We've all had a good belly laugh at the amorous antics of John Prescott. But aren't we being just a tad hypocritical?

OH, you've got to laugh... There is always something ludicrously comic about other people's affairs. The devil is in the detail. Who can forget the description of David Mellor in his Chelsea shirt? Edwina Currie's comments about John Major's big blue underpants.? Prince Charles's phone call to Camilla? And much too much information about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky?

And now we have John Prescott as a sex god.

Well, as my old mother used to say, it's enough to make a cat laugh. Let alone a few million disillusioned voters.

The lovers might have thought they were part of some heroic, romantic love story, but find in the end they are just objects of ridicule and mockery. Very cheering. It's one of the most potent weapons society has for keeping people on the straight and narrow.

But what hypocrites we are.

It's a fair bet that at least half the people pontificating so pompously about the implications have had their moments of extra marital interest. If everyone who'd ever had an affair lost their job, there would be plenty of businesses - including newspapers and television companies - that would be struggling along on skeleton staff. It's not the morality of it all that's stirring us, it's the ludicrousness.

Meanwhile, behind the mockery and mirth, there are devastated families. They're not laughing.

And while we're distracted - not least by that amazing TV appearance of Prescott's mistress Tracey Temple. She was having an affair with the Deputy Prime Minister for goodness' sake, how did she think it would end? - there are other more important things to consider.

Prescott's actions, daft and distasteful though they were, had consequences merely for his mistress and their families.

The Home Secretary's failings, meanwhile, have left foreign criminals who should have been deported, still free in this country. He and his department have been incompetent, dangerously so. That is certainly no laughing matter.

Sexual shenanigans don't make a man useless at his job. Incompetence does. And we should be grown up enough to stop sniggering and tell the difference between the two.

OF course we felt sympathy with the angry nurses demonstrating about the latest spate of NHS redundancies. We all want as many nurses as possible in our hospitals, especially when we're the ones desperate for the pain killers or bed pans.

But as the angry delegates jeered and heckled Patricia Hewitt, it was hard not to think about the new "Dignity Nurses".

There are plans to have a Dignity Nurse in every hospital to ensure that old people especially are properly cared for. Too often, it seems, they are left neglected and unfed because too many nurses think of them as too old to be worth bothering about.

So now we will have one Dignity Nurse. But what about all the others?

If there are so many nurses who are incapable of treating their patients with basic dignity and kindness, maybe they're in the wrong job. In which case, maybe some redundancies may not be such bad news after all.

HOORAY for Keira Knightley. She gave the red silk dress she wore to the Oscars to Oxfam, who auctioned it on eBay for over £4,300 - a nice little chunk towards their African drought appeal and worth much more in publicity.

It's a nice gesture, and so obvious that it seems odd that she's the first to do it.

Trouble is, of course, is that many of the top actresses, who already earn squillions for doing their job, don't even buy their Oscar dresses, but are lent them by top designers desperate for the publicity.

Odd, isn't it, that the more easily you can afford to buy something the more likely you are to blag freebies.

Just ask Cherie Blair...

WOMEN work more hours than men, according to a new report, because they think they have to do more to justify their role in the workplace.

In all areas of work, smart, clever, hardworking women have made it to the top. We think this is equality.

No. When there are as many useless women in charge as there are useless men, or when women too can afford to be slackers, then that will be equality.

CHILDREN are suffering "loving neglect" because parents fail to set boundaries, a teachers' leader said this week. Basically, we're too soft.

We can't bear to see our children upset. Can't bear for them not to like us. Give in to tantrums and bribe our way out of bother. We'd rather be their friends than their parents. Oh, what wimps we are.

The result, says Mick Brookes of the National Association of Head Teachers is that children - even nice posh middle class children - come to school incapable of learning.

They are tired, grumpy and belligerent because they've been fed the wrong food, can do pretty much what they like and can stay up until all hours playing computer games or watching TV in their bedrooms. And we're talking primary schoolchildren here.

Meanwhile, Children's Laureate, award-winning author Jacqueline Wilson, has launched a campaign to get parents reading bedtime stories to their children again, instead of abandoning them alone to their story tapes or TVs.

You may, of course, not agree with Mick Brookes. You might think teachers are too busy blaming parents because it's the teachers who have lost control.

Well, here's a challenge. If you have a primary age child with their own TV in their bedroom, try taking it away for a week or two. Just out of interest. Double the test by reading them a story instead - just ten minutes, that's all.

After all, you can't lose. If Mick Brookes is wrong then you've proved your point and can rest easy with your conscience.

And if he's right... Well, just try it and see.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/ features/griffiths.html