Best of Peter Rhodes – November 2

A READER writes: "If convicts in British jails are allowed to vote, will they be able to vote for police commissioners?"

AND talking of jail, did we all notice in Downton Abbey (ITV) that Mr Bates was as fit as a flea in the exercise yard at York Prison but limped and used a walking stick when he was set free? Very dodgy.

OWN up. As a fungal infection threatens to wipe out Britain's ash trees, how many of us can actually identify an ash tree?

OUR changing language. An American forecaster, describing the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, referred to deep flooding as "multi-feet inundation."

WE may not think much of weather forecasters but consider this. Superstorm Sandy struck a population of 50 million Americans who had been given several days' warning. About 60 fatalities have been reported. In the days before weather forecasting, the Great Storm of November 1703 ripped across an unprepared England with a population of just five million. In the space of 24 hours it killed 8,000 people.

HOW computers work. I bought a pair of boots on eBay. The next day, I logged on to find that eBay had already selected items I might be interested in buying, namely three more pairs of boots. Computers don't understand that when you have bought a pair of boots, the last thing you are likely to want is another pair of boots. I was actually looking for a vegetable rack. Geeks are always talking about artificial intelligence, as though it is just around the corner. When they develop a computer program that can make the connection between boots and a vegetable rack, that will be the time to start worrying.

TWO developments on the burglary front deserve watching. The first is the Government announcing open season on burglars caught red-handed. Check the small print carefully, but the new guidelines seem to suggest we can whack them very hard indeed. The second development is the news this week that half of all burglars, including many with more than 12 convictions, are given fines or community service rather than jail. How long will it be before a householder batters a burglar to death and the dead man's family sue the judge for giving the burglar his liberty, and thus allowing him to carry on robbing, instead of locking him safely up in prison?

THE Duchess of Cornwall has apparently booked into a "holistic health centre" in southern India for a regime of "spiritually healing" ayurvedic massages. She is dabbling in what some people call alternative medicine, some call complementary medicine and others call complete cobblers. One of the most outspoken sceptics was Nigella Lawson's first husband, the late, great columnist John Diamond. When he found himself dying of a particularly cruel form of cancer in the late 1990s, Diamond investigated some of the alternatives to Western medicine and concluded that West was best. From beyond the grave, Diamond has this massage for Camilla: "It's easy for the well-fed metropolitan with time and money on his hands to talk about dealing with his chronic symptoms with ayurvedic medicine or Chinese herbal therapies . . . but if you go to the countries where those remedies are all they have, you'll find them crying out for good old Western antibiotics, painkillers and all the rest of the modern and expensive pharmacopoeia."

INCIDENTALLY, the Duchess is said to be "taking a break". From what?

DISNEY buys Lucasfilm, and promises a new generation of Star Wars movies. But more is not always better. Long ago, in a cinema far, far away, I was privileged to be among the first to see the original 1977 epic. Nothing since then has matched the scalp-tingling moment when R2-D2 projects Princess Leia's message: "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.You're my only hope." And in all of movie history, no hero has delivered a more thrilling line than: "I'm Luke Skywalker. I'm here to rescue you." The original Star Wars was a creation of pure magic. And the trouble with all the great magic tricks is that the first time is always the best.

LORD Bichard, former boss of the Benefits Agency, says retired people should be asked to do community work. Naturally, there has been an explosion of fury from wrinklies horrified at the prospect of being dragged away from Countdown for a little light community gardening. The National Pensioners Convention thunders: "This amounts to little more than National Service for the over-60s and is absolutely outrageous." Damn right. For a start it overlooks the social work that pensioners do already. They perform a valuable service in keeping post-office queues moving by jabbing the person in front with their bus pass. They keep Ovaltine and Damart in business. They teach us the virtue of patience by joining the fast, basket-only queue at the supermarket and then producing a purseful of money-off tokens. Community work? When would they find the time?