Peter Rhodes: Too thick to drive?

I'M sure he is telling the truth but there's something about the name of one Volkswagen board spokesman that makes you wonder. Olaf Lies.

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WELL done, Boris Johnson. The London Mayor has turned down the opportunity to host the start of the 2017 Tour de France on the grounds that the £35 million could be better spent. How about the world's cities taking a similar stand against the endless pressure to host the ruinously expensive Olympic Games? Think of the money that would be saved and the benefits to the Greek economy if the Olympics were simply held every four years in Greece, where the games had their birth, with all the nations bunging in a few drachmas to pay for the facilities. Sorted, as Aristotle would have said.

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MY campaign to award exclamation marks to British towns and villages is gathering pace. As I noted a few days ago, the Devon village of Westward Ho! Is the only place with one. So far your suggestions for exclamation-ennoblement include Tring! and Middle Wallop!

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FROM yesterday it is illegal for drivers to smoke while there are children in the car. Police say they will not prosecute for a while, giving a period of "education not prosecution." Which presumably means the cops think some motorists are too thick to know that turning a car into a gas chamber might be harmful to the kids. Is it unfair to suggest that anyone so irredeemably ignorant and selfish shouldn't be in charge of a vehicle in the first place?

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YOU may recall I mentioned the trail camera we bought a few weeks ago. Strapped to a suitable tree on a dark night, its motion-sensitive shutter snaps passing wildlife. I must have left it switched on indoors and have just downloaded 300 images of me eating. I appear to have at least five chins and demolish a salad with all the grace of a Galapagos tortoise. It makes you realise how unfair David Attenborough and Co are, filming animals in secret. There is no warning, no "watch the birdie," no time to adjust your face. Nobody ever asks a giant tortoise: "Are you ready for your close-up yet?"

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IN war, bad news is good news. Readers and viewers expect a diet of muddle, failure and needless casualties, and the media generally oblige. So you have probably not read the views of Air Commodore Martin Sampson, the RAF commander leading the UK air war against Islamic State. He says the US-led coalition is winning and IS is under pressure and demoralised. As I wrote of this air war exactly a year ago: "It is not the usual shock-and-awe extravaganza. It is the military equivalent of toothache, a constant, draining pain gradually wearing down your courage and your resistance." Speak it softly but we might just be winning.

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DAVID Cameron goes to Jamaica and local activists start demanding reparations for the slave trade. This may be the right time for us Yorkshire folk to raise the issue of the Harrowing of the North, carried out by the Normans in 1069. The whole region was laid waste and thousands were slaughtered or died of famine. If it had not been for the Harrowing I feel sure I would be living in a much bigger house, earning far more money and would not have lost my hair. Shall we say £20 million?

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STOP press. Another place desperately lacking an exclamation mark is a village near Warwick. Ashow! Bless you.