Rhodes on plastic pollution, ruinous roads and that scene with Mr Darcy that simply never happened

Some of the London newspapers have raised a tax issue I first noted a couple of years ago. It is that as electric cars become more popular, the Government will lose billions in the tax and duty we currently pay on petrol and diesel. How on earth can Whitehall fill this huge black hole in the nation's finances?

One solution, putting a special tax on the sale price of electric cars, may seem fair but could risk stalling the Government's most sacred project, the dash toward zero emissions. So instead, Whitehall is working on plans for a national network of pay-as-you-drive toll roads, enforced by onboard computers and satellite technology. Behold, the irony. The more clean, green electric cars appear on the roads, the more we will all have to pay to drive anywhere. It is, as a reader described it, “like slapping a tax on people who stop paying tobacco duty when they give up smoking”. Couldn't have put it better.

Reporting on a new exhibition of costumes from the BBC's iconic 1995 production of Pride and Prejudice, the Guardian focuses on Mr Darcy's shirt and declares: “It is one of the most famous scenes in British television history: Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy emerges dripping from a lake to bump into Jennifer Ehle’s Elizabeth Bennet.” Nonsense.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least in this column, that Darcy does no such thing. In the Beeb version of Jane Austen's romance, we see Darcy diving into the lake and we see him walking wet-shirted later. But the dripping/emerging scene is fake memory. People think they remember it but it never happened.

The Daily Mail paints a grim picture of inflation forcing living standards down to levels “not seen for 70 years”. It illustrates this apocalyptic forecast with black-and-white images of the 1950s. Behold the appalling depravity of whole families sitting down to a meal together. It must have been a ghastly decade with meals of boiled mince, nothing on telly except Muffin, and the nightly fight for the last spoonful of Virol. Yet the strange thing is that many people look back on the 1950s with great fondness. You'd think they'd never had it so good.

Virol? It was a food supplement based on malt extract and bone marrow. The taste was best described as unforgettable.