This provoked a frenzy of righteous indignation in Gloucestershire What do they know in London about cloth-making, they asked. We've always used teasels; you can't make proper cloth without teasels.Teasels, or their modern equivalents, have survived, so it looks as though in that case the government was wrong. But few would argue that the effort to raise standards and thus exports was misguided; and by pursuing common standards - or uniformity if you prefer - the bureaucrats of 17th-century London were helping to create the United Kingdom.Similar things happened in Philip II's Spain, or Richelieu's France. And in France and Spain today, on a certain level, they also resent the centralising, standardising influence of Brussels But Britain's resentment has an extra edge. It entered the European Community late, after others - foreigners - had laid the ground rules, and it did so more because it felt it had to than because it actively wanted to. For that reason, many British people are ready to believe almost anything, no matter how far-fetched and how often denied, about Europe.It helps, of course, that once in a while Brussels does go over the top.

For example, though all the rest of the myths above are just myths, there really is a maximum noise level for lawn-mowers.(Photograph omitted). WE MEDIA types don't hang around, you know. Last week London Transport announced that it was applying to have a byelaw forbidding queue-jumping abolished and before you could say room for one more on top the demise of the queue had been announced, analysed, done and dusted, another stop on the downward path of this once great nation of ours. A slight problem with it all is that London Transport is making the application because it believes the queue is so firmly bedded in the British psyche that there is no need to enforce it. Robin Pulford, an LT spokesman, claims that 99.9 per cent of his queues work without problems. Strolling, as I do, in the City and down Regent Street last week, I had to agree with him.

Orderly queues everywhere, except, curiously, at one bus stop in Regent Street, for the Number 12, where people barged in from all directions, including a silver-haired man of a certain age whose late run from outside the Angus Steak House would not have disgraced a running back for the Cincinnati Bengals. Curious because the Number 12 goes to Peckham, an area pinpointed as problematical by Mr Pulford only hours before More work is needed on this. Gill Mackenzie, secretary of the Polite Society, reports no especial problems with queues, beyond a little local difficulty recently in Oxford with foreign students in fish and chip shops. Re unruly foreigners, Mr Pulford was challenged by German television, which took exception to some slightly incautious remarks he made about 'the worst queuers in the world' during a radio interview.

But Mr Pulford was not to be outfaced, recounting a disturbing personal experience at a German bus stop in the Sixties when a little old lady was trampled in the scramble Climbdown of German television, LT triumphant. The Polite Society, by the way, has decreed 7 October National Day of Courtesy, which prompts the Captain to send his compliments to Beeston's, the Suffolk bus company: could you possibly persuade your drivers that vigorous vertical gestures with a cupped hand are not in the best traditions of public service? Thank you LADY Thatcher, 68, bit of a plain talker Last week, South Africa. Before that, this, loudly, at a reception abroad where she spotted the noble figure of Ferdinand Mount, her former policy adviser, now editor of the Times Literary Supplement: 'Ferdie, what are we going to do about the Royal Family? They're so stupid.' A FINE dresser, President Mandela Beautiful suits, splendidly conservative shirts and ties Savile Row? Jermyn Street? Not a bit of it. Nelson Mandela buys his suits, shirts and ties from Grays, of Johannesburg, the outfitters owned by his friend, Yussuf Furpee. The business was started by Mr Furpee's father; other clients include Chief Buthelezi. Mr Mandela takes a great interest in clothes, says Mr Furpee.