Peter Rhodes: A few feet from oblivion

THINGS to do on a rainy day. The Government pro-EU leaflet is snappily entitled "Why the Government believes that voting to remain in the European Union is the best decision for the UK." A reader tells me that with skilful use of a black marker pen he has retitled the leaflet: "Government lie: voting to remain in the EU is the best decision for the UK."

HACKED Off, the pressure group demanding tighter controls on the wicked Press, rages against four newspapers which knew about a politician's liaison with a sex worker but refused to run the story. This, says Hacked Off, was a conspiracy to put pressure on the minister. Yet if the papers had run the story, you can bet your life Hacked Off would be complaining about media intrusion and accusing the newspapers of putting pressure on politicians. There is no pleasing some people.

TWO hundred thousand new houses per year. The HS2 rail project. Hinkley Point nuclear power station. We know all the mighty civil engineering and building projects lined up for the next few years to make the UK fit for the 21st century. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors warned last year that Britain's construction industry is facing its worst skills crisis since 1998. A pal in the industry tells me that Hinkley Point alone will require every single skilled steel-fitter in the UK. It's all very well planning the new Jerusalem but who's going to build it?

IT is a golden rule of television that you cannot make a programme about Britain without forcing some hapless presenter to stand on a terrifyingly high white cliff and induce anxiety in the viewing public. Sure enough, the Beeb's political guru Nick Robinson was plonked a few feet from oblivion for Europe: Them Or US (BBC2). Having survived cancer it would have been ironic if Robinson had been blown off Beachy Head.

GREAT programme, incidentally. I had no idea that so many tears were shed by both British and European leaders as the UK struggled to join the Common Market. Politicians were different then.

THANKS for your memories of kids misunderstanding things, including the proud parents whose little lad explained his absence from school by telling the teacher he had dire ear.

MANY of your memories concern children mis-hearing the words of hymns. I am reminded of the schoolteacher who heard a small child joyously belting out: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord / He is trampling on the village where the great giraffes are stored."

AND now, hymns while washing. Launderettes, once a feature of every high street, are fading fast. Britain once had 12,500 but today only about 3,000 are left. The Lib-Dems have launched a campaign to save them from being converted into houses and flats. I am transported back to 1970, the heyday of DIY washing and my misspent time as a student at a technical college Oop North. A pal and I were in the launderette when something went wrong and the place flooded. We bravely remained behind when all the other customers had fled, perching on the wooden benches. I think it was his idea to start singing Abide With Me, which made the proprietor very angry. It is a strange thing that while I have never been thrown out of a pub, I have been thrown out of a launderette.