PINK is not the enemy.

Low expectations are.

Professor Alice Roberts – the beaming, bouncy face of TV science and archaeology – said this week that we she would never give her daughter a princess party – for fear of emphasising girlie stereotypes.

She is, she says, “really aware of the pinkification of toys and clothes”.

Fair enough. Pink does seem to have become the only permissible colour for small girls and many sensible people live in fear that this princess culture might influence young girls’ future lives and careers.

But long ago didn’t Professor Roberts, right, have bright pink hair when she first appeared as a fairly humble digger in the background mud on Time Team? Didn’t seem to do her career ambitions much harm.

Alice Roberts makes a loose connection between pink princesses and the low number of girls studying physics.

Other studies have implied that giving small girls pretty pink dusters and irons will programme them to a life of domestic servitude.

Mmmm. I played with toy guns, Meccano and bows and arrows – and still do most of the cleaning and ironing in this house… Too many girls are perhaps discouraged from broadening their horizons out of traditonally “girlie” roles. But many are still breaking barriers in traditionally “male” careers – there are more women doctors, lawyers, engineers and scientists than ever before.

And I bet most of them wore a lot of pink when they were little….

WHEN American whizz kid investor Mohamed El-Erian had a note from his ten year old daughter listing the 22 important occasions in her life he’d missed – first day at school, first soccer match, PTA, concerts – he jacked in his more than full-time job and went part-time with a portfolio of smaller jobs so that he really could spend more time with his family.

It’s what mothers have been doing for years. Now that fathers, too, realise they can’t have it all, maybe things will start to happen.

SHADOW Equalities Minister Gloria De Piero wants public sector employers to monitor the social backgrounds of job applicants – to ensure more working class people get a chance of jobs.

Worthy motives, utterly impossible to carry out. And starting from totally the wrong place. As is the constant bleat to lower standards for university entrance for children from state schools.

This week a mother was fined £500 for faking an address so her daughter was in the catchment area for a better school. Instead of punishing the mother, surely the education authorities should be in the dock for providing schools so hopeless that parents would lie to keep their children out of them.

Meanwhile, the Institute of Health Equity said that around half of all children starting school just aren’t ready for it – they don’t know how to sit still, listen to a story, dress themselves, pay attention or use the toilet. At four years old they are already behind their better off contemporaries and the gap will only get wider.

Somehow, we have to narrow the gap right there. If we put more money, effort, resources and care into the very early years and then brought our state schools up to scratch we wouldn’t need special allowances at university or job selection – because there would be precious little difference in standards.

PRINCE Harry has his initials made out in tiny brass tacks on the soles of his £1,500 handmade shoes.

Isn’t that sweet? Like personalised number plates only better. And at least they’re not diamonds. You can’t call him extravagant.