WELL, it's all right for Euan Blair. No wonder he was out campaigning with his parents over half term. He's not doing AS levels this week, unlike most of his Lower Sixth contemporaries who spent their week off locked in their bedrooms revising for exams which have lost their credibility even before the papers have been dished out.

Yes, I know, Euan goes to a state school. But, let's face it the London Oratory is not a state school like the state schools our children go to. And it wasn't Tony Blair who decided that the school wasn't doing the exams.

But it was his Government who decided that our kids should do them. And while headmasters, teachers, parents and especially students, groan and grumble under the weight of them, the Blairs go blithely on. Good luck to Euan - but it doesn't seem fair on the rest of them.

There is much talk of divides in this country - between rich and poor, black and white, North and South.

But the biggest divide is between the experts and the rest of us.

Politicians in chauffered cars don't have to battle with the transport system they've arranged . Architects don't have to live in houses where a so-called third bedroom is too small for a bed. Health ministers don't wait on trolleys in grubby hospitals. Supermarket bosses don't have to stand in the checkout queue where neither the woman in front, nor the checkout girl, nor the supervisor who took five minutes to come to the till, know how much small cauliflowers cost this week. Airline bosses don't spend hours in overcrowded airport lounges trying to keep small children amused when a plane is delayed, yet again.

And I bet call centre bosses never, ever, have to listen to a plinky plonky version of Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring fifteen times before they get through to the number they want.

The world is divided into Them and Us. Lucky Euan is One of Them and our lot are the ones doing exams.

JENNA Bush - twin daughter of President Dubya - has been in trouble for under-age drinking. My oh my, she's 19 years old and she wanted a beer.

It's easy for us, with our town centres full of drunken, fighting, vomiting 15-year-olds most Friday nights - to scoff at the strangely puritanical drink laws of most American states where you have to be 21 to get a drink.

On the other hand, maybe Americans aren't so daft after all. This is the country where 18-year-olds can stroll into a shop and buy a gun. So once they've bought their firearms, it's probably quite a good idea that they stay sober.

SO now we're in danger of losing Easter, with the possible re-organisation of the school year into six terms.

Well, Good Friday has already just about gone. It's pretty meaningless for most of the population. As is Epiphany. (Twelfth Night, in case you forgot).

And long before the Spring Bank Holiday we had another religious landmark at this time of year. But how many people noticed that last weekend it was Whitsun?

But whatever they do to the school terms, Easter - Sunday and Monday at least - will survive. For who's going to give up on the chance to pig out on all those chocolate eggs? Easter, like Christmas, provides the perfect opportunities for profit and greed. With a combination like that, it's bound to survive. Whatever they do to the school terms.

A NEW version of the children's classic The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, and the rest of the Narnia books is apparently going to play down the Christian themes. Even the lion Aslan - a Christ-like figure who brings redemption through his own sacrificial death and resurrection - could be marketed as a cuddly toy. What next? Oliver Twist without the workhouse? Jane Eyre without the mad wife in the attic? (Pretty un-pc if you think about it) War and Peace without the battles? The idea is to bring the books to the broadest possible audience. Otherwise known as the lowest common denominator.

But as the Narnia books have already sold more that 65 million copies in more than 30 different languages. How much broader do they think they can go?

And the new film of Lord of the Rings is to be sponsored by Burger King. Oh gosh, I can see it now "Woppers are Hobbit-forming."

FOR me it was Ray Davies of The Kinks and Mick Jagger of the Stones - teenage obsessions that, to be honest, I've never entirely outgrown. But puppy love is bad for you, says a new report. According to an American study, young girls who develop crushes on unattainable men are more likely to go on to develop depression in adult life. Well that's 99.9 per cent of us reaching for the Prozac then.

Little girls these days sigh after Robbie Williams or Lenardo di Caprio. Their grandmothers and great grandmothers day-dreamed about Clark Gable and Rudolph Valentino. Before cinema was invented, bookish girls yearned for Heathcliffe or Darcy or even Lord Byron.

And just think of all those Victorian misses who pined for the curate.

Developing crushes is a normal part of growing up, a sort of practice run for the real world until a teenage girl swops her dream ideal for a spotty, gawky, but much more available, real life boy.

It's a stage we go through and surely, the only problem occurs if we get stuck in it.

On the other hand, if Ray Davies would like my phone number...

BRITISH Airways stewardesses will share up to £3m compensation for having a pay cut when they became pregnant.

Is this really fair?

They're complaining because they no longer get the away from home allowance which boosted their pay. BA, quite sensibly one assumes, confines pregnant women to ground duties. In which case they're not actually away from home and so don't need the allowance. If BA had made them continue flying, no doubt they would have sued for that as well.

Pregnancy is not an unavoidable illness. It's a matter of choice. If they can't do the extra duties, then why should they be paid for them?

Next thing, no doubt, we'll have stewards suing because they have to travel. Or because they can't get pregnant. Or something equally daft. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, we campaigned for equality.

This isn't equality, it's plain old-fashioned greed and, ultimately, will do pregnant women no good at all.

Published: 06/06/2001