We can’t afford retail therapy

YES, of course you’re worth it – but that doesn’t mean you can afford it. The bad news is that the number of women – especially young women – declared bankrupt has risen fourfold in six years.

Women still earn less than men, of course, which doesn’t help. It’s harder to keep a career on the fast track with children. More women work parttime.

And after divorce or a relationship breaks down, many are left to pick up the pieces. More single women are buying their own homes – hooray for independence, we like that – but massive mortgages make them very vulnerable when times get hard. And there are a lot of hard times around at the moment.

But we are, too, our own worst enemies. Ever since someone gleefully invented the phrase “retail therapy”, we’ve been out there, slapping down the plastic like there’s no tomorrow. “Because we’re worth it”, we say happily, shoving yet another receipt into our purse without looking at it too carefully or doing the sums or reading the small print.

Our role models, God help us, are people like Coleen Rooney, rarely seen without a clutch of upmarket carrier bags draped on her arm. The WAGs – no brighter or cleverer than the rest of us – always have a £1,000 handbag or £500 shoes, different every day. It’s easy to forget the small detail of the millionaire footballing husband to pay for it all.

And the marketing men know an easy target when they see one. That’s us. Two of the biggest growth industries in the past 20 years have been in weddings and baby equipment. Weddings can easily cost £20,000 and when many brides are paying a chunk of it, that’s another step towards bankruptcy.

And babies. Remember when babies wore hand-me-downs and the cot, pram and highchair were passed around the family? Now it’s nothing to spend £400 on a buggy. Fine if you can afford it. But many of us can’t – but haven’t realised yet. Still there are foolish women who never do the sums, who lurch from pay day to pay day, with no idea of how much they have or haven’t got, who ignore those nasty letters from the bank and think it’s feminine and cute to be clueless about cash. Well it’s not.

Our grannies weren’t so daft. They usually ruled the family finances, with carefully hoarded amounts for the rent, the gas and the housekeeping.

They didn’t have much – but they knew to the penny exactly what they had. They were worth it too. It’s just that they never thought that entitled them to buy something they didn’t need with money they hadn’t got. And that’s why Granny never went bankrupt.

The dirty tricks department

AFTER the scandalous expenses, we now have the scandalous emails. If the Government cannot cling on to power with its policies, it will employ the dirty tricks department instead. I’ve always considered Gordon Brown a decent sort, son of the manse, integrity and all that. But after this latest fiasco – for which he has refused to apologise directly – I am somehow reminded of the old song...

‘Twas an evening in October, I’ll confess I wasn’t sober,
I was carting home a load with manly pride,
When my feet began to stutter and I fell into the gutter,
And a pig came up and lay down by my side.
Then I lay there in the gutter and my heart was all a-flutter,
Till a lady, passing by, did chance to say:
“You can tell a man that boozes by the company he chooses,”
Then the pig got up and slowly walked away.

Gordon Brown has chosen his company.

We are the ones who should walk away. Don’t you just wish we could get rid of the whole lot of them?

Dismantle the current corrupt, complicated and criminally complicated system of government, sweep it all aside?

Let’s get back to basics and put the Queen and Prince Philip back in charge. That would sort them out.

To be born English

READER John Heslop, from Durham, was browsing through a rack of cards when he came across one which said proudly: “To be born ENGLISH is to be born to wealth, power and privilege....the WEALTH of History, the POWER of Language and the PRIVILEGE of freedom.”

His first thought, he said, was that it was “something from the English brigade” – until he looked at the back “Made in Wales” it said. “So it must be tongue in cheek,” he assumed.

In the same series – made by a lady in my home county of Pembrokeshire – is another card which says: “To be born WELSH is be born privileged, not with a silver spoon in your mouth, but with MUSIC in your blood and POETRY in your soul.”

I know which I prefer...

A nice idea, but...

SO every teenager will have to do 50 hours of community work in Gordon Brown’s latest wizard wheeze. They will spend the time working with charities and vulnerable groups such as the elderly or disabled.

Well yes, for some it will be a useful and rewarding time. For those on the receiving end it could also be a bonus.

Extra help is always welcome. It could indeed teach new skills and foster new interests.

But then there are the sullen, lazy teenagers who don’t want to be there and will make that quite plain and who could do more harm than good.

Why should the vulnerable be on the receiving end of their unwilling sulkiness?

Many years ago one of my elderly aunts had her garden done by a group of young men on community service.

Chaos, not to mention the noise and the foul language. The supervisors weren’t much better than the lads doing the work and after they’d been, my aunt had to pay someone else to come and clean up the mess and get the garden right.

Community work is a great idea – but it needs a lot of thinking through.

And maybe the vulnerable are the last people who should be practised on.

Teachers, leave those bids alone

JUST when they’re beginning to get a lot of sympathy for the way in which they have to deal with badly behaved children and ever more Government interference, teachers at the NUT conference have demanded a four-day week and a ten per cent pay rise. Look, it’s not big, it’s not clever – especially in the middle of a recession.

Teachers still have a lot of lessons to learn.

Nice to see, Brucie

AMAZING Bruce Forsyth family picture in the papers last week. On Mother’s Day, Brucie played his own generation game and assembled his children by his three wives, grandchildren and great grandchildren for a day together. Fair enough. Lots of families do the same thing.

Except also present was his third wife, of course, and his first wife. His second wife, Anthea “give us a twirl”

Redfern, couldn’t make it – she was visiting her own mother, but rang to join in the fun.

When so many divorces end in bitter family rifts and unhealed great divides, the Forsyth togetherness is very cheering – and proves that maybe there is such a thing as a good divorce.

Berets are back

THE French have re-discovered the beret and are wearing their national headgear with pride.

Whether with the stripey jersey and string of onions too, I’m not sure. It makes you think wistfully of the days when the English were famous for bowler hats. In the days when you could trust the bankers. No chance of those coming back then.