Peter Rhodes on a Tsar at the Palace, a surge in DIY and the nightmare of having your number plates cloned

Kingfisher, the owner of Screwfix and B&Q, reports profits soaring to £800 million thanks to hordes of people turning to DIY during lockdown.

We are witnessing the emergence of a new socio-economic group, a new generation of blokes with black thumbnails, united under the worldwide banner of DIY: “If it ain't broke, it is now.”

Incidentally, if you are embarking on your first DIY job, I can recommend the Rhodes Rule of Three which takes into account the fragility, fiddlyness and general cussedness of washers, compression joints, radiator valves and suchlike.

It goes like this: Buy three, lose one, break one, fix one.

A demonstration in Bristol against a new law giving police extra powers to deal with demos turned into a riot, thus proving the need for the new law. The hawks in Whitehall will be happy today.

So that's the 2021 Census form duly filled in. I was surprised how intrusive it was. Surely it's enough to know our profession or trade.

Why do they need to know our employers' addresses, or the last job we had, even if it was 20 years ago? And how watertight is the Government's guarantee that all the information will be treated in the strictest confidence?

Supposing you entered “Hitman employed by Mafia.” Would there not be a knock at the door?

We do not expect much of our legal system. All we ask is that it protects the innocent and pursues the guilty.

Too often, it does the reverse, as in the case of a plumber from south London whose number plates were cloned two years ago. Since then, according to weekend reports, he has received fixed-penalty demands totalling £17,000 as a fraudster uses his plates to drive in and out of London's congestion zone.

Faced with the bailiffs, this plumber has already forked out £7,000. Police say he should contact the DVLA. The DVLA says he should talk to the police.

Number-plate cloning is big business, made possible by a system which rigorously enforces civil debts while overlooking criminal activity.

How hard would it be for the CCTV cameras which send out fixed-penalty demands to be used to track and trace the cloners? And if this victim were not a humble plumber but an MP or a chief constable, don't you think the case would have been cracked years ago?

If you believe some London newspapers, Buckingham Palace is to appoint a “diversity tsar” to modernise the Royal Family. I doubt it.

The last Tsar, Nicholas II, was a member of Queen Victoria's extended family, horribly murdered with his wife and children in 1918.

Somehow, I can't see the Windsors having any sort of tsar on the premises. The Guardian hedges its bets by referring to the new appointment as a diversity “chief.”

But we live in sensitive times. Expect a formal complaint from the Sioux Nation.