Peter Rhodes: Been sold a useless degree?

BY their achievements shall ye know them. Newcastle upon Tyne - voted Rough Guides' travel destination of the year. Coventry - appointed 2021 UK City of Culture. Wolverhampton - man cements head inside microwave.

MANY years ago, long before computer translation was even dreamed of, we imperfect linguists relied on phrase books when abroad. A colleague made the point that these books seemed to contain the most useless and unlikely phrases: "These are not my shoes, mine are brown," etc. Her own creation was:"My helicopter is full of eels." Twenty-odd years on, with the benefit of a computer translation app, I have discovered that if you are ever in Turkey and you need to tell someone your helicopter is indeed full of eels, the phrase you need is: "Helikopterim yılanbalığı dolu."

A READER makes the point that in Peaky Blinders (BBC1) all the 1920s Brummy hooligans are remarkably thin. If a similar drama were set in 21st century Brum, he says it would be called Porky Blinders.

TALKING of being stout, a new report confirms what many of us have long suspected: one in four NHS nurses is reckoned to be obese. A couple of days after that damning report, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges suggested that fast-food could improve staff relations in hospitals. It declared: "Organising a pizza delivery for hard-pressed doctors and nurses can buy an awful lot of goodwill." Excellent. And while they're at it, they might organise a fag break for the lung-cancer patients and a drinks trolley for the alcoholism unit.

IN the grand tradition of underlining the bleedin' obvious, the National Audit Office points out that some university degrees, which land students in £50,000 or more debt, come with fewer consumer-protection rights than some dodgy products sold by the financial-services industry. Damn right. Offhand, I can't think of any other sales offensive which targets kids before their 18th birthday, offering all sorts of uni courses which may, or may not, get them a decent job. "If this was a regulated financial market, we would be raising the question of mis-selling says the NAO chief Sir Amyas Morse. Warning bells should be ringing. Ten years from now, how many universities will be driven to bankruptcy by PPI-style claims from former students brandishing worthless degrees? And how many former students, unable to land any other job, will be cold-calling their contemporaries with:"Have you been mis-sold a degree?"

FOUR years ago a church in Kent, working closely with an alcoholism charity, decided to stop using real wine in Holy Communion and replace it with grape juice. But that decision has just been reversed by a new vicar, in line with CofE canon law which stipulates that worshippers must be offered "fermented juice of the grape." In my childhood, I helped prepare the communion at a Methodist church. In those days Methodists were strictly teetotal and the "wine" taken by all the old folk of the congregation was actually Ribena. As far as I know, they all went to Heaven.