Best of Peter Rhodes - April 3
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.
WITH the warm weather coming, a reader says he phoned the local ramblers' club but the chap on the other end just went on and on.
THERE is no end, it seems, to your imaginative ways of dealing with failed professionals.
* Are failed witch doctors exspelled?
* Are failed chiropodists defeated?
* Are failed cricketers detested?
THE Archbishop of Canterbury says God will not protect mankind from the consequences of climate change which are due to our "corporate folly." This raises a number of questions:
* When precisely did God give the archbishop this news?
* Does it apply to the poor, innocent Pacific islanders who have contributed nothing to global warming?
* Did the archbishop ask the Almighty to consider saving us? If not, why not?
* Why was God so stern on Adam for eating the fruit of one tree when He does nothing to stop the deforestation of the Amazon?
* What was He thinking of, creating a planet so fragile it could be wrecked by one species in just two centuries of industrialisation?
* With hindsight, would He have spent more than six days on the project?
* If God won't save us, any chance of asking the Tooth Fairy to help?
PETER Bacon, 25, knew the affair wasn't going well when the naked woman in bed next to him woke up and, instead of asking whether he fancied tea or coffee, shrieked: "The law has been changed for f*****s like you. If you're too drunk to give consent then it's rape!" Turns out his one-night stand was a 44-year-old lawyer with a drink problem and a bad temper. She cried rape, he spent a year awaiting trial and was last week acquitted in just 45 minutes by a jury. This is a landmark case. Some women seriously believe that, if you don't like the look of the bloke the next morning, or if he scarpers, or if he says something unkind about your wallpaper, it's rape. No, it isn't. It's experience.
AN IMAGE of our times. A bloke at the hotel where we stayed last week, eyes blissfully closed, earphones in place and his iPod held in the fingers of one extended arm, to keep it dry. In the Jacuzzi.
A READER was struck by last week's piece in which I referred to the £380,000 a year trousered by the boss of my building society. The reader has just received two letters from his building society. The first, concerning the AGM, reports that the chief executive of his own building society is earning pretty much the same amount. So who sets the rate? The second tells my reader the interest on his savings has fallen from £4,000 last year to £800 this year. Does anyone have the blueprints for a guillotine?
WHAT'S the difference between Lady Goodwin's husband and Jacqui Smith's husband? Lady Goodwin's husband is a banker.
IN 1992 a court in Scotland ruled that car clamping on private land was "theft and extortion" and banned it overnight. Yet in England this intimidating and thoroughly unpleasant business not only thrives but is aided and abetted by the DVLA which cheerfully supplies names and addresses for clamping firms to send demands for money. God knows why it is still legal in England. Maybe it's because Scottish politicians actually care about the Scots while English politicians are too busy filling in their expenses forms.
THE antiques trade has always had a darker side but The Antiques Roadshow (BBC1) tends to overlook it. On Sunday two cases may have caused some viewers a little alarm. The first was a silver bowl, picked up for £5 in a charity shop and valued at £1,200. The second was a beautiful twist-stemmed 18th century wine glass, bought for £1 at a car-boot sale and valued at £3,000. There was not a frisson of concern, not the merest suggestion that this was anything other than jolly good luck for the purchasers. By what legitimate means does a £3,000 glass come to be at a car-boot sale? And if someone has made a quick £1,195 profit out of a charity shop, might they consider sharing their fortune with the charity? Or aren't we supposed to ask such questions?
IF YOU have never seen politicians spending money in earnest, you have missed one of life's great awe-inspiring events. It happened to me more than 20 years ago when I beheld the Mount Pleasant Airport (MPA) in the Falklands. Back then it cost a cool £400 million. I wrote: "MPA has all mod cons including a hair salon, two lavish canteens, showers, a rugby pitch, soccer field, squash courts, surgery and, as befits a settlement of 2,000 souls, an international airport with en-suite fighter squadron. Here is British enterprise at its most stunning. Shame you have to travel 8,000 miles to find it but that's politics for you". I had an MPA moment this week watching a TV documentary on the British Army hospital in Afghanistan. Here in a vast, spotless unit, NHS doctors and nurses fought to save the lives of soldiers, civilians and enemy alike. And you couldn't help reflecting that while this inspiring film was being made, 400 unexplained deaths were being investigated at Stafford Hospital where critical cases were assessed by receptionists and patients were dying in their own filth. Priorities, Gordon. Priorities.
WE LOVE to believe the truth is out there. Which is why a sudden, unexplained sighting of a bear in a forest in Suffolk caused a bit of a stir this week. For a few exciting hours borin' old England seemed a little more exciting. Then it emerged that the creature was actually an actor in a bear costume promoting a production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. The truth is sometimes unbearable.
