REMEMBER the MPs’ expenses scandal? There was scarcely one of our humble representatives who didn’t have his/her nose deeply in the trough – or even a moat, to recall one of the most infamous examples.

That was 2009. Are our MPs contrite? Have they learned a lesson? They certainly have. They’re determined the expenses brouhaha won’t recur. But not necessarily the abuse of expenses, only our knowledge of it.

Under-reported amid last week’s Brexit shenanigans the Commons voted to make all investigations into MPs’ expenses anonymous. Their strong commitment to this shabby cause was demonstrated by the fact that within hours of the vote all details of current investigations were deleted from Parliament’s website.

To its credit, the Commons committee on standards opposed the secrecy, its chairman, Sir Kevin Barron, observing: “Today’s vote marks a backwards step in transparency.” But the MPs took it. Like their disregard for the outcome of the Brexit referendum – still battling as though Leave or Remain have yet to be decided, rather than working to implement the nation’s choice – it shows staggering indifference to the people who put them in power.

GOD preserve us from the political-correctness zealots. After students erased Rudyard Kipling’s If from a university building at Manchester, I re-read the poem, consistently voted Britain’s most popular, for evidence of the racism alleged by the students. Not a sign.

Okay, Kipling undeniably (loudly) banged the drum for Empire, but he does not deserve the disapprobation now heaped upon him. His Epitaphs of War includes this: “We were together since the war began./ He was my servant and the better man.” His poem Dane-Geld has some pertinent Brexit advice: “We never pay anyone Dane-geld, / No matter how trifling the cost; / For the end of that game is oppression and shame, / And the nation that pays it is lost.”

“My Boy Jack” is a heart-stopping lament for any soldier killed in war, and there are many simply lovely Kipling poems. Will Wimbledon, I wonder, follow the Manchester students’ example and erase those wonderful words from If about treating “those two imposters”, Triumph and Disaster, just the same, that confront every competitor stepping on to the courts?

THIRTY years of Countryfile. Each week it celebrates a different region. The programme’s popularity mirrors the heartening fact, confirmed by surveys, that, next to the NHS, the countryside is our most cherished asset. And yet what Countryfile never says is that if business interests so dictate, chances are the countryside will be sacrificed. The North York Moors is home to not one but two potash mines. A remote Scottish peninsula is to become Britain’s first Spaceport, while a second might be built in Snowdonia. Even the Lake District, featured in Countryfile’s opening titles, was threatened with eight zipwires across Thirlmere. Countryfile or no Countryfile, the priceless value of an unspoiled, tranquil, countryside to a largely urban population is still insufficiently realised.