Husbands and wives

OKAY, Michelle Obama was stunning, Sarah Brown played a blinder and all the other wives at the G20 summit looked... well... very wifely. But why were they there at all?

Their husbands were there to work. It’s what they do. The G20 summit was just an extension of their offices in an extension of their working day. Why should they take their wives to work with them?

Most men don’t. The dentist, the doctor, the road sweeper, teacher, tailor, soldier, spy... you don’t expect to see them at work with a wife in tow, all dressed up and waiting to be entertained.

Many of those G20 wives have pretty high-powered jobs themselves. They all certainly have lives of their own. So why were they trailing around after their husbands like political Wags with nothing better to do?

Even if they’d come for the trip, I expect they could have entertained themselves without being organised en masse. Poor Sarah Brown, having to run a sort of upmarket hen party without even copious amounts of booze to make it bearable. It was all very strange, a throwback to another era.

We’ve always known that politicians live on a different planet from the rest of us.

Now it seems they live in a different century too.

Idea banded about

KEEP Britain Tidy is urging the public to pick up the rubber bands abandoned by postmen and send them back to the Royal Mail in protest against the litter they cause. Actually, when I find rubber bands dropped by the postmen, I keep them. Always useful.

If Keep Britain Tidy really want to clean up our streets, surely it would be better to suggest posting discarded burger trays, pizza boxes and cardboard buckets back to the likes of McDonalds and KFC.

Unstamped, of course.

Fit for school

YOU know, really, that maybe the teachers have a point. Mary Bousted of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers has criticised parents for sending their children to school unable to talk, listen, sit still, dress themselves or eat properly, certainly not prepared to – heaven forbid – actually do what they’re told.

We’ve all known them. Not just the usual suspects. Very privileged children are just as likely to be spoilt, indulged and allowed to do what they like. Obnoxiousness knows no class barriers.

Neither does bad parenting. So stop being smug.

It’s bad enough trying to do a half decent job when you put the effort in. Impossible if you don’t.

I remember with a pang seeing two girls from a nursery taking the children out for a walk. Each girl had three toddlers on reins. The girls took little notice of their charges and talked to each other all the time.

They might just as well have been walking dogs.

Goodness knows what those children got from the walk, but it certainly wasn’t social skills.

Interesting to glance at some of the parenting chat rooms, where in among the many sensible, reasoned comments, there are plenty from whingeing mothers, declaring it’s not their fault and, anyway, they haven’t got time to read to their children. Well, for a start, they could get off the computer...

There are very few perfect parents – and wouldn’t it be scary if there were? There are very few perfect teachers. Most of us do the best we can. It also helps if we work together. It definitely helps if you don’t go along to the school and punch the teacher, as an increasing number of parents apparently do.

But the bottom line is still, if you want schools to teach your children properly, it always helps if your child is teachable.

And that is what parents are for.

What a difference a ray makes

SUNDAY morning, filling in time while on chauffeur duty, I walked along the splendid Deerness Valley walkway from Stanley Crook to Waterhouses and back. The sun shone, the birds sang and walkers, joggers, cyclists, horse riders all greeted each other happily or stopped for a chat, delighting in the sunshine. Our national character has been determined by our usually indifferent weather which encourages us to scuttle past, collar up, head down with no temptation to stop and linger and talk.

If the sun shone more often, surely we would be a different nation.

Fifi disappoints

BOB Geldof’s daughters have been such a disappointment to me. With their wonderfully daft names – Fifi Trixibelle and Peaches, right, – I had longed for them to grow up to be desperately serious and intense, for the sheer pleasure of hearing about Dame Fifi or Lady Chief Justice Peaches.

Now my hopes must rest on Jamie Oliver’s latest. I look forward to the day when she eventually takes over one of the high offices of government.

Chancellor Petal Blossom Rainbow has rather a nice sound to it, don’t you think?

What a great idea

BEING too loud or intrusive when using your mobile phone could soon land you in jail in India if their equivalent of the House of Lords has its way.

The Indians have decided that mobile phone users need to be educated in how to use their phones without annoying other people. If they can’t, shan’t or won’t – then they will be off to the slammer. Minus their phones, of course. Sounds good to me.

Let’s hope the law gets passed in India and works and then we could perhaps have the same law here. If only our jails were big enough.

Backchat

Dear Sharon,
I MUST concur with your view that every copy of an Alfred Wainwright book is his memorial. My Sixties’ set is still an indispensable accompaniment whenever I walk in the Lakes. Although they have recently been revised, barring the odd tree that has disappeared, the original guides are still as accurate as when they were written, and Wainwright’s knowledge and dry wit add an extra dimension to the walks.

John Heslop, Durham

Dear Sharon,
LIKE the Brown mantra of ‘prudence’, we really did save for independence in old age. Sadly, unlike MPs, we get none of the handouts and benefits offered because of that, yet many salaried MPs appear to live entirely off the taxpayers’ backs, which makes me wonder what exactly do they do with their very comfortable salaries.

I think it is their lack of shame for their greed that irks me most.

Shelagh Harnby, Stockton-on-Tees.

Dear Sharon,
HEAR hear on your views on MPs’ expenses. They are making fools of us and it has gone on long enough. When my parents moved to Newton Aycliffe in the late Fifties, they were allocated a local authority house because my father, a teacher, was considered an “essential worker”.

Let’s give MPs local authority houses too. They can choose to have council houses or flats provided, either in their constituency or in London.

If these were to be in some of the worst estates, it might help bring them down to earth a bit to realise some of the problems we ordinary mortals have to put up with.

Jean Johnson, Darlington.