How do you do what..?

KATE Fox, author of Watching the English, says the Brits no longer know how to greet each other. She wants a revival of "How do you do?" Good luck with that, Kate. Nothing makes foreigners laugh quite like a room full of Brits greeting each other with "How do you do?" to which the only proper reply is "How do you do?" Everybody asks the same question but nobody ever gets an answer.

I RECALL a visit to the States in the 1980s when the first person I was introduced to was an amiable old Southern colonel in the National Guard. "How do you do?" I greeted him. "I do pretty well, " he chuckled in response. From that moment I have always used "Hi."

WE may throw up our hands in horror over the allegations that Qatar's 2022 World Cup success was the result of bribery and corruption. But the ethics we assume to be universal actually apply in only a small part of this world; principally northern Europe and North America. In most of Africa, Asia, India, the Middle East, China and South America, the greasing of palms, the subversion of officials and the favouring of family members is absolutely par for the course. That is the part of the world where the population is growing fastest. Within a generation or two "business ethics" will be a quaint old Western folk-value, like forming a queue or giving up your seat on a bus.

SIMON Thurley, head of English Heritage, says the organisation is running short of unpaid volunteers because of changes to working life and pensions. Thurley describes the sort of folk he wants as "well-off, fit and healthy people who have nothing to do." What a charmer. I wonder how many excellent candidates saw that description and decided to volunteer for the National Trust instead.

OUR constituency system is skewed against small parties. If Ukip had been contesting a General Election last week it would have won millions of votes, but not a single seat in Parliament. And if the people who voted for Ukip last week do the same at the General Election, as the polls seem to suggest, then Weird Ed will be our next prime minister and there will never be a referendum on the EU. The next chapter in British history: How Ukip landed us in the EU for ever.

AT the end of this week, on June 6, we will mark the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. In our modern age every police force, local council and primary school has its mission statement, and they tend to be long-winded and self-important. In the history of mankind has the liberation of an entire continent ever been summed up in just 30 words? This is the mission statement the Allied Supreme Commander, Dwight D Eisenhower, gave his men: "You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other United Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces."

COULD any modern mission-statement writer compose the above without ending it with "going forward"?

TALKING of which, the GF-words are being exported to Brazil. England coach Roy Hodgson says of one of his lads: " I'm sure he's going to be a very big player for England going forward." Not so hot going backwards, perhaps? Any similar GF sightings gratefully received.

NOW I think of it, there was one wartime mission statement which was even more succinct than Eisenhower's. In December 1941 the tiny Allied detachment in Iceland received the top-secret order: "Commence hostilities with Japan"