Best of Peter Rhodes - April 23

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

SAYINGS for our time. A Gordon Hundred = 10, being the number of buses that turned up in Madrid after the Prime Minister promised 100.

KINVER & District Horticultural Society in Worcestershire has a talk next week on "Easy Rules of Pruning." The speaker is Hilary Twigg.

OUR changing language. As four men set sail in the South Pacific to recreate the epic voyage of Captain William Bligh of The Bounty, the BBC reminds us that this voyage has been "memorialised in two Hollywood films." Which presumably means it will never be forgottenated.

WHILE it was good to see our brave Jack and Jill Tars welcoming stranded British tourists on board HMS Albion in Spain, was it really necessary to issue the sailors with assault rifles to greet them? Apparently this is standard procedure when any RN warship comes into dock, even in a friendly state like Spain. You'd think they might bend the rules for a bunch of knackered tourists and kids clutching water wings.

CALL me a tight-fist but something in me rebels at the prospect of people getting compensation from the state for the cost of getting home during the no-fly crisis. Most of us are quite prepared to see public money used to help the flooded folk of Cockermouth or our boys wounded in Afghanistan. But throwing open the community chest to people who are richer than us and can afford a fortnight in Marrakesh or the Maldives? Not in my name.

THE council in Poole, Dorset, is under fire this week for painting a 6ft 6ins wide cycle lane, allowing just 4ft 6ins for vehicles. A council spokesman protested: "The markings are advisory."

Says who? The Highway Code warns us sternly: "Do not drive or park in a cycle lane marked by a broken white line unless it is unavoidable." Have you noticed how councils will say anything rather than admit to a cock-up?

I SUGGESTED some weeks ago that neither Labour nor the Conservatives really want to win the General Election. Doesn't Brown secretly yearn to hand over the keys to Number 10 and walk away from his billion-pound black hole? Wouldn't Cameron prefer a few more years in opposition while someone else takes the flak for Gordon's Debt? It seems I am not alone. This comes from Peter Wilby in the New Statesman: "I sometimes wonder if the explanation for this peculiar campaign is that nobody wants to win. Perhaps Clegg's success - and his being allowed to appear in the TV debates at all - is a carefully laid plot by the other parties to put him in Downing Street."

HARRIET Harman, the privately-educated niece of Lord Longford and deputy Labour leader, says David Cameron is arrogant and spoiled. Pot, kettle, black.

MIND you, I still don't understand what Cameron's sidekick and Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne is for. Unless he is the dispensable fall-guy, to be quietly ushered out of the way when Vince Cable becomes Chancellor in a Con-Lib government. I tell you, I would not rule out anything.

SCIENTISTS in the remote rainforests of Borneo have discovered the world's longest insect, a stick insect which measures nearly 22 inches. As well as heading the list of things you don't want to find in your sleeping bag, stick insects are living proof of a wise old saying. They start their lives looking like small twigs, spend their time eating twigs and die looking like big twigs. Remember, you are what you eat.

HOJATOLESLAM Kazem Sedighi, a senior Iranian cleric (and a brilliant Scrabble solution) tells us that promiscuous women are responsible for seismic catastrophes. As he explained to a spellbound congregation in Tehran recently: "Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes."

TITTER ye not. For if Islam has its share of bonkers believers, so does Christendom. From the town of Aaron, deep in the Arkansas Bible belt, comes this internet posting on the Iceland volcano: "You people need to wake up. We are in the last days. Sin is causing the land to spew us out."

AN unnamed Premier League player is being forced to pay £15,000 every three months in protection money to a London gang, according to a BBC investigation. A gang member interviewed by the World Service explained that if the player doesn't pay up, he won't play football any more. The rationale behind this business arrangement is that the player was a member of the gang in his youth. They looked after him then, so he can look after them now. It is, of course, outrageous. But most of us are forced to hand over a proportion of our wages to a protection racket known as Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs who will put us away if we decline to pay. I dare say the footballer sees his protection payment as just another form of income tax - and at least he sees the benefits. Another £15,000 handed over, another financial quarter with both kneecaps intact. Bargain, innit?

ACCORDING to the Daily Telegraph, two women every day are being turned away from "overstretched maternity units." Now, there's a charming mental image.