Peter Rhodes: The terrorist incident that wasn't

THE Government has launched a consultation on tipping in restaurants amid concerns that some establishments are not "transparent" about their charges. Isn't this the right time to get rid of the entire tipping culture?

CAN anyone explain why we are expected to tip taxi drivers but not bus drivers, hairdressers but not chiropodists or waiters but not chefs? It is all outdated, unfair and patronising. Let us see the menu, see the prices and pay the bill, the whole bill and nothing but the bill.

AN audit conducted by the Royal College of Physicians suggests that 40,000 hospital patients a year are subject to "do not resuscitate" orders without their families being consulted. And how many of those "do not resuscitate" posters were clipped to the foot of the bed by the patients' mates, as a joke?

THESE days there is a tendency to trumpet the arrests and charges of terrorist suspects from the rooftops, but keep quiet about the outcome when it doesn't fit the "war on terror" narrative. Consider the curious case of the Frenchman, arrested in a full-scale security operation at Gatwick last November. Remember it? We were told that Jerome Chauris, 41, carried a rifle and a knife into the airport. Police were called, the airport went into lockdown, flights were cancelled and a controlled explosion was carried out. Amid huge headlines and TV coverage, Chauris was remanded in custody where he stayed for five months. The entire operation is reckoned to have cost £1.2 million and we all thought, well done - another terror plot foiled.

AND then, a few days ago, Mr Chauris was quietly brought before Hove Crown Court charged with possessing a dangerous article in an aerodrome and possessing a knife in a public place. The jury acquitted him in just nine minutes. This time there was much less media coverage; BBC online dismissed it all in four paragraphs. It turns out Mr Chauris had been carrying an air rifle, quite legally, in his suitcase on an earlier flight. Speaking little English and short of cash, he became agitated when he learned he would have to pay to put it in the luggage hold for an EasyJet flight. He reacted by dumping the rifle and other possessions in a bin. The local Crawley News carried a commendably full account of proceedings which it headlined : "Bomb scare at Gatwick caused by passenger not having any money to pay EasyJet luggage charge." Now, it may have been perfectly reasonable for everyone to react as they did, so soon after the Paris bombings. But, for the sake of everybody who was delayed or scared witless by this affair, or simply wondered what happened, it should be put on record that the "terrorist incident" at Gatwick last November was actually a baggage dispute. And quite why your taxes and mine were spent on keeping Mr Chauris in custody for five months is anybody's guess.

I LOVED the marksmanship which ended Line of Duty (BBC1). Out of breath after running, DC Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure), using a short-barrelled carbine, managed to kill the driver of a moving Range Rover through blacked-out windows with a single shot at a range of about 200 yards. Annie Oakley, eat your heart out.