When it's right to flash your cash

And all this for selling bookcases with silly names.

I don't for a moment begrudge Ingvar his money. After years of MFI furniture which always came with a built-in wobble, Ikea was a revelation. Our Billy bookcases have endured a lifetime of rough treatment and still stand sturdily in the boys' rooms.

It's what he does with his money that bothers me.

When the rest of us buy our lottery tickets we dream of another lifestyle, whether modest luxury or total excess. I've always veered to the total excess mode myself - much more fun. But even those who say, bafflingly, that "it won't change our lives," usually manage at least a posh holiday, a new car, a bit of a do.

Not Ingvar.

His only luxury is a small vineyard. Otherwise, he lives a life that the rest of us would find easy to recognise - he drives an 11-year-old car, gets cheap flight deals over the Internet, and does his own fruit and veg shopping at the market - waiting until the afternoon to get the cheapest deals.

Which, when you think about it, is grossly unfair - snatching bargains away from those who really need them. Ingvar says it is his duty not to acquire luxurious things because "this would incite others to follow suit".

Exactly. It's the thought - vain, we know - of a bit of luxury and comfort, first class travel and someone else to buy your fruit and veg for you, that keeps most of us at it, keeps our noses to the grindstone, our shoulders to the wheel, our fingers on the keyboard. The thought that one day...

And then Ingvar goes and spoils it all. It's enough to make you long for the oldstyle Greek shipping magnates with yachts the size of a street of houses, all fat cigars and vulgar diamonds and an utterly lavish lifestyle.

It is the duty of the seriously rich to be seen to be rich, to provide some entertainment for the rest of us.

To show my displeasure, I am boycotting Ikea. I shall never buy another bowl or bookcase there. Then Ingvar's profits will plummet to a mere £31.999999999bn.

That'll show him.

AT last! Blackpool is going to clean up its act. And about time too.

Yesterday a group of the town's businesses decided to outlaw some of the more sordid items routinely on sale in the town - obscene T-shirts, sex toys, objectionable inflatables, sadomasochism toys. Items that started out as a bit of bawdy fun but which have degenerated into something sleazy and unpleasant and best avoided.

It's finally dawned on the town that such stuff actually puts off far more people than it attracts. Now they are hoping to attract a string of casinos to the town and take it upmarket.

Blackpool. Upmarket?

I fear it will take a lot more to do that than just getting rid of the inflatable willies.

MICHAEL Temperley (below) was 15 when he died a horrendous death - locked in a skip by his friend who then set it on fire.

It's the sort of thing that gives parents nightmares. If that happened to our children, we think, we would want to hunt the killer down and personally tear him limb from limb.

Michael's parents were made of far nobler stuff. They actually wrote to the court with a plea of mercy, asking that their son's killer not be given a long sentence. Presumably, they didn't want another young life ruined.

Their generosity of spirit is humbling - and a truly honourable memorial to their son.

The abberation

of abortion

CAN we really be that stupid? Much fuss is being made about a film that shows, in close detail, the reality of an abortion.

But latest figures show that abortion rates are still rising, that one in three women in this country has had an abortion.

True, that is a slightly misleading statistic (a bit like the old joke about one in three women being Chinese - remember this the next time you see the Beverley Sisters) but it should make us stop and think.

It doesn't matter whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, what is deeply depressing is that women are increasingly relying on abortion as a means of contraception. This is positively primitive. The last society that did that was the old Communist Russia. A great example.

For us, abortion was always meant to be the last resort, reserved for the particularly foolish or unlucky, not just a matter of routine. It has never been as easy as it is now to get contraception. No appointments, no clinics, no pretend wedding ring necessary - just pick up the condoms at the supermarket where they arouse as much interest as a tin of beans going through the checkout.

So why aren't we doing it?

Maybe it's some deep-seated instinct. When we can have so much control over our bodies, when fewer of us are having babies at all and those that are, are having them later, maybe we still need to know that yes, we can have babies if we choose. Well if it is, this is a daft way of going about it. However easy, simple and straightforward an abortion might be, it will never be as simple and straightforward as not getting pregnant in the first place. Remember that next time you're in the supermarket.

IN a bid to do something about our nation of fatties, children's TV characters are no longer to be associated with unhealthy food.

Bad luck for the Teletubbies. So it's bye bye to pink custard and eh oh to a nice dish of broccoli.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk

/news/griffiths.html