We all accept that parents need as much help as they can get but what about carers, who don't choose their roles?

Children are not the only people who need looking after. Last week, both the Labour and Conservative leaders announced their plans to help families with childcare. Very laudable they are too. Of course working parents - and stay-at-home parents, too - need all the help they can get, physically and financially. But what about the other carers?

Also in the news last week were two tragic cases of carers who just couldn't cope any more. War hero Ken Baker, 82, is suffering from Alzheimer's. He has also had a colostomy operation for bowel cancer and his wife just couldn't go on. She brought him home from Spain and abandoned him in an Essex hospital.

Yes, it was an apparently callous thing to do. But who's to say what drove Barbara Baker to such extremes?

Meanwhile, Bill and Wendy Ainscow had spent 33 years coping with their daughter Lisa, who has Asperger's syndrome. Just when they thought they'd got her safely into a rehabilitation hospital, a psychiatrist decided she was well enough to be de-sectioned and sent her home again. Her parents couldn't cope. They took sleeping pills and walked into the sea in Tenerife, hoping to drown. Bill Ainscow did. Wendy was rescued and now has all the problems still to face, but this time alone.

And how many more Bills, Wendys and Barbaras are there?

In nearly every street in this country, there is a carer. A husband looking after a dying wife, devoted parents struggling to care for an adult with the mind of a child, or a befuddled old man being cared for by a wife who needs looking after herself. There are middle-aged women coping with teenagers, the menopause and a parent with dementia.

Some of them get some help some of the time. Most of them could do with a lot more. They could probably do with more money, more physical help, even a bit of tea and sympathy. At the very least, if they're still managing to work, they could do with understanding employers who would give them time off as and when needed.

For parents of small, healthy children, the juggling of work and home has an end. It's a problem that time will solve. And it's a happy problem. Most parents, after all, have chosen to have children, knowing what it would involve.

Not so for other carers, who have been dealt an unlucky card and had no choice in the matter. They can see the years stretching ahead with everything getting worse, not better. They're the ones who need the extra money each week, the extra help at the beginning and end of the day.

So when ministers and shadow ministers talk about help for parents, I cheer. But when they provide really useful help and support for the army of unsung carers, then I will cheer even louder.

Why there's nothing nicer than knitting

CATHERINE Zeta Jones apparently spends her time between takes on the film set knitting ponchos for Christmas presents. Great idea.

Not only will the presents prove far more valuable than something she'd just gone out and bought - if any of the recipients actually wear them - but sitting knitting is almost as good as meditation for inducing calm.

And the bonus is that the clicking of needles in the background could also have a nice soothing effect on other anxious actors.

Knitting is a great stress-buster. Maybe we should have needles and wool on the NHS.

Court on camera

TELEVISING court cases is probably inevitable. It's logical. The public is already allowed in. The press has long been able to report all the juicy details.

And there's the problem. As any tired old hack who has sat in the press box doing the crossword will tell you, a large part of any court case is mind-numbingly boring, bogged down in detail.

Very few barristers are like Rumpole or Kavanagah QC. And although I remember one dancing across the court trilling "The flowers that bloom in the spring...", it is precisely because he was a rare bit of entertainment in my otherwise deadly dull court reporting days.

Many of the arguments for and against televising trials were also used for televising Parliament. Remember, we were told that MPs would flock in to play up for the cameras.

Ah yes. So that's why we invariably see half a dozen of our finest, snoozing happily away on the empty benches.

Head after our

own hearts

A HEADTEACHER in Dundee has banned all mention of Christmas in her school until December 1.

Brilliant. Give that woman a medal.

Better still - put her in charge of radio, television and those silly people who choose the infuriating muzak played in shopping centres.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk

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