Peter Rhodes on women as bait, vanishing links and a very good day for burying bad news

A SENSE of priorities, please. Along hundreds of miles of the British seashore, the official attitude to coastal erosion is simple: do nothing. Instead of building barriers, the sea is allowed to go where it wishes and much-loved clifftop homes tumble into the breakers. So while members are horrified to see England's oldest golf course, owned by the Royal North Devon Golf Club, being torn apart by Storm Eleanor, what's the alternative? It would be a strange sort of society that spent public money protecting golf links while allowing homes to be swallowed by the sea. Pick up your clubs, gentlemen, and head for the hills.

THE furore from the Presidents Club rumbles on. Theresa May condemns the "objectification"of females while one MP snarled that women were used as bait. Well, of course they were. Women have been used , or have used themselves, as bait throughout history. It is an unfortunate biological fact that middle-aged men adore the company and spectacle of nubile women and have done so from the bull-vaulting girls of ancient Crete to today's Playboy Club. While we may shudder at the spectacle of daft old drunks leering at bunny girls, if you set about banning hostesses where do you stop? Are airline cabin crew, clearly used as advertising bait, to survive? Then what of dancers? Does anyone seriously believe that men watch dance shows for the intricate footwork and the heroic lifts, or do we all accept it's more to do with flesh and fishnets?

THERE was a certain irony in TV reporters and pundits being so stern and judgmental about the Presidents Club when their own organisations use objectified women and girl-bait endlessly. In a totally equal and gender-respectful world, Strictly Come Dancing would be performed by men and women all dressed in drab dungarees. The campaign for the total de-objectification of women has a long way to go. Assuming we really want it.

"SHAMEFUL surrender" was how one tabloid described the decision to erase a hand-written sign in a London Tube station marking the anniversary of the epic defence of Rorke's Drift in 1879. Is it wrong to remember our imperial victories? Maybe not - so long as we keep them in context. The only reason the authorities made such a fuss about Rorke's Drift and awarded 11 VCs was to lessen the blow of the Battle of Isandlwana hours before when a Zulu army equipped with little more than spears massacred an entire British regiment. Rorke's Drift was a heroic battle but, as the Victorian spin-doctors knew, it was also a very good day for burying bad news.

I WROTE last week about my teenage hero Jason King. A reader tells me that the great observer Bill Bryson was never a fan of this "ridiculous rake in a poofy kaftan." Bryson admitted he had watched only one episode of Jason King in the 1970s yet had "never lost the desire to work the fellow over with a baseball bat studded with nails." Don't sugar-coat it, Bill.