Peter Rhodes: Making Britain grate

WHAT do you do with an angry, unstable man who beats his wife, rages with hatred against gays and is interviewed three times in connection with terrorism? You sell him a gun. It's the American way.

THEY are not real fans. It's only a tiny minority. The other fans started it. The local beer was too strong. The organisation was rubbish. The police over-reacted. Useful phrases to excuse England's football hooligans, tried, trusted and endlessly repeated over the past 50 years.

GOOD to see you all taking this EU referendum so seriously. A reader writes: "Only by banning the sale of ready-shredded cheese can we make Britain grate again."

IN a weekend column, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby refers to the Thiepval Memorial in northern France as "a memorial to the roughly one million casualties on all sides in the Battle of the Somme in 1916." It is no such thing, which just goes to show that even archbishops are not infallible. Thiepval specifically commemorates the "Missing," the British and Commonwealth soldiers who died on the Somme and have no known grave. Maybe the Archbishop would like it to commemorate "all sides" in the spirit of love and reconciliation that he invokes to promote the European Union, but it doesn't.

THE Archbishop goes on to speak fondly of a war cemetery in Normandy where German and British soldiers are buried together. But this is a rare exception. As a rule, British and Commonwealth soldiers are buried with their mates, not among those who tried to kill them. To do otherwise is to suggest that a British Para who helped liberate Normandy is no better or worse than the SS officer who ordered firing squads to kill French civilians. This "moral equivalence," with all participants viewed as blameless victims, may be trendy today but it still makes old soldiers very angry.

IF you have a moment, go online to YouTube and watch Brexit : The Movie. It is made by the Leave lobby and crowd-funded by hundreds of well-wishers. The film spells out a clear, intelligent case for leaving the EU in order to regain control of our nation, improve our democracy, rid ourselves of the arrogant, unelected elite in Brussels and unleash a new age of British prosperity. Too often the Leave case is dominated by scare stories about race and migration. Here's a sensible, sober examination which will not only confirm your worst fears about the EU but also make you proud to be British.

HOWEVER, make sure you view Brexit: The Movie with just the tiniest pinch of salt, especially the section about why Switzerland is so prosperous. It avoids any mention of blood diamonds, gold looted in the Holocaust and the multi-billion dollar proceeds of organised crime, secretly stashed away in Zurich. Switzerland's wealth is not based on cuckoo clocks.

WE have seen the Queen acting in the 2012 Olympics spoof with James Bond, and again in the promotional video for Prince Harry's Invictus Games. Now it is whispered that she has a fine singing voice and loves George Formby's songs. The years are slipping by and at 90 this may be the moment for Her Majesty to release her inner performer. Coming in December: The Queen's Christmas Message - The Musical.