Best of Peter Rhodes - Feb 12

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

OUR changing language. Fashion designer Ben de Lisi has come up with a replacement for the traditional bum-chilling NHS hospital gown. He says: "I wanted the new gowns to feel fabulous and aspirational". If you really aspire to wear a hospital gown, you probably need another sort of hospital.

GORDON Brown in tears on telly. Alastair Campbell in tears on telly. Somewhere in the darker recesses of the Conservative Party machine, you can bet that someone is planning how best to get David Cameron in tears on telly. But bigger tears. Wetter tears. More visible tears. Don't you just love election campaigns?

A PRISONERS' rights group is campaigning for those behind bars to be given the vote. And why not? For that matter, why can't prisoners become MPs? After all, MPs become prisoners.

HOW to double your life expectancy? Get released from a Scottish jail. When the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was freed last August, we were told he was dying of cancer and had less than three months to live. Six months later . . . .

ON his UK speaking tour this week, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair warned against the idea of elected mayors taking control of police forces, with a cautionary tale from the United States. According to Sir Ian, when an elected sheriff in Florida was asked why his officers had shot a suspect 67 times, he replied: "Well, I guess that's all the ammunition we had."

In fact, according to most reports, the suspect was shot 68 times and the actual words, from Sheriff Grady Judd to the Orlando Sentinel newspaper, were: "That's all the bullets we had, or we would have shot him more." Sir Ian is horrified by such "populist" attitudes. The Yanks clearly are not. An internet discussion entitled "Why Shoot Him 68 Times?" brought this laconic response: "67 - not enough; 68 - just fine; 69 - that's just not right."

AND what's wrong with politicians wanting to be popular, anyway? It was unpopular politicians who gave us our bonkers legal system which protects burglars from householders. A jury this week acquitted David Fullard who struck a knuckleduster-wearing thug with a sword after two intruders forced their way into his home and threatened to rape his partner and kill his children. To understand the mind-set which put this "honest and caring" father in the dock, heed the words of the prosecuting lawyer. He said of Mr Fullard's sword: "It is always going to out-trump the knuckleduster." The term "out-trump" is almost beyond belief. It reflects the view that, upon finding a burglar in your home, you should first ascertain his size and weaponry in order that a sporting, fair fight may ensue. Sheriff Judd's 68-bullet solution is far more appealing.

MEANWHILE, in the politics examination: "The Prime Minister has the power of disillusion."

AS AUNTIE Beeb comes under the cosh for spending millions on celebrities, hire cars and global jet-setting, an old taxi driver tells me such largesse is nothing new. Some years ago he made a good living charging £20 a time to ferry celebrities a couple of miles from Birmingham's New Street station to the former BBC regional headquarters at Pebble Mill. But that nice little earner was eclipsed when the BBC sent a limousine to collect an unnamed celebrity at Birmingham Airport and bring him to Pebble Mill. It is no more than 10 miles but as the old driver explains: "They sent the limo out from London. God knows what the cost was."

WHY, having encouraged civilians to leave the Taliban stronghold of Marjah, must our troops be expected to clear it on foot, inch by perilous inch? It makes military sense either to lay siege to the town or flatten it with air power. Unfortunately, this is a political battle. The theory is that if we leave the place intact and kill only a few Taliban, the Afghan citizens will love us and the Taliban will lay down their arms and march into the sunlit uplands of a free and democratic Afghanistan. And the only danger will be our helicopters colliding with pigs.

WHO are these vile international speculators driving the Greek economy into the mire? They are thieves and cheats, sinking their rapacious talons into the tender body of the birthplace of democracy, putting the misery of the fine people of Greece behind their own fat and easy profits. They are scum. They are beneath contempt. Unless, of course, they happen to be working for my pension fund in which case they are grand chaps doing a damn good job and the feckless Greeks have only themselves to blame for not planning ahead. Economics explained.

AT PRESENT, drivers are not nicked for speeding the moment they exceed 30mph - for very good reasons. As the West Midlands Casualty Reduction Scheme explains: "There is official leeway given to motorists exceeding the speed limit— 10% + 2mph over the posted speed limit. All Partnerships have a commitment to reach these threshold enforcement limits. NO Partnership area enforces below these limits. These enforcement guidelines are there to make sure people don't drive around looking at their speedometer instead of concentrating on the road."

So there you have it. The official view of police and road-safety experts today is that it's better to drift a few mph over the limit than spend all your time watching the speedometer. But what of tomorrow? There are regular moves by ministers and some police chiefs to introduce "zero tolerance," which would mean nicking drivers at 31 or 32mph. If that happened (and I dare say it will) you can bet your life that today's sound, sensible case for a more flexible approach would be quietly removed from police websites overnight. Print this off and keep it.

THREE MPs think they can invoke the 1689 Bill of Rights to keep their alleged expenses fiddle out of the courts. Meanwhile, Commander Ali Dizaei, a criminal in uniform who thought he was above the law and abused the privilege of his profession has been jailed for trying to frame an innocent man. A reader points out the strange coincidence that in the same week we are reporting on the old Bill of Rights and the rights of the Old Bill.