Peter Rhodes: Beware of what you wish for

THE problem is guns, so let's ban flags. Only in America...

THE Confederate flag, now regarded as a factor in the South Carolina church massacre, is cherished by old Southerners as a symbol of what they believe was a cultured, romantic and rural society, laid waste by the brute forces of Northern industry. Steel and iron trampled on cotton. It is a monstrously distorted view of history but it will surely be driven underground and reinforced by the banning of the flag.

INCIDENTALLY, you don't have to go to the Deep South of the United States to see Confederate flags. They flutter in areas where rural folk feel put down and scorned by posh city people. Drive through the countryside of England and you may see Dixie's flag. If you spot one, let me know.

FLY tippers are scum but there should be a particularly nasty corner of hell reserved for the ones who have just despoiled a country lane near us. They have dumped a huge load of asbestos in a field entrance. Landowners are responsible for clearing fly-tipping and, in this case, a farmer is faced with the hassle of disposing of a potentially hazardous substance. And somewhere, a customer is probably delighted that a couple of lads with a truck charged him so little to demolish and clear away his old garage.

BRITAIN'S favourite gardener utters the gardening term "bastard trenching" and the BBC feels it has to apologise. A viewer emailed: "Alan Titchmarsh just swore on TV. I think that's one of the signs of the Apocalypse." We hacks are not particularly offended by Titchmarsh's b-word. When a story is set in print not across one or two columns but across one-and-a-half columns, it is known as a bastard measure.

IN metalworking, the same word is commonly used. Files are gauged by their roughness as follows: rough, middle, bastard, second cut, smooth, and dead smooth. Just like people, really.