Peter Rhodes: Tonight's the night

TONIGHT'S the night. Forget all the speculation, the spin and the opinion polls about Jeremy Corbyn's appeal or lack of it, or his alleged mighty mandate from Labour Party members. Tonight, as the by-election count comes in from Oldham West and Royton, we will see for the first time what real people think of Corbynism. My hugely well-informed and insightful by-election prediction remains exactly the same today as it was this time last week. I haven't the foggiest.

IS anyone surprised that scrapping the vehicle tax disc has been followed by a doubling in the number of untaxed cars on the road to more than half a million? If you make it easy to get away with tax dodging, people will dodge taxes. Does anyone in Whitehall have a brain?

CAMPAIGNERS claim that two curry restaurants in Britain close every week because of a shortage of trained chefs from the Indian sub-continent. The answer, they insist, is to relax UK migration rules to allow in more skilled chefs. Their argument is that only Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani or Kashmiri-born cooks could possibly have the necessary skills. What a load of bunkum. For a start, this argument is vaguely racist. Imagine the fury if anyone suggested that only somebody born in England could cook fish and chips, or that haggis-stuffing jobs were reserved exclusively for Scotsmen. Secondly, if the restaurants raised their wages, they might have less difficulty recruiting staff. And finally, it's hardly surprising there's a shortage of chefs if restaurant owners continue to exclude half the available population. When did you last see a female chef in a curry house?

FOLLOWING yesterday's bit on the Church of England's controversial Lord's Prayer advert which has been banned from cinemas, a reader asks: "Am I right in thinking the Church has lots of buildings of its own where it could screen these commercials?"

THE silliest sight of the week has been pacifists pretending not to be pacifists. From Corbyn all the way down to my old friend Kevin the Angry Troll, they huff and puff and declare that, if only there was a proper end strategy / a full UN mandate / a reliable Syrian opposition / British boots on the ground then, by jingo, they'd be up for a scrap with Islamic State. But we all know that even if every item on their wish-list were ticked, they still wouldn't vote for war against the most evil regime since Nazi Germany because deep down they believe all violence is wicked. Nothing wrong with that. Pacifism is an old and respected philosophy, if a wee bit dotty. But, please, have the honesty not to spoil it by denying it.

A READER says the sadness and solemnity of recent events have been spoiled by the computer-generated news subtitles on his TV. "Paris attacks" appeared as "Parrot attacks," "Charles de Gaulle" as "Sure other goal" and "responsibility" as "portability." He was fascinated to read that it was "not possible to bum from 30,000 feet." Bomb, apparently.

AFTER this week's item on Lucy Worsley's difficulties with Rs (they come out as Ws), a reader points out that there is a word in the dictionary to define this condition. It is rhotacism. Ironically, because it begins with an R, those most affected by rhotacism can't actually pronounce it.