Peter Rhodes: There's no such thing as a fireman

I HAVE seen nothing in the EU debate this week to shift me from my original view that whether you want to stay in the EU or quit, the only sensible course of action is to vote to leave. First we vote, then we haggle.

AN advert catches my eye. A big national charity which pays its chief executive £120,000 a year wants a manager for a small-town charity shop. The salary, for a 30-hour week, is £14,000 a year. My spies tell me such rates are the norm for charity-shop employees. It's surprising no-one has set up a charity for them.

JO Heywood, head of a very upmarket boarding school in Ascot, says children should be raised gender-neutral and "if a little girl wants to spend time in a fireman's outfit, then that is to be encouraged." Tut, tut, headteacher. Isn't she aware that there is no such thing as a fireman's outfit because there is no such thing as a fireman? In these politically-correct times, they are all fire fighters.

AS for encouraging females to get into fire fighters' outfits, many need absolutely no encouragement. Ask any male stripper.

IN the beginning, banks and moneylenders wrongly charged people PPI (payment protection insurance) they didn't need. Then we had the usual full public inquiry, denouncing the offenders as rogues and charlatans. And then, riding to the rescue likes knights of old on noble steeds, were hordes of companies promising to get you your share of the banks' millions. The latest figures show that for every £4 recovered, the gallant knights pocketed £1. It adds up to about £5,000 million in commission. The irony, as the National Audit Office reported this week, is that most of the PPI victims could have got their compensation free. Its report says: 'The quality of claims management remains highly variable, with some companies doing little more than passing batches of consumer complaints on to the ombudsman while achieving high profit margins." Some firms have been fined; some have been branded immoral. Moral: don't be surprised if your knight on his noble steed leaves something behind for the roses.

AND if the PPI game is exposed as immoral, surely we must have a full public inquiry. No matter who the losers are, the winners are always the lawyers.

AS the Queen opened the new Elizabeth Line in London's Crossrail system, the little cord that opens the little curtains to reveal the plaque stuck and someone rushed forward to help. This raises two points. The first is that from the Queen's accession until the present day, we may have sent satellites to Mars, walked on the moon and created the internet but no-one has quite sorted out the little curtains with little strings dilemma. They are as troublesome in 2016 as they were in 1952. The second point is that Her Majesty has probably pulled more little cords to open more little curtains than any human in history. She is the global expert and leading authority on the subject. Yet still there are people waiting to rush forward to assist her. It must, to put it mildly, try the royal patience.

ACTUALLY, there is a third point. How many women in London are called Elizabeth Line?