Best of Peter Rhodes - Jan 22

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

AND yet more from the parish newsletter: "The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility."

"It means 450,000 fewer people are out of work than everyone expected last spring." Government minister Yvette Cooper welcoming the latest unemployment figure of 2.46 million. If politics is the art of presenting bad news as good news, she's a star.

AT the flick of a computer keyboard anyone can access court reports, obituaries, career details, household members and census returns. Watching the spiritualist at work in I Believe in Ghosts (BBC3), I couldn't help thinking how much easier it is to be a medium now that we have Google.

"FRIGHTENING But True" is the heading on an email doing the rounds which suggests that every Muslim is under orders to kill Christians. It purports to be written by a prison officer, John Harrison MBE, and describes a seminar where an Imam (preacher) admitted that killing a non-believer is one way for a Muslim to get into Paradise. But as with so many of these postings, there is no location given and no date. No-one called John Harrison MBE has owned up to this item and one John Harrison, a photographer in Northern Ireland, has actually gone online to say it's nothing to do with him. It seems this nasty little piece of Muslim-bashing began in the United States in 2003. It isn't true and yet it has reached 28,000 websites and possibly millions of emails. What is really frightening, to anyone with a sense of history, is that this sort of poison is so eagerly spread and seemingly believed without question. In the early years of the 20th century another fake document, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, described a Jewish plot to take over the world. It, too, was widely circulated. Adolf Hitler believed it. The rest is history.

TWENTY-nine cops and civilian staff in Staffordshire have been caught bang to rights taking excessive "sick" days off over Christmas during the past five years. Chairman of the force's Police Federation Mark Judson says the constabulary is entitled to discipline staff but adds: "There will be legitimate reasons why some people, on occasions, go off sick at Christmas." Wrong. There is only one legitimate reason for going off sick and that is sickness. All the others are fiddles.

I HAVEN'T seen An Education and I've no interest in seeing Avatar but the third film with eight nominations at the British Academy Film Awards, The Hurt Locker, is one of the most astonishing war films I have ever seen. Is there any lonelier job than being a bomb-disposal officer?

AS hospitals restrict visiting to cope with the winter vomiting virus, a reader asks: "Why do they always blame visitors? Doctors wander around in anything from suits to T-shirts. When I was in hospital in Spain, the doctors wore fresh whites every day - so why not here?"

THE word is obviously out. While British drivers studiously obey the 50mph average speed limit on the M6 roadworks, foreign lorries hurtle through at lethal speeds, clearly believing they will not be prosecuted. Surely police patrols could pull in these Euro-speeders for a thorough vehicle check, lasting an hour or so. No fine, no paperwork - just a serious delay. If our amis and amigos missed a few ferry connections, they might just get the message.

THE award for Wildlife Photographer of the Year has been withdrawn after complaints that the wolf pictured leaping a gate was probably not wild but trained. One radio report said the creature was available for hire "for modelling assignments."

Nah, I don't get out of my lair for less than £10,000.

AND yet more timely tips from the parish magazine: "Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say 'Hell' to someone who doesn't care much about you."

SO what's melting faster, the glaciers in the Himalayas or the evidence for global warming?

After that spot of embarrassment with "Climategate," the emails suggesting some scientists were massaging the evidence, now comes news that the glaciers around Everest may not melt in 25 years, after all. That was the prediction confidently brandished a couple of years ago by the grand-sounding United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It was presented as hard science but now turns out to have been based on a telephone chat with one Indian scientist who was merely speculating. Meanwhile, the Met Office, that temple of climate-change faith, may be dumped by the BBC when its contract expires in April. This is hardly surprising after its forecasts of a barbecue summer and a mild winter were followed by the Cockermouth floods and the big freeze. It is deliciously easy at this stage to condemn the climate-change lobby as some vast global conspiracy. And yet some of the data does suggest a gradual rise in temperatures. Australians, currently sizzling in 40 degrees plus - at night - have no doubts that Oz is getting hotter. And even if the jury is out, it still makes sense to conserve the earth's resources and produce as much renewable electricity as possible - so long as we don't bankrupt ourselves in the process. Climate change, like religion, is a noble myth. Even if we don't really believe it, things work better and life is kinder if we pretend we do.

I DON'T understand the national outrage over Sue Tollefsen of Essex planning a second pregnancy at the age of 59 when our benefits system positively encourages pregnancies at 14. If I were a foetus-in-waiting I'd rather take my chances with Mrs Tollefsen, a married former teacher with a pension, than with some chain-smoking slapperette on benefits.

EVER have the feeling that life is passing you by? The Home Office wants to ban "all you can drink" promotions where pubs charge you £10 to sling as much down your neck as you can. Which pubs are these? Not mine, I fear.

THE Institute for Advanced Motorists is suggesting that frail old drivers should be given a new sort of driving licence which would keep them off motorways. But they already have such a document. It's called a bus pass.