Paranoia rules

Sunday school teachers, football coaches, parents who have a formal arrangement to give lifts to their children’s friends, will all need approval.

The aim is admirable. But utterly misguided. There has been such uproar that there might even be a rethink. But I wouldn’t hold your breath.

It just adds to the mistrustful, suspicious, paranoid attitude of modern society in which every adult is deemed to be a paedophile unless they have a certificate to prove otherwise.

It also means that we will no longer trust our own judgement and instincts about someone who’s possibly dodgy – or raise our children to do the same. The right piece of paper will be all we need and we will accept that in total confidence, forgetting that the most dangerous people are often the most cunning and devious.

Anyway, there are far better ways to keep children safe.

The number of children killed by strangers each year is usually around five.

Too many, of course, and each one an unimaginable tragedy, but a remarkably consistent number for many years.

Meanwhile, around 100 children a year, or a horrifying two each week – and that’s a very conservative estimate – are killed by their own parents or someone close to them, often their mother’s boyfriend.

And more than that again – around 130 children – are killed each year in road accidents.

So if we want to protect our children, there are more urgent ways of doing it than vetting every person who has the briefest of contact with them.

Instead of establishing all the bureaucratic nightmare of the Independent Safeguarding Authority – based in Darlington, incidentally – our money and effort would be much better spent in protecting those children we already know to be vulnerable.

And giving social workers the powers and the support to intervene.

Better still, improving safety on our roads and the standard of driving generally, would save the lives of more than 20 times as many children, not to mention reducing the numbers – currently 38,000 – who are injured on the roads each year In the real world, more drivers with advanced driving skills would make our children much safer than more drivers with an ISA certificate.

It would also help make us less paranoid.

So that rules that out, then.

IT’S not often I feel old, but sometimes I feel positively ancient, like one of the last baffled dinosaurs glumly roaming the earth when all its companions had been blown to kingdom come.

Ours was probably the last generation to have a thorough grounding in grammar. If you have just yawned dismissively, and think grammar’s unimportant, then I suggest you look at some of the messageboards on the internet, in which people are so incapable of conveying what they mean, that they often end up saying the opposite of what they intended – and get very abusive when people misunderstand them.

That’s not a language just changing and evolving – it’s one collapsing back into primeval grunts.

A colleague is increasingly annoyed by the prevalence “I was sat”

or “I was stood” – usages that have crept unchallenged even into posh newspapers that should know better.

And if you don’t know what’s wrong with that, then you’re probably under 50. And if you actually care, then you’re definitely over 50.

Remember this when communication is reduced to little more than grunts and threats and you’re sitting in the wilderness, unable to make yourself understood.

And all the dinosaurs who could have helped you have long since died out.

THIS weekend is the start of the Great Exodus. The motorways of Britain will be choked with cars weighed down by laptops, TV sets, duvets, mugs, clothes and even the occasional book as parents crisscross the country taking new students off to their new lives at university.

On return, their red-eyed mothers will stand in the unnaturally tidy bedrooms and miss their babies, wondering how they’ll cope.

Well, don’t get too misty-eyed, because they’ll soon be back again.

Reading week, Christmas, Easter, a mate’s party – there are always plenty of excuses for students to come home. Even after they’ve graduated, an awful lot of them keep boomeranging back for the odd week, month, year...

Just when you’ve got used to the peace and quiet, they’ll be back, causing chaos again. If you’re lucky...

If you’re ever tempted to get tearful because your son or daughter has left home for university, then think of those mothers whose children are in Afghanistan – and get a grip and count your blessings.

■ Sharon Griffiths’ new book The Lost Guide to Life and Love is out now. (Avon, £6.99)

If not a dad, then a favourite uncle?

ELTON John as a dad? Despite his well known... er... eccentricities, there are probably many who would make a much worse job of it.

However, even though he and his partner apparently fell in love with a toddler in a Ukrainian orphanage, they cannot adopt him. Too old, too gay and – in Ukraine – too single, say the authorities.

So no, Elton won’t be a daddy.

But he is well known for his kindness and generosity.

The people at the orphanage liked him. If he really cares about the orphans – rather than himself – he will no doubt find a way of giving them a better life.

He might not be a dad – but he could easily be a lot of needy children’s very favourite uncle.

Why spoil our fun?

FABIO Capello has spoken. The FA will not pay to fly the players’ wives and children over to South Africa for the World Cup next year.

A shame really. The ridiculous antics of the WAGS were always so much more entertaining than the football. Those clothes!

Those shoes! Those fake tans!

Those nights out!

Let’s hope they pay their own way, for the pleasure of seeing their husbands one day a week. And to provide the rest of us with a wonderful source of innocent merriment.

WAGS go on safari. I can hardly wait.

A valuable lesson

IN a much-needed bid to show children that meat does not grow in polystyrene trays on supermarket shelves, a school in Kent kept a small farm, including a sheep called Marcus, left. The children bottle fed and petted Marcus, teachers explained his purpose in life.

But when the time came for Marcus to fulfil his fate and become lamb chops, some of the parents apparently became hysterical and accused the headmistress of murder. One – Lord, help us! – is even threatening to sue the education authority for the distress caused to her child.

It’s not the children who need lessons about the food chain. The parents are in even more desperate need of education.

"I'm an old bag from Deptford"

FIRST of all the Duchess of Cornwall posed happily with a shopping bag emblazoned with “I’m an old bag from Deptford” and then she had a game of table tennis with a young lad – a proper game of table tennis, at which she beat him.

What a star! A sense of humour and a whiz at ping-pong.

A winning combination.

If she carries on like this, she’ll soon be a National Treasure.