Tales Of The City: So just how far would the foolish Tory who doctored an election photo have gone?

If awards for political cheek were handed out at election time, Mr Ed Matts would be weighed down with the things. Mr Matts is the prospective Tory candidate for Dorset South who has been hauled over the coals for tampering with a photograph of himself and Ann Widdecombe holding placards.

If awards for political cheek were handed out at election time, Mr Ed Matts would be weighed down with the things. Mr Matts is the prospective Tory candidate for Dorset South who has been hauled over the coals for tampering with a photograph of himself and Ann Widdecombe holding placards.

Mr Matts - a smug-looking individual, like Niles Crane in Frasier - sees nothing wrong with doctoring a picture so as to excise people from the background and change the message on the placards he and Ms Widdecombe are holding. Did no memory of his European history lessons light a guttering match in the back of his head? Did no echo of the words "Josef" and "Stalin" whisper in his ear? Did he think he could enlist the feisty Ann W to any campaign he chose to support by rewriting the words on the placard they carried?

He is fantastically unbothered by it all, calling it "a foolish mistake" (like, you know, backing Bindaree in the Grand National) and explaining that "being involved in an individual asylum case is not inconsistent with the Conservative view that Britain's asylum system is in urgent need of attention". So that's all right then. Why doesn't he imprint on Ann Widdecombe's placard the words "Shove Off Gypsy Scum" or "Put Thousands More People In Jail", since they're also perfectly consistent with Conservative views? It's quite possible the former shadow home secretary shares these views, so you needn't go to the trouble of asking if she minds. Actually, tell you what, Ed, why not remove Ms Widdecombe's head from the photograph completely, and superimpose that of the newly-popular Duchess of Cornwall onto her body, and on the placard put, oh I don't know, "Compulsory HIV Checks for Immigrants Now," or perhaps just "Vote Conservative"?

There was a time when Coca-Cola ran adverts showing Queen Victoria enjoying a tumbler of the fizzy pick-me-up, borne on a silver salver by a footman. They were, you'll be amazed to learn, mock-ups and fakes. They didn't ask her permission, but she might have shared the view that it was quite nice. There are all kinds of precedents for monkeying around with historical data or adjusting photographs to suggest something that didn't take place. The most recent involved one Piers Morgan. I seem to recall he was fired shortly afterwards.

Is it a bird...?

Is there something in the committee-room water supply that makes local councils unusually fearful? Council officials in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk have voted to ban hanging baskets in the city centre in case they might fall off, bean a pedestrian and plunge the town into compensation-debt hell. Tree swings have been banned in Hampshire, pancake races in Slough and games of conkers (without special goggles) in Cumbria.

Now some church locals called the Agreed Syllabus Conference have dropped all mention of the Holy Ghost from its liturgy, as it might upset unusually nervous children and fill them with images of white sheets and clanking chains. They're not keen on teaching transubstantiation either, lest children fear they're being led into cannibalism and blood-drinking mayhem.

Speaking as a cradle Catholic, I was always puzzled by the role of the Holy Ghost, how he fitted into the Trinity alongside God the Father and God the Son (was he a kind of sleeping partner?) but I wasn't concerned that he was a spooky ghost. I was concerned because he was a bird. I couldn't see how he fitted into the three-persons-in-One equation. The Trinity is held up before bright Catholic children as the final mystery that only gifted and zealous believers will finally understand after years of study.

To the blasphemously disposed, the trio of Father, Son and Ghost sounded like one of those species-crossing families in the movies - Tarzan, Jane and Cheetah, say. There seemed something profoundly counter-intuitive about the Throne of Heaven being occupied by an elderly greybeard (Father) with a feisty, thirty-something rabble-rouser (the Son) brooding jealously on the next throne and a dove flapping overhead, with all three equally powerful, indeed interchangeable figures. I was pleased to discover James Joyce shared my puzzlement, and wrote, in Ulysses, a French limerick about "un jeune homme de Dijon" who was horribly confused by réligion, especially by the difference between "le père et le fils et le pigeon".

Meter madness

I promise not to bang on about parking fines in London any more after this, but my sad tale last week, about being clamped in Soho for putting £2 in a meter to top up the parking-time from 15 to 45 minutes, has spawned some interesting inquiries.

Like the one from Ms Kennedy of NW5 who parked just off Charing Cross Road, bought a 50p ticket and stuck it on her car until she could find more change, then bought a new ticket (for half an hour's parking) and put that on her car, replacing the first one. Returning from the shops, she found her car marked for clamping. The parking attendant explained she should have made use of the "five minutes' grace" facility in which you can leave your car unticketed while you seek out the relevant change.

Well, that sounded very kind of the council - but unfortunately, it's a complete fabrication. Talk to the people at Westminster City Hall, and you'll get it, both barrels, chapter and verse: if you park on a meter without having the right money, you're dead. You should have driven round the capital until you found a convenient NCP. Otherwise, tough. So now you know. Hard to argue, isn't it, with this level of municipal charm?