its own treasurer and board and accounts. Half our registered charities are already duplicating the work done by the other half. If the two princes really want to do something helpful, they could bash a few heads together and set about combining the dozens of British military charities into one really useful organisation.

I CAN'T work up much fury at Messrs Cameron and Brown posing for photographs at Westminster Abbey's field of remembrance. It's what politicians do. I was more dismayed by the wording on the Abbey's order of service for Armistice Day noting "The Passing of the World War One Generation." What an ugly and un-English construction this is. "World War One" is an Americanism. British soldiers of 1914-18 called their conflict the Great War. Later it became the First World War and that is what we should call it.

CHRISTINA Schmid's tribute to her husband Olaf, a bomb-disposal expert killed in Afghanistan, was unashamedly dedicated to fighting men and "traditional warrior values." She told the congregation at the funeral service in Truro Cathedral: "Warriors are unique. Our protectors, not destroyers." I was reminded of the fine words attributed to Winston Churchill: "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."

NOW that our beloved Government is introducing lessons on domestic violence for children as young as five, it is worth repeating the Government's official definition of domestic violence, which seems to have been written by a very large committee: "Any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse (psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional) between adults who are or have been intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality."

Please, Miss, if Mummy won't lend Daddy a fiver, is that domestic violence?

Who'd be a teacher?

OUR changing language. Spotted on what we used to call a dustcart are two compartments, one for paper and the other, for cans and glass, labelled "co-mingled." If co-mingled now means mixed, watch out for co-mingled herbs and co-mingled-race children. New words are sometimes a co-mingled blessing.