Best of Peter Rhodes - April 15

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

ERIC Pickles, the rotund Communities Secretary, says councils should take firm action against travellers setting up illegal sites over the Royal Wedding and Easter period. So that' s a big fat gipsy warning.

THE Bishop of Burnley reportedly referred to the election of a BNP Mayor in the town of Padiham as "a return to the dark ages." Surely not.

DAVID Cameron brands Oxford University as "disgraceful" for its low number of black students. He should send one of his black Cabinet ministers to investigate.

WHO was the scruffy, shiny-faced, straggly haired character being interviewed so respectfully on BBC Midlands Today this week? Why, it was none other than Baron Jones of Birmingham, formerly Digby Jones, director-general of the CBI. A haircut, perhaps, milord?

FROM Monday this week it has been illegal for women in France to wear veils. However, a spokesman for the French police union admits the law will be "very difficult to apply" on certain Muslim-dominated estates. The union has told its members to view the ban as a "low priority." Sounds like the French law on smoking in public. The law says non but smokers still smoke and cops look the other way.

AFTER the no-veil law in France was introduced, the strident Alison Pearson declared in the Daily Telegraph: "We, too, should ban the burqa."

Oh, no we shouldn't. In time, all those silly girls dressed like crows will come to realise that the veil has nothing to do with Islam and that the males ordering them to wear it are just ignorant and sexually confused power-freaks. If we leave the issue alone, the veils will vanish.

If we ban them and British police start arresting Muslim women, thousands of young women who have never covered their faces will veil-up in solidarity.

The old hymn tells us "When to speak and when be silent / When to do and when forbear." On this issue we should definitely forbear.

MORE than a quarter of new jobs coming on the market are being snapped up by the over-65s, according to figures released this week. This is probably because the wrinklies have two unfair advantages. They can read. They can write.

NO-ONE died. Some celebrities and politicians may have been embarrassed. They will be duly compensated with far more money than the average soldier gets for being maimed in Afghanistan. And that's about the extent of the phone-hacking row at the News of the World. It's a big story if you happen to have a professional vendetta against Murdoch and a bit of a yawn for the rest of the nation. And how many of those self-righteous organs pelting Murdoch with rotten tomatoes can swear, hand on heart, they have never used information provided by illegal means, from documents either stolen or leaked (another word for stolen) or from the contents of celebrities' dustbins?

BEFORE the Census date, I predicted that no more than 90 per cent of these complicated and intrusive forms to be returned, as the law demands. The national figure so far is about 75 per cent. In London only 60 per cent have been returned. If the entire exercise had been voluntary, would the response have been any worse?

HERE'S a curious thing. I am convinced when I swore my Scout Promise all those years ago the Scout Law said: "A scout smiles and whistles under all difficulties."

But researching a Scouting tale this week, I find it actually reads: "A scout smiles and whistles under all circumstances."

Was my Skipper making private changes to B-P's hallowed words? Anyway, it's all academic. Show me someone who can smile and whistle at the same time and I'll show you a circus act.

A FRIEND just back from Spain found himself staying in a pretty little village with its own shiny new railway station. This was the result of the Spanish doing what politicians call "investing in the nation's infrastructure" and the rest of us call "spending money we haven't got." Sure enough, Spain now has lots of shiny new public-spending projects. But it also has 20 per cent unemployment and an economy heading for the buffers faster than you can say Portugal. Supporters of Britain's £30,000 million High Speed Train, think again.

A READER who suspects the 1969 moon landing was faked asks: "If people seriously believe we had the technology to land on the moon over 40 years ago, why won't my laptop work 20 feet from the modem?"