The shaming courage of Sabine

When she was just 12, she was kidnapped, drugged and chained by her neck in an underground cell. She was kept there for three months, thinking her parents had abandoned her. She was repeatedly raped by Marc Dutroux, who has admitted the offences, but has denied murdering four other little girls - including two eight-year-olds who were buried alive.

Sabine's evidence was so graphic, her experiences so horrendous, that two of the people in the court fainted. She is clearly a remarkable young lady. Even when she was Dutroux's prisoner, she kept a diary of what happened to her. She still had her school bag and books with her and she tried to keep up with her school work to keep her mind busy.

Two weeks after her release, she was back at school. And now, coolly and calmly, she has faced up to her tormentor in court and has said that she wanted to show Dutroux that he had not destroyed her.

Goodness knows what she went through and is probably still going through, but she is clearly determined to deal with it and seems, somehow, to have managed. Stress levels in the western world are soaring and we are apparently swallowing mountains of anti-depressants in a bid to help us cope with life. A life which, in all honesty, we must admit is probably more comfortable than ever in the history of the world, but which we somehow seem less equipped to deal with.

Then we read about what Sabine Dardenne endured and see how she coped with that. Puts things into perspective a bit, doesn't it?

DAFFODILS are cheery yellow flowers that tell us spring is here, so we plant them wherever we can - in our gardens, on roadsides, on greens and commons. Dandelions are also cheery yellow flowers that tell us spring is here, yet we spend a fortune and a lot of effort trying to get rid of them. When you look at them, a dandelion is not intrinsically uglier than a daffodil, so why all that hatred? Maybe if we spent as much time cultivating dandelions as we do trying to get rid of them we might look at them in a totally different light.

Not exactly everyone's idea of fun...

OPTICIAN Tracey Morris is a fun runner who started training four months ago, was the fastest British woman in the London Marathon at the weekend and has qualified for a place at the Athens Olympics. Which only goes to show, I fear, that her definition of a fun run is probably a bit different from yours and mine.

Why it's time to make voting matter

SO 16-year-olds aren't going to get the vote after all. Well yes, maybe they are too young, too immature, too politically unaware. But what about the rest of us? Few of us are really that much better informed.

Many of us are pretty hazy about politics, about which party makes which promises and fails to deliver, or even which level of government does what - and that's before the regional assembly sticks its oar in. It's all a bit confusing - which is probably why fewer of us are bothering to vote at all. Mind you, if we can be persuaded by some of those dire party political broadcasts, then we don't deserve the vote in the first place.

Maybe the answer is not to make the franchise wider but to narrow it down again, to make it something worth having. In olden days, it was just the prerogative of men, of course, but even they had to be property owners. You can see the logic - they just wanted decisions made by grown up, responsible people with a real financial stake in the country.

If a vote was something prized and special, then maybe we would value it more. In South Africa, where blacks were so long deprived of the vote, they had an over 80 per cent turn out in their elections.

So instead of lowering the voting age, maybe it's time to raise it again and see if it makes much difference. How about a vote for over-30s only?

Thank goodness

for 50s fashion

THE new look for next season is meant to be prim and proper, 50s and lady like. What a relief.

If it means we can go through the summer without having to look at pale and podgy midriffs wobbling dangerously over the stretch marks, it can only make life better. And that's even before we consider the septic pierced belly buttons.

£30 a week to stay on in school after 16 is clearly going to make a difference in some families, although giving the money direct to 16-year-olds is probably not going to do much to help the family budget as a whole.

The money will go only to those children in the poorest families, but will create problems for better off families too. For if £30 is deemed to be the going rate for 16-year-olds, then others in only marginally better off homes will start demanding their £30 too - and parents will be pressured to cough up.

But I am still baffled by the Government's logic. If education is so important that children have to be paid to stay on in school, why do they then have to pay so much to go to university?

Maybe they should just save that £30 a week towards their tuition fees.

MOST people would sell their computer passwords for a bar of chocolate, says new research. Computer passwords? Given the right circumstances and the right chocolate, I know people who would sell their souls.

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