Peter Rhodes: Echoes of the Third Reich?

"HOW'S this for global warming, then?" Greeting guaranteed to start a fight in Washington DC.

THANKS for your memories inspired by my recent item on how hand cream and toothpaste tubes look similar. My particular sympathy to the reader who started the day by brushing his teeth with Germolene.

MIRIAM Margolyes says she was terribly upset not to be cast as Mrs Gamp in Dickensian (BBC1), declaring: "I entered this world for no other reason than to play that part." For my money, Margolyes was at her finest as the funniest Queen Victoria ever, in the classic Blackadder Christmas Special, with the matchless Jim Broadbent as the delightfully dim Prince Albert.

MORE than 70 years after Hitler's suicide in the bunker, his Third Reich still throws a long, dark shadow over our world. We hear of Denmark asking refugees to pay towards their costs and recall the Nazis confiscating the belongings of Jews in transit. We hear of asylum seekers in Cardiff being forced to wear wristbands to obtain free meals at their hostel and think of the yellow stars that Jews were forced to wear in the ghettos. So let's take a reality check. Let's remind ourselves that asking the better-off to pay toward state services, as the Danes are doing, is perfectly normal social-security practice across Europe. As for showing a wristband to get a meal, isn't that what the fans do at Glastonbury? And let us never forget that while Europe is trying, as humanely as possible, to safeguard, shelter and feed millions of migrants, the Nazis were rounding up six million Jews in order to gas them to death. There is absolutely no comparison. A little more reality, please, and a little less hysteria.

SO if you're a bloke turning 65 this year, are you a Bill or a Bob? The Bills were born before April 6, 1951 and will get the measly £116 state pension. The Bobs were born after that date and will qualify for the new, improved £155 state pension - £2,000 a year more. In the name of fairness, the way forward is for all the Bobs to give all the Bills £1,000 a year. No. I can't see it happening either.

ACTUALLY, it gets more complicated. Because of various additional payments, the measly state pension may not be quite so measly as it appears. Because of lying politicians, the new, improved state pension may not be so improved. Nobody will know what the Bills and Bobs are actually getting until mid-March, a few weeks before the changeover date, when those who have applied for their pension (you have to apply; you don't get it automatically) are finally informed of the exact sum. I suspect some Bobs will be almost as unhappy as Bills.

THE form has arrived for me to update the photo on my driving licence, a neat little dodge which earns the Government £14 a time. You can understand them wanting an up-to-date snap on your licence but the form explains that, by the magic of the computer, the DVLA is quite happy to use the photo from your passport "even if this is the same as your current licence." I dare say this makes sense to somebody.

THE licence form also invites us to become an organ donor. They don't only want your £14. They want your liver, too.