Too much! Too much!

Well, we all know about that, don’t we? Numbing uncertainty is what freezes me to the spot every time I go shopping.

A quick look at Tesco’s online shopping site reveals that they sell 210 different shampoos. Not to mention 35 different sorts of baked beans and 44 washing powders.

Marks & Spencer sell 223 different trousers for women. Amazing. And you still can’t find anything that really fits...

Currys have 146 different televisions and 66 different microwaves.

Even a straightforward cup of coffee now can take half an hour to order by the time they’ve gone through all the options.

And that’s just the easy things.

We choose our partners for life, yet divorce rates rocket, while arranged marriages where the partners had only limited choice, often thrive. So how good is choice?

Previous generations left school and went to work where their parents told them. No messing. They had no choice. No career fairs, advice, consultation or agonising. And the contentment quotient was probably the same as today’s.

Clothes, wine, food, careers, universities, husbands, partners, gas , electricity – every aspect of our dayto- day lives requires us to make endless decisions.

And do they make us happier?

Probably not. The greater the choice, the more nervous we get about the choices we’ve made – or haven’t made. Maybe if I’d been an archaeologist instead of a journalist...

Or even if it’s only about shampoo.

Maybe if I’d chosen the one with Added Volume instead of For Coloured Hair, that too might have changed my life...

But now we are becoming wary of choice.

As the major supermarket grow to the size of small towns, customers are increasingly flocking to the likes of Lidl and Aldi. And it’s not just because the prices are low.

It’s because the choice is limited.

One sort of toothpaste, two types of coffee, one sort of baked beans. You can whiz round the entire store in the time it takes to choose a yoghurt in Tesco (plain, fruit, organic, sugarfree, low-fat, creamy, with statins, Greek, Welsh, English, French, German, set, runny, with corners, crispy bits or no bits at all, all in about 500 flavours.) And if when you get home, anyone complains there are no arguments.

You can just say “That’s all they had”.

Choose to have no choice.

Job done. Stress lifted. Life simpler.

THE new US Senator for the state of Massachusetts, Scott Brown, is happy to admit that when he was a student he posed naked for a magazine centrefold, his modesty protected by little more than a staple and a smile.

I was trying to think if any of our homegrown senior politicians could ever have done the same....

I know, I know. Sorry. You really don’t want to let that thought into your head, do you?

THANKS to Geoff Carr in Aycliffe, I’ve been watching out for McDonald’s ads. You know the ones, where they tell you how much you can get for a pound, otherwise known as a quid or a bob... A bob? What are they thinking of?

McDonald’s think that a bob was a pound. It was, of course a shilling or 5p in modern money.

McDonald’s clearly don’t have any grown-ups working in their advertising department. Or even anyone with the nous to do a bit of research. Goodness knows what they would make of a tanner, half a dollar, half a crown or a guinea...

On the other hand, somewhere in an old tin I have a few bob – old shilling pieces worth 5p each. If I took one into McDonald’s, do you think they’d give me a burger in exchange?

The feral generation

THE trouble is that we haven’t got a clue how many people live. The two Edlington brothers who brutalised two other boys had a home life that was beyond the comprehension of most of us. Both parents drunk, drugged and abusive, giving the children cannabis to make them sleep, living in squalor and constant violence.

Never mind naming the boys, it’s the parents who should be named and shamed.

But as any weary social worker will tell you, such families are not unusual. We hear of them only when something goes tragically wrong., but there are hundreds of other similar families, tottering on the edge of death and disaster, but whose lives are still tragedies. Especially for their children.

And it will get worse. We now know that children deprived of love and proper parenting in the first three years of their lives are damaged forever. By the time the system has caught up with them, it’s already too late. Abused children are more likely to become abusers. And so the cycle goes on, getting worse with each generation.

The feral kids we feared ten years ago are now parents themselves. What hope for their children? And for the rest of us?

Cheryl Cole

CHERYL COLE has said that she will take next year off to have a baby. Just like that.

I love her certainty that she can and will have a baby exactly when she wants.

Many women will tell her sadly that it’s not always that simple. But let’s hope that Cheryl doesn’t find that out for herself.

Backchat

Dear Sharon,
RE your article on pointless local authority waste of paper.

I was recently asked to complete a questionnaire regarding my use of our local library, to improve their service.

I quite happily ticked various boxes regarding my visits but then moved on to the “personal data”.

Now I can understand how my age and gender may influence my reading habits but when it asked for my religion and then my sexual orientation, I really could not see how that had any relevance.

I ended up throwing it in the bin and haranguing the poor librarian at my next visit. She did say they had not had many completed forms returned.

Sheila Swainston, by email.

Dear Sharon,
MO Mowlam was a remarkable person and when she was first elected was like a breath of fresh air in politics. But I do not think her decision to lie about her health was either safe or sensible, though as you say, her very condition might have impaired her judgment about it.

By all accounts her behaviour at the end of her time in Northern Ireland was eccentric. She could very easily have alienated the very people she was trying to bring together. It could all have ended very differently.

Had she been a surgeon or a bus driver entrusted with people’s lives, I do not think you would have applauded her deception. As Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, she was ultimately responsible for the lives of many more people.

Raymond Wilson, Stockton.