Peter Rhodes: Low-level disorder?

THE good people of Cromer will no doubt be reassured that the invasion, riots, rampaging mobs, blatant theft, road blocking and general thuggishness that forced their little east-coast resort into lockdown at the weekend was, according to the police, merely "low-level disorder." You can't help wondering whether the cops would have used that description if it had happened in, say, the chief constable's front garden.

"LOW level." I can't recall weasel words ever being quite so weasely. And despite two days of anarchy, anguish and distress, not a single arrest was made. If this outrage had been caused by football fans or motorbike gangs, would the police response have been the same? Of course not. They would have turned up mob-handed and the cells would be full. So why the "low-level" approach? Possibly because those involved were travellers The courts have ruled that some travellers are a separate ethnic group and you can't help feeling that when the word "ethnic" crops up, the authorities like to look the other way. That restaurant being invaded by 40 burly blokes stealing booze from the fridge? It's just low-level disorder. Nothing to see here, folks.

BY coincidence, the day after the travellers moved on from Cromer, the Crown Prosecution Service unveiled new guidelines on internet trolls, warning that online bullies would face "the same robust and proactive approach used with offline offending." Would that be "robust," as seen in Cromer, by any chance?

DOES anyone seriously believe that up to a dozen young Muslim men and the local imam spent six months planning a major bomb attack at their headquarters in the little Spanish town of Ripoll and nobody suspected anything? Pull the other one. It reminds me of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Only a tiny percentage of the Catholic community were IRA guerillas. But for every IRA gunman there were dozens of folks who would never dream of informing the cops. A survey among British Muslims for Channel 4 last year revealed that while 96 per cent were against terrorist violence, only 34 per cent would inform the police if they thought somebody they knew was getting involved with people who support terrorism in Syria. And in Ripoll? One resident told the world's media: "We are in a state of shock." I dare say some are more shocked than others.

YES, it was a terrible tragedy and yes, she was a good dresser. But it was 20 years ago and I cannot be the only one to have reached Diana-exhaustion on this over-hyped anniversary. We have seen and heard quite enough authorised and unauthorised tapes, gossip, video and books. Can the nation cope with another "Diana - Queen of Style" supplement? I think not. Let us move on.

I WROTE about a colleague who took his three-year-old daughter through a car wash and told her it was Alton Towers. It reminded a reader of deception at the dinner table one Christmas during the austere 1940s. The parents thought the roast would fool the kids but one of them noticed that the "chicken" had four legs. A rabbit.

THE irony now is that chicken is everyday nosh while rabbit has become a delicacy.