Best of Peter Rhodes - February 11

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

THE Prince of Wales (two homes, Bentley, Aston Martin, 140 staff and Duchy of Cornwall) says he wants to see a shift away from the consumer society to make it "cool to use less stuff." To his credit, he uses only a tiny amount of common sense.

WHEN Gordon Brown became prime minister in 2007, Downing Street famously promised "no more spin." Oh, yeah? Wikileaks revealed this week that in 2009 one of Brown's aides tried to persuade the US General Stanley McChrystal to play down the lack of progress in the Afghanistan campaign because it would look bad in the papers. The general decided to "maintain his intellectual honesty" and tell the truth. Now, there's a novel approach.

THE Australian Opposition leader Tony Abbott, on hearing how soldier Jared MacKinney died in a firefight in Afghanistan, commented: "S*** happens."

Not surprisingly he has come in for a load of flak. Yet the soldier's widow has forgiven him and another politician claims he saw soldiers nodding in agreement.

"S*** happens" is the universal epitaph for all soldiers, instantly understood by their comrades. The Taliban call it the will of Allah but it means much the same.

I COULDN'T resist contacting the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to see how they would react if a family asked for the words "S*** happens" to be inscribed on a war grave. As they have never had such a request, the Commission describe it as "a moot question."

ONE of the good things Auntie Beeb does is to provide radio stations for target audiences. Tune in at random to Radios 1,2,3,4, 5 Live or 7 and you find a station aimed, respectively, at young, old, classical buffs, middle-class, sporty blokes or nostalgics.

But now, seemingly driven by some north-south guilt issues, the BBC Trust has ordered Radio 4 to pull in more listeners from the North and ethnic minorities. This is as daft as asking Radio 1 to take over Gardener's Question Time or inviting Five Live to broadcast Woman's Hour. Radio 4 has the highest approval rating of any BBC radio station. If its bosses want to keep that approval, they will put the Trust's report in the shredder. Radio 4 is a national treasure. Leave it alone.

UNDER new plans, communities which accept wind farms may be offered council-tax reductions. Whitehall may be able to bribe a few tiny hamlets but it is a fundamental rule of electricity that more ohms = more resistance.

A LATVIAN immigrant, Sandris Vedze, has been jailed for nearly six years for driving "like a lunatic" on the M5 near Tewksbury.

No surprises there. One of the first rules of the motorway these days is to give a very wide berth to any vehicle displaying the LV plate.

It may be wrong to damn an entire nation but Latvians have not done a great deal for road safety in the UK.

When he was finally pulled over and arrested, Vedze lashed out with a lock-knife, slashing a police officer in the neck. Later, he kicked and punched three custody officers.

Britain now has the privilege of feeding and containing this character for the next few years.

It may give him time to reflect that, in any of the other 26 countries of the EU, including his native Latvia, Vedze would have been shot dead at the roadside by an armed copper the moment he pulled his knife.

TIME-WARP problem in Outcasts, the new sci-fi drama on BBC1. The humans have managed to build vast, light-speed spaceships which whisk them to the earth-like planet of Carpathia in five years. But their mobile phones are big clunky box-things, straight out of the 1980s. It's Skype, Jim, but not as we know it.

INCIDENTALLY, it hardly needs adding that the future world of Carpathia is inhabited entirely by stereotypes. Stupid, aggressive men. Strong, intelligent women. Welcome to Planet Beeb.

IT is announced that actress Penelope Keith has won a six-year planning battle to open a tea room in Scotland.

That's right, a six-year struggle for the privilege of having stroppy customers, vile weather, wasted food, dirty tables, drunks demanding booze, horrible things in the loo, health inspectors crawling all over you, huge fuel bills and pitiful profits.

The eagerness of the British to serve snacks to strangers is one of life's eternal mysteries.

DEBBIE Attwood, a freelance journalist in Sussex, has set herself the challenge of buying her clothes from charity shops for the next 12 months. Me? About 40 years, since you ask.

IS it any wonder Christina Aguilera fluffed a line of The Star-Spangled Banner at Sunday's Super Bowl in Texas? Of all national anthems, none has a better tune or worse lyrics. ("Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes," for goodness' sake). The Star-Spangled Banner, which commemorates a fairly obscure battle in 1814, has four verses which, frankly, is two too many for a nation with the attention span of a gnat. Boy band singer Jesse McCartney forgot the words before a motor race in 2009 and R&B star Keri Hilson forgot them before a basketball match last year. Oh, say can you see the case for a re-write?

THE Highways Agency is responding to global warming by replacing traditional British asphalt with a French variety which does not melt in hot weather. Think of this when you're waiting for the snow plough to turn up.