Peter Rhodes on a presidential invitation, getting the right grades and the soldiers who blessed the Bomb

I have rarely seen rain like this week's. It washed over the house, flooded the gutters, pooled on the lawn and forced its way through a window frame. Imagine my relief on turning to the online forecast to discover this was “Light rain showers and a gentle breeze.” Where would we Brits be without the priceless gift of understatement?

By now you will have gathered that if ministers had announced a teacher-based grade system last week, they would have been pilloried by the very same people who demanded a teacher-based grade system this week.

Can you see the weak link in the Government opting for teachers' predictions? Why complicate things by bringing in third parties? Give the teachers a break. Let the kids choose their own grades.

After the VJ-Day commemoration, there is some national shame about neglecting our heroes of Burma, the “Forgotten Army.” But it wasn't only civilians who were responsible for this mass amnesia. In 1945 these soldiers returned from a horrible war fought between warriors who barely regarded the enemy as human. Some wars you don't want to remember.

You may prefer to skip this item. An old Chindit described to me the scene in a jungle clearing when a stray bullet hit his section's pack-mule. The mule, whose vocal chords had been removed to stop it braying, was carrying the flame thrower which ignited, spurting flaming petrol. The poor, blazing creature ran around the clearing in silent agony and no-one could end its misery with a bullet, for fear of alerting the enemy. And families wonder why Grandad never talked about the war? As the Chindit told me: “Who are you going to talk to about something like that? Your wife? The kids?” The truth is that the Forgotten Army came home and did its best to forget.

The other reason that Far East soldiers tended to keep quiet was that many found themselves holding distinctly unfashionable views. I interviewed dozens of them and many freely admitted the sweetest news they ever heard came in August 1945 when the first atom bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. It meant the PoWs would survive. It meant that hundreds of thousands of British soldiers training for the invasion of Japan would not be sent to certain slaughter. In the ban-the-bomb pacifism of later years, plenty of old soldiers kept quiet about the thankfulness they felt when the Bomb was unleashed.

Shades of Orwell? Consider this question from an insurance firm: “Have you had any claims or losses in the last five years (including whether you considered making a claim but did not follow this through)?” So they don't only demand to know what you did. They demand to know what you thought. How did this ever creep into English contract law?

As the demonstrations grow, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus boldly declares: “There will be no new elections until you kill me.” Well, it worked in Romania.