Best of Peter Rhodes - August 14
The best of this week's Peter Rhodes column from the Express & Star.
The best of this week's Peter Rhodes column from the Express & Star.
FASCINATING report on the lad who was sacked from running the dodgems but won his case at an industrial tribunal. He claimed funfair dismissal.
A COUNCIL'S website tells us: "South Staffordshire Solutions is the council's contact centre for personal visits". I think we used to call it Reception. Meanwhile, a food company is offering "breakfast solutions". Cereal bars.
A READER writes: "People keep telling me that swimming is good for your figure. So what is it with whales?"
SWINE flu appears to be a mild strain of influenza. It is not particularly easy to catch. It does not appear to be mutating into anything more dangerous. So why is Britain preparing for the mass vaccination of millions of us? And will this vaccination be voluntary or compulsory? I had not seen any official statement on this so I rang the Department of Health who tell me: "We haven't decided on the details yet but we would never make a vaccine compulsory. We are not in the business of making people have medicine they don't want." This is good news for those of us who would rather opt out, at least until we have seen what the side-effects are. I bet there will be an awful lot of flu shots going unclaimed.
AND isn't it good to see medical researchers casting doubt on Tamiflu? Hoarders and frauds have been making false claims in order to stockpile the flu medicine. Now, it emerges Tamiflu should not be given to some children. Try shifting that lot on the black market, you crooks.
YOU can tell the silly season has begun - there is a "development" in the Madeleine McCann story. More than two years after the little girl vanished in Portugal, a report emerges of a mysterious woman who, three days after the 2007 abduction, asked a tourist in Barcelona (700 miles away) : "Are you here to deliver my new daughter?" As you do.
The "stunned tourist" kept quiet about this conversation for so long "for personal reasons". As you do.
It's just another Maddie fairytale. Take a huge pinch of salt with it. As you do.
OF COURSE it was crass of Jeremy Clarkson to make a joke about the Nazi invasion of Poland. Of course it was unforgivable of the BBC to screen it. But Clarkson makes the Beeb an awful lot of money. Therefore, unlike Poland, he is fireproof.
OUR changing language. An expert on company law told Radio 4 that some offenders deserved a nap on the ruckles.
THE Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs says we really ought to have a UK food policy. Great idea. And when do we get a UK population policy?
A READER was so outraged at the recent exhibition at Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art which invited punters to scribble in the margins of a Bible that he wrote to the gallery. The three-page email in response is one of the funniest documents I have read. It is achingly politically correct, stressing the gallery's commitment to lesbians, gays, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. It insists that no offence was intended to Christians. But it then goes into details about another part of the exhibition, a video in which the artist tears pages from a Bible, crushes them and pushes them into her sweater and trousers. Apparently the point of this is to demonstrate the two aspects of the Bible, its content and its physical embodiment. The artist is "challenging her beliefs through artistic expression." Of course she is, dearie. Now take your email and shove it up your jumper.
DO ANXIOUS guitarists fret?
A READER insists he heard of an Eskimo who lived in an ig. It had no loo.
THE latest aid for brain surgeons is a micro-vacuum gizmo developed by British scientists. It can apparently suck whole blood clots out of the brain. I find myself idly wondering what else it might suck out of your brains. Oops, there goes the ability to tap dance, your mother-in-law's first name, the wife's birthday and the capital of Outer Mongolia.
WENT fishing for the first time in ages and, once again, the box of shame worked. This is the box which does not contain those discreet little flies beloved of serious anglers who tie their own lures to imitate natural bugs. The box of shame is stuffed with gaudy, glittery lures resembling no creature that ever lived. Max Hastings, the writer, field sportsman and liberator of the Falklands, once declared that he would rather fish all day and catch nothing using traditional flies than resort to lures "dressed up like a saloon-bar jade." I dare say my three plump and delicious trout would have preferred a day with Mr Hastings. (NB: "Jade = ye olde expression for disreputable women. Chiefly used by bad-tempered anglers with no supper).
I AM intrigued to see that Morris dancing will be among the attractions at a British National Party festival to be held in Derbyshire this weekend. I remarked a few weeks ago on the curious fact that many Morris dancers black their faces these days, almost as though they are making a political point in a society where face-blacking is regarded as distinctly non-PC. Is Morris Dancing becoming the cultural wing of the BNP?
RAGING against the "evil" NHS, one American newspaper claimed that the great physicist Stephen Hawking "wouldn't have a chance" if he lived in the UK. Professor Hawking has set the record straight, pointing out that he does live in England and he owes his life to the NHS. So why did the Yanks think he was one of them? I can only assume it's because his artificial voice has an American accent. Gee, honey, I thought he was from Connecticut.
DO unhappy French street sweepers rue the day?
