Peter Rhodes: London before the Gherkin

THERESA May has launched a nationwide audit to monitor how people from various ethnic backgrounds are treated by public services. Good luck with that. And what will happen when they discover what is already known, bur rarely whispered? It is the fact that some of the worst educational results, highest levels of illiteracy, gravest incidences of domestic violence, suicide and infant mortality, highest levels of crime and lowest uptake of vaccinations, creating lethal hotspots of measles, are found not among newly-arrived migrants from the Third World but in the traveller and gipsy communities which have lived in Britain for centuries? Gipsy life is full of traditions but the authorities have a tradition of their own. It's called looking the other way.

VICTORIA (ITV) starring Doctor Who's former companion Jenna Coleman has some strangely unconvincing computer-generated images of 19th century England but at least it gives us a vision of what London was, and what it might have been. It was an impressive, low-rise capital with elegant buildings overlooked for miles around by the towering bulk of St Paul's. Instead, the glory of Wren's London has vanished under high-rise blocks and weird-shaped skyscrapers. For a number of reasons, Paris did things differently, which is why it is a much prettier city.

AND off to the lake, slipping one extra sailing day into this long, lovely summer of 2016, a season so benign and bountiful that even some farmers are smiling. The water glistened, the sails filled and hundreds of kids screamed and played on the vast inflatable water park erected for the holidays. And on a hired rowing raft, presumably enjoying themselves while acquiring the sort of tan you'd get if you lived in a post box, were two women accompanied by a man. The women were dressed in the niqab. This is not to be confused with the Muslim hijab headscarf, nor the much-debated burkini. This was the full, funeral-black, pre-Islamic tribal gear, including long black gloves, covering their flesh from head to toe, apart from a tiny eye slit. As I have written several times, I defend anyone's right to wear whatever they want, whenever they choose. Just so long as the rest of us have the right to say how very silly, and rather sad, they looked, blocking out the blessings of a beautiful summer's day in the belief that God will bless them.

MEMO to some of my correspondents on the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn delivering a socialist government. Hating anyone who happens to be richer than you is not socialism. It's envy. When one writer thunders: "Our society has a desperate need for redistribution of wealth," I bet he actually means: "My life hasn't turned out quite as I hoped."

I AM assured this story of the NHS in the 21st century is true. An acquaintance, worried about her cough, arranged a phone appointment with her GP. At the appointed hour he called her, asked her to cough into the phone and assured her the cough was nothing to worry about.

I KNOW what you are thinking. The same question is haunting me, too. How does the GP on the telephone diagnose wind?

AND who would want to use the phone afterwards?