Peter Rhodes: National Service? The lawyers would kill it off in no time

OUR changing language. Times sketch writer Ann Treneman describes the influx of Scottish MPs "tartanising" the House of Commons.

A SURVEY suggests teenagers are not taking Saturday jobs because they are "solely focused on their studies." So it's nothing to do with being idle little devils and lying in bed till 3pm, then?

ANOTHER survey, in the wake of Prince Harry's call for National Service to be resumed, shows the greatest support for National Service is among 50 to 60-year-olds – in other words, it is popular among members of the generation that just missed National Service themselves, and know nothing about it. Older chaps, who spent two years pounding drill squares and peeling potatoes, are all too aware that the very essence of peace-time conscription was that, no matter how smart or how tough you thought you were, the system would beat you every time. In today's age of individual rights and lawyers, the individual would win every single legal battle for alleged bullying, and New National Service would be scrapped faster than you can say jankers (ask your granddad).

SO how many right-on lovers of democracy celebrated the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta this week - but also rejoiced in the sacking of Sir Tim Hunt for alleged sexism? For the record, this is what Magna Carta has to say about crimes: "For a trivial offence a man shall be fined only in proportion to the degree of his offence, and for a serious offence correspondingly, but not so heavily as to deprive him of his livelihood." Eight hundred years after the great charter was sealed, tyranny still rules and a man can be professionally ruined for one silly joke. The barons of 1215 were a bloody-handed bunch but they would have been appalled at Tim Hunt's treatment.

ERIC Gill (1882-1940) was a fabulously gifted artist. He was also a raging pervert and paedophile who had sex with his sister, daughters and his own dog. In her fine series How to Be Bohemian (BBC4), Victoria Coren Mitchell could barely conceal her disgust. And yet Gill's sculpture of Prospero with a naked Ariel still stands boldly on the front of the BBC's Broadcasting House. It is a dilemma. Do you bin an artist's entire life work if he is exposed as a sexual rampager? And how can Auntie Beeb keep Eric Gill's sculpture but ban Rolf Harris's Two Little Boys?

PUNCTUATION corner. A pop-up advert declares: "Walk In Wet Rooms." Is this an invitation to stroll through flood-stricken lounges? I suspect not. A hyphen would make it clear that the objects for sale are "Walk-In Wet Rooms." Never underestimate the humble hyphen. It is the wee small dash that makes the profound distinction between extra marital sex, which rarely causes any problems, and extra-marital sex, which often does.