Best of Peter Rhodes - August 12

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

IT'S not every day that someone sings the praises of his local council so I am delighted to use this: "I wish to commend Walsall Council for their forward planning which has enabled them to beat the rioters by ensuring most of the shops were already empty."

"YOU cannot riot on your own. A one-man riot is a tantrum." Criminologist Professor John Pitts.

AN OLD soldier of 92 rang me in tears. "I was gardening last week," he told me. "I was picking my beans and I can't think when I have felt so proud to be an Englishman.

" And then these riots started. I think a lot of old soldiers like me will have been crying and asking, what on earth were we fighting for?

"These rioters are the enemy of the people. They should be rounded up and treated as prisoners-of-war, held behind barbed wire on an island somewhere."

WHEN it comes to riots, no theory survives contact with the facts. Just when you've decided the riots are caused by a feral, uneducated, brutalised underclass, the first court appearances include a graphic designer, a university graduate, a school assistant and a recruit in the British Army. And you think, this should not be happening - these people should be on our side.

These were not riots of hungry, deprived alien masses but of kids from just down the road who fancied upgrading their personal possessions and realised that a) the police would not stop them and b) ordinary people were frightened of them. The power to inflict terror, enrich yourself and fear nothing is an irresistible cocktail not just for the underclass but for all sorts of people.

THOSE computer-generated and gaffe-prone subtitles on television news may provide some innocent amusement but there are times when events are so serious that the damn things should be switched off, in the national interest. As a broken-hearted Muslim woman told Sky News of her trauma, the subtitles said her husband had been "scared to go to the moss" and "writers came down the street." Hopeless.

NICK Clegg declares: "If you indulge in criminality you will face the consequences." A sharp-eyed BBC emailer points out that if you remove the single word "in," from the deputy prime minister's statement, the real problem is revealed.

BECAUSE she is black and very brave, Louise Johnson who defended her hairdressing shop from rioters in Wolverhampton, can give this vivid eyewitness account and get away with it: "They came down Queen Street like something you would see in Zulu."

You can see what she means but, frankly, it's insulting to Zulus.

MEANWHILE, as London burned, Mrs Rhodes and I were well out of the urban jungle, enjoying a couple of relaxing days in the Cotswolds. One of the nice things about Broadway is that you are most unlikely to meet the Winchcombe Massive torching ye olde craft shoppes for the hell of it, innit? Mind you, they still have real discipline in the Cotswolds. I have no idea what frightful punishments they inflict on those who decorate their homes in unapproved colours but every house in Broadway seems to be painted in hugely expensive grey-green shades from the Farrow & Ball catalogue. Heaven help anyone caught using magnolia from Wickes. A day in the stocks, I dare say.

I WROTE recently about dwarfing genes, used to produce low-grown crops, and wondered how many dwarfing genes there are and what they are called. A reader obliges: "There surely have to be seven. Shorty, Dumpy, Stumpy, Half-Pint, Knee-High, Sawn Off and Shortarse.." So now you know.

OOPS. In one of those embarrassing live programmes over which Auntie Beeb has no control, the unspeakable has been spoken. In Farming Today (Radio 4), a scientist declared that global warming was "not a threat but an opportunity" for British fruit growers. Global warming good? This is heresy. Fetch the kindling. Prepare the stake.

IN THE finest equal-opportunities manner, a male reader writes to congratulate Lieutenant Commander Sarah West, who has just been appointed as the first female to command a warship of the Royal Navy, the frigate HMS Portland. He spoils it somewhat by asking who's going to reverse it for her.

WE country dwellers with septic tanks are under orders to register them with the Environment Agency. From the masses of advice on the internet, my eye fell on a section devoted to: "Onion-shaped septic tank owners."

Poor devils.

A FRIEND has received a demand for payment from the taxman. If he doesn't pay by September 27, the note informs him sternly that he will have to pay interest on the sum outstanding. The sum outstanding is £0-00p.