Peter Rhodes: Turning poor kids into professionals

ANOTHER month. Another Monday. Same old question. Who's going to resign from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse this week?

AS you know, I am not a great believer in conspiracy theories. But is there something in the scale, the time-span or the Civil Service involvement in the inquiry that makes it impossible for it to recruit and keep key staff? Meanwhile, the alleged abusers die, the victims give up hope and the long grass grows longer.

A READER writes: "I don't know anybody who looks like John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or David Cameron. So why do I know loads of people who look like Jeremy Corbyn?"

I AWOKE in the early hours to hear a comedian claiming on World Service that he led a solitary life by choice. But it wasn't his choice, it was the choice of other people. It takes a lot to make me laugh at 3.25am.

THE Conservative Conference kicks off in Birmingham. At its heart is Theresa May's crusade for social mobility, creating a system that turns poor, disadvantaged kids into high-earning professionals. So how's this for social mobility? The former Channel 4 treasury guru and Labour loyalist Paul Mason reveals that the professions in his family tree from 1790 to the present go: labourer, hatter, hatter, hatter, miner, miner, economics editor. My family tree follows a similar trajectory: weaver, weaver, weaver, carpenter, plumber, Dazzlingly Successful Globe-Trotting Multi-Media Correspondent and Opinion-Former (although I usually describe myself as a hack). Mason says some of this 20th century social mobility was "about how Labour shaped the postwar boom in the interests of the working class." Right on, brother. But it was no disadvantage that Paul Mason and I (and Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, for that matter) went to grammar school.

HOW to spot a scammer. The latest villain trying to rob me online sent an email including this line: "Apple is cited by guidelines to go trough a varification of your information." If these blighters ever master the English language, we're stuffed.

A FORMER officer on the Royal Yacht warns Daily Telegraph readers against plans to recommission Britannia. Better by far, he says, to build a new yacht to "showcase the best of contemporary British shipbuilding and design." Really? As far as the Royal Navy is concerned, the latest generation of ships include subs which run aground, destroyers riddled with engine failure and aircraft carriers with no aircraft. Might be better to refloat Her Majesty's old tub, after all.

MORE curious names for companies. A reader reminds me that in Blackpool there is a funeral director called Box Brothers. There really is. However, no matter what anybody may tell you, there is no such firm of divorce lawyers as Ditcher, Quick & Hyde. That one was invented for a 2012 remake of a Three Stooges film.

ASKED why he had not paid some federal taxes, Donald Trump replied: "That makes me smart." History may recall those were the four words that costs him the US presidency. Trump is 70. How can you live so long without learning the different between being smart and being a smartarse?