Peter Rhodes: Lagged for winter

A READER says she is disappointed to learn from this column that pansexuality has nothing to do with pans. She was working on her debut novel, Fifty Shades of Stew.

WHOPPERS of our time. I heard one pundit describe the brought-forward hike in council tax to pay for social care as "a temporary rise." Yeah, right.

BUT the council tax had to be the target, didn't it? Freezing it for several years had become a totem of Toryism, a buffer protecting the property-rich from the demands of Britain's uncontrollable welfare bill. The real hit will come when Westminster re-bands the nation's homes based on today's inflated values and the most desirable addresses will be in Much Weeping in the Shires.

THE late A A Gill is hailed as a great writer but he was actually a great speaker. Gill was dyslexic so he first wrote his columns and then phoned them to a copy typist. And if something sounds right when you're reading it out loud, it generally looks good on the page. If more people spoke their stuff before tweeting, emailing or writing, the world would be a happier place and we would be spared Prince Andrew's recent ungrammatical letter denying "a split between the Prince of Wales and I."

IN choosing to use "I," the prince was following the modern trend of avoiding "me" at all costs. "Me" is a good, honest word but is often wrongly replaced by "I" or "myself." It's time for CROM, the Campaign for the Restoration of Me.

IN the wicked old pre-equality days, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst ran a short three-week course for army chaplains and female officers. It was universally known as the Tarts' and Vicars' Course. Listening to some of the gung-ho nonsense spouted by politicians about Britain's "failure" to intervene in Syria, it occurred to me that every new MP should be ordered to complete a similar course at the academy, if only to understand the hardware, the human factors and the difference between what is militarily possible and impossible. Britain is no longer a superpower. We have no gunboats to send up the rivers. Dropping food and aid by parachute is hopelessly inefficient and desperately risky. Sometimes, no matter how angry and helpless it makes you feel, the best option is not to get involved at all. It is dangerous to have politicians pontificating on military action when they have absolutely no military experience. Quick march to Sandhurst, you 'orrible shower.

OH, Yuletide fooltide. I have invested in a pair of cargo trousers which are not only cheaper than jeans but harder-wearing and look much better on rumps of a certain age. They come with many pockets in which you can lose things. Some pairs have a special pouch for knee pads, which must be very useful when you're begging the kids not to put you in a home.

THE folly? These cargoes are fleece-lined. And once you have one pair of fleece-lined trousers, you want all your trousers fleece-lined. And your vests, gloves and jackets. You end up compulsively chasing cold patches around your body, slapping on fleece like lagging in a loft. I'm surprised Age Concern doesn't issue a warning.