Peter Rhodes with an ambassador's warning, more about commas and Auntie Beeb silencing a whistle-blower

I WROTE some days ago about a dairy firm selling "Farmers' Own Milk." A reader assures me that in a field off the A5 near Tamworth is a sign: "For sale - farmers' own seed." Let us move swiftly on. . . .

SOMETIMES it takes an outsider to get a good inside look at what's going on. The US Ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, says he is "sorrowing" over the all-pervading pessimism he finds in Britain about the prospect of Brexit. "Don't be pessimistic," he tells us in the C4 documentary series, Inside the American Embassy. "How can a country with this great a history, this great a language, this great a legal system, this great a presence, not be successful?"

WELL said, Woody. But I suspect you've been talking to too many of the London elite. Out here in the provinces we, too, are astonished at the endless chorus of moaning minnies who have convinced themselves that the EU is the greatest creation on God's earth and leaving it will bring Armageddon. Our bold and brilliant nation which once looked upon the whole world as its oyster is today in a panic about leaving the warm embrace of Nurse Brussels. Forty years of EU membership have dimmed the British spirit and the sooner we are out, the better.

IF you listen to a recording of the Today programme (Radio 4) from last week, you will hear Professor Sir Brian Jarman explain why some hospitals develop a culture where old or seriously ill people are routinely bumped off and whistleblowers are bullied, silenced or sacked. According to Professor Jarman who is Britain's leading expert on hospital mortality, it is because some parts of the NHS are run almost on Stalinist lines. And at the heart of that culture, he told Radio 4, is an organisation called Common Purpose. And that's all he managed to get out before the interview was abruptly ended. This will come as no surprise to conspiracy theorists. While Common Purpose, a charity, claims to be no more than an organisation encouraging good leadership, its critics accuse it of everything from mind-control to subverting British democracy and undermining a free Press.

SOME of the criticism of Common Purpose as "Freemasonry of the Left" may sound extreme. But when someone of Professor Jarman's stature becomes a whistle-blower on the BBC's flagship news programme, surely it is worth the Beeb asking a few questions or at least explaining to Today listeners what Common Purpose is? Not a peep. Once again, Auntie Beeb slipped into her familiar silent mode. Nothing to see here, folks.

YOU can still catch Professor Sir Brian Jarman's interview. It's about one hour 33 minutes into the June 21 Today programme at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b6hrl1

AFTER last week's pedantic piece on the salutation comma (that's the one that goes before the person you're addressing) a reader sends a perfect example. Note well the difference between "Let's eat, Grandpa" and "Let's eat Grandpa."