STOP panicking and get a job - any job. It will do you more good than the wrong course at the wrong university. A level results are out tomorrow. Cue lots of pictures of beautiful young girls shrieking and leaping up and down clutching news of their brilliant grades.

What we won't see are those who failed or have done really badly They will have slunk away into a corner, away from the cameras and straight onto the phone to try to get a place through Clearing, to find the university places left over when all the successful candidates have claimed theirs.

They might be better off not bothering.

True, there are people who find places through the Clearing process and go on to enjoy their course, do well and are a great success in life. But there are many others who grab at a course - any course - and spend many years and a lot of money regretting it. A little more thought and a lot less panic might work wonders.

The fuss about results is out of control. The panic about getting places utterly daft. Pages and pages of newspapers, acres of websites will be covered with details of unfilled places, whipping up a national frenzy, pressurising people into finding a place, any place, whether or not it's the right one.

Much of the panic is fostered by the universities. Remember - they need students even more than students need courses.

It's like an academic end-of-season sale with courses originally asking for A level grades of BBC now on offer for grades DEE - if you're quick. And people fall for it. Especially miserable 18-year-olds who feel like failures when all their friends are sailing off to uni.

But we know what happens at sales, don't we? We rush in and buy something we think is a bargain. We don't have time to think whether it's right for us or not because someone else might snatch it up. Then we get our bargain home and realise that if we 'd had time to think we would never have chosen it.

Well, the same goes for bargain basement degrees.

If a student is facing failure tomorrow then the best course of action is to get a job, any job. A good one might teach them something useful, might lead to a career and save them the cost of university - something well worth considering these days.

But even a bad job isn't wasted. It teaches them about the world of work, about turning up and getting on with people, about how many hours you have to work before you can have a good night out. Senior Son spent the best part of a year working in a pie factory. Might not have been as glamorous as a gap year swanning round Thailand but it probably taught him a lot more.

Above all, the world of work gives them time to grow up a bit, time to sort out what they really want to do. So when they apply to university next year it will be with a bit of thought and a bit of calm and a bit of forward planning - not in a mad panic-stricken scramble.

Hope you and yours get the results you need. But if not, it's really not the end of the world. Honest.

A TEENAGER who planned a party while his mother was away stored a secret cache of booze and food in the loft. When he and his friends went to get it down, they locked themselves in the loft and couldn't get out. Friends turned up for the party and, getting no reply, went away disappointed. Over a day later, the boys realised that they'd been trying to open the loft hatch the wrong way.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you know the Fates are on a mother's side.

THE Government is thinking of bringing back the deposit on pop bottles as a way of re-using resources and clearing up litter. Well, yes. But as it would take about 500 empty bottles for a decent pair of trainers, we think today's children won't be interested. Anyway, when are they let out on their own to hunt for them?

If the Department of the Environment is really keen to get our streets cleaner then maybe it should introduce a £1 deposit on pizza boxes - and a fiver on all McDonalds.

OF course, police must have as much publicity as possible in the hunt for the missing ten-year-olds Holly and Jessica.

But what is gained by repeatedly watching their parents trying to cope with the grief and worry? Will it really inspire anyone who knows anything to come forward who hasn't come forward already?

Or is it an intrusion too far and in danger of turning them into a real life soap opera for us to gawp at?

ON-the-spot fines for anti-social behaviour can only work if the yobs are honest or police already know them. Even a load of drunks will be cunning enough to give false names and addresses. By the time the police have sorted that lot out it's going to take more time and effort than keeping them in the cells overnight and taking them before the magistrates.

Drunks don't have traceable number plates. Until we have compulsory identity cards, on-the-spot fines will be more trouble than they're worth.

When will it all be over?

THE football season is apparently about to start again.

Can someone tell me when it stopped?