Peter Rhodes on painful mortgages and the best firelighters

A COUPLE of years ago I invited women readers who worked in factories and offices in the 1960s and 1970s to tell us of their experiences. You may recall the result was a grim litany of being groped by bosses, foremen, councillors and other males in positions of power. If the latest Westminster sex scandal proves anything, it is that there's no time limit on publicising such offences. I bet a lot of elderly gentlemen who like to think of themselves as pillars of the community are sweating a little today.

HOWEVER, consider the tale of a reader who was widowed a few months ago. She visited the family solicitor. He went to hug her but thought better of it and shook her hand instead. He did the safe, respectable thing. "The point is," she told me, "at that moment what I really needed was a hug." In the witch-hunt over inappropriate touching we must cherish and protect the appropriate sort.

OH, the pain, the hardship, the suffering. Within weeks we'll all be living on potato skins and beef dripping, and sending the kids out to clean chimneys. Or so you'd imagine from the agony-fest whipped up over the Bank of England's decision to raise interest rates from 0.25 per cent to 0.5 per cent. You would think, from some of the dispatches by breathless young TV hacks who have never known a rate rise, that the sky was falling in. At risk of sounding like one of Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen, me and t'missus bought ower second house in 1978. It took t'builders 11 months to get it finished. And in those 11 months, t'interest rate on ower mortgage went oop from eight to 13 per cent. Pain? I can tell thee about pain.

A READER, noting the redevelopment of The Poacher's Pocket pub near Oswestry, asks: "Why is it acceptable to name hostelries after poachers and highwaymen? How about The Burglar's Swag Bag or the Car-jacker?" He has a point. Fans of Peep Show (C4) will recall that Super Hans (Matt King) agreed to run a pub so long as its name carried "a political message". His choice was Free the Paedos.

I MENTIONED the lost art of making firelighters from newspapers. A reader skilled in the art writes to say his local paper makes awful firelighters and the Daily Telegraph is much easier to ignite.I recall many years ago an old sub-editor telling me the Birmingham Post made the best firelighters of all, because it was so very dry.

SO the Queen has invested some of her money in an offshore portfolio. Isn't it time that we made it illegal for anyone to put money in such high-earning, tax-avoiding, hugely-rewarding funds? Apart from my pension fund, naturally.