Best of Peter Rhodes - November 5

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

THERE is something gloriously democratic about the remembrance poppy. Rich or poor, we all wear the same simple symbol of the Flanders battlefields where baronets and barrow boys fell side by side under the undiscriminating hail of that ultimate leveller, the machine gun. The Great War 1914-1918 was all about democracy. It marked the triumph of a system based in the belief that we are all created equal. Which is why my flesh creeps at the sight of today's bejewelled designer poppies worn by some celebrities. People who think they are a little too rich, a little too famous or a little too special to wear the common paper poppy really shouldn't bother at all.

A Catholic magazine in Italy claims that prime minister Silvio Berlusconi suffers from "a disease, something uncontrollable," in his relations with young women. Ah, for the stern old days when the Vatican had the perfect cure. It not only kept the chaps chaste but improved the soprano section of the choirs no end.

YOU may need someone under 15 to explain the last item in this excellent selection of readers' Swifites:

"It's topped with Parmesan cheese," he grated.

"Undertakers are essential," he said, stiffly.

"It's a new gearbox," he said, engagingly.

"Let's all go commando!" said Nicholas.

THE British Retail Consortium reported yesterday that food prices have climbed by 4.4 per cent over the past year. Thankfully, we Brits have a special way of keeping our food bills down. It is called eating rubbish. We eat more low-cost, high-fat, high-salt rubbish than almost anyone else apart, of course, from the Yanks who shovel the cheapest food they can find down their necks in industrial quantities. America spends just 6.1 per cent of disposable income on food. Britain comes second at 8.3 per cent. The Germans and French, who are no richer than us but take their food seriously, spend 10.9 and 13.6 per cent respectively. Somewhere along the line we Brits discovered pasties at three for £1 and forgot the old adage that you are what you eat.

THE worry is that Barack Obama could prove such a disappointment that he will be replaced in the 2012 presidential election by a right-wing US administration led by Tea Party candidates. The Tea Party is not an organised group but a philosophy, a fervent belief ( popular among strange ladies with too much lip gloss) that all America's ills can be fixed if only everyone goes to church, owns a gun and shoots lots of moose. Wonder what this strange crew will do if they ever get their hands on nuclear weapons. According to the Mayan calendar, the world ends in 2012. Now, there's a coincidence.

WALKERS Crisps is said to be facing a huge payout because its latest competition, inviting customers to predict where and when it is going to rain, is too easy. Quite so. A reader tells me he has entered 12 times already and won £100. The secret of his success? The TV weather maps.

SCIENTISTS at St Andrew's University have perfected a "light-bending" material which may one day be used to create invisible clothes. Not so much Y-fronts as Where-fronts.

THE Metropolitan Police self-assessment form to identify hazards runs to 238 little boxes that must be ticked before officers are sent into any situation looking vaguely dangerous. The boxes for wet floors, fast driving and public order I can understand. But right in the middle of the form is the tick box for "gravity."

"Sorry, chief inspector. I would have been a brave copper but there was all this gravity . . . "

As I may have observed before, if you find yourself bombed in the Tube, stranded on thin ice or stuck down a deep hole, just pray that the first person to find you is not a member of the emergency services.

FINAL words on the Coventry tabby-cat in a wheelie bin case. A reader points out that Top Cat lived in a dustbin and, by all accounts, was very happy.

WE assumed that when the Blair/Brown regime crumbled, all those pointless advisers and tsars would clear their desks and shove off. Not a hope. The former Asbo Tsar, Louise Casey, was appointed Victims' Commissioner in the dying days of Labour and is still at work. Her latest idea is to end the right of trial by jury for what she calls "lesser offences." Casey claims that nearly 70,000 Crown Court cases each year could be heard in magistrates' courts, saving at least £30 million in prosecution costs and easing the trauma of crime victims. Maybe so. But there's more to life than money. We wear poppies in remembrance of those who died to protect our liberties. The ancient right of trial by jury is a profoundly important part of living in a civilised society. It defines a democracy. It is not some luxury to be crossed off Louise Casey's shopping list to save a few quid.

HAVING said that, by all means start unblocking the courts. It can be done. Thirty-odd years ago I covered the magistrates' courts in York where the gap between the drunk-and-disorderlies being arrested, put in the cells, tried, fined and sent home was measures in hours, not months.

THE news that graduate unemployment has risen to its highest level for 17 years at nearly 9 per cent barely begins to tell the full story. Nine out of 100 graduates may be without any work. But how many are kicking their heels in low-paid jobs, flipping burgers or serving coffee, hoping for things to get better? And how many tens of thousands of young school leavers with GCSEs have been displaced by graduates from jobs which should by rights be theirs? For some youngsters, graduate employment is a bigger problem than graduate unemployment.

"SHE'S mutton dressed as lamb," he said, sheepishly.