Best of Peter Rhodes - June 28

THE outgoing head of the NHS, Sir David Nicholson, accuses the media of having a "lack of balance" when reporting on the NHS. Better a lack of balance than a surfeit of coffins, eh?

AFTER the story of Eva, who married Mr Weaver to become Eva Weaver, have any readers had to think long and hard before taking on their husband's surname? Do let me know.

QUOTE of the week comes from Russian President Vladmir Putin on the vexed issue of what to do with whistleblowers: "Extraditing human-rights defenders like Snowden and Assange is like shearing a pig – too much squeaking, too little wool." The thing about Putin is you can actually imagine him shearing a pig.

WE MAY be spectacularly missing the point about undercover policing. Vile though it is, the alleged attempt to smear Stephen Lawrence's family is not the big issue. Nor, for all the pain it caused, is the fact that some undercover officers had sex with women activists who had no idea they were cops. And nor, even though it makes the flesh creep, is this week's allegation that officers used the birth certificates of dead babies to create fake identities. The most alarming claim is that some police who secretly infiltrated direct-action groups became agents provocateurs. In others words, as a court heard at an inquiry into a policeman who went undercover in a climate-change group, some officers may actually have encouraged, or even originated plots. If elite little units such as Special Branch's Special Demonstration Squad can exist, apparently with no senior supervision, who is to prevent an officer crossing the line between observing and encouraging? And if undercover officers incite climate-change, anti-capitalism or animal-rights activists, where else might they be busy? In several columns over the past few years I have expressed surprise that, time after time, the police and security services manage to foil terrorist plots just before the bombers, beheaders or hijackers would have struck. It is a remarkable track record. In view of this week's revelations, it may strike you as more than remarkable. Is it possible that some of the terrorist plots "foiled" by police and MI5 are not all they appear? Unthinkable? Of course it is. But then, until this week, who would have dreamed that British bobbies would steal the identities of dead children?

JUST when you think there's nothing left to invent, along comes the "hovering mug" with a handle that goes under the base of the mug to catch drips and protect wooden surfaces. One of the inventors declares proudly: "It's going to change the way people think about mugs." Calm down, lad. It's still only a mug.

YVONNE Davies knows all about the dangers of drugs. Her family went through "a living hell" as her brother, a cannabis smoker, descended into schizophrenia and depression. He was found dead in a canal in 1997. Mrs Davies is a magistrate and, as she sentenced a drug dealer last year, she told him of her family tragedy and an attempt to steer him away from drugs. Isn't that what magistrates are for, to bring their own experience and wisdom into the legal process? Apparently not. Yvonne Davies has now been sacked after 14 years on the bench for her "expression of personal views" which were deemed to be "inappropriate." If this sort of nonsense makes you despair, it probably has the same effect on other magistrates. I was talking to a long-serving JP a few weeks ago who is thoroughly disillusioned with the court system. He told me: "It's nothing more than a revenue-collecting operation."

I AM fresh back from rambling over the hills and vales of Devon, fit as a flea and I'm striding home from our local paper shop. Slowly, an old chap with one of those NHS aluminium walking sticks that goes click-click with every step emerges from the library. I move out to overtake but the old chap suddenly accelerates. His walking stick is no longer going click-click but clickety-clickety, barely touching the ground. I step up the pace but the other man (who clearly needs a walking stick in the way that a goldfish needs a bicycle), puts on a sudden spurt and reaches his car. It is a large new BMW with – you've guessed – a blue disabled badge on display.

AS he crossed the Grand Canyon in high winds and without a safety harness or net, high-wire artist Nik Wallenda was seen to be murmuring prayers. I dare say they were on the lines of: "Oh, Dear Lord, why has thou, in thine infinite wisdom and mercy, made thine humble servant such a freekin' idiot?"

FOR a few grim weeks earlier this year we in the media had to endure the daily spectacle of the Leveson Inquiry in which the legal profession (noble, truthful, courageous, etc, etc) tore into the Press (slimy, underhand, intrusive, etc, etc) over the nasty business of phone hacking. You might well have formed the opinion that journalists were the only professionals hacking into other people's business. Not so. It is now revealed that most of the phone and computer hacking discovered by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency was done not by reporters but by legal firms, insurers and large corporations. Let us see m'learned friends talk their way out of this one.