Bellend Sebastian

In the sense that today's state pensions are being paid by the tax and NI of the current workforce. They're not paid into a pot to be drawn on like most work/private pensions. Hence my flippant/provocative comment about us needing more working immigrants

I am all too aware of this and to address it I propose that at that point they all be transported to Van Diemen's Land. Too quickly do we reject the use of 19th century solutions for 21st century problems

What we need is lots of lovely immigrants of working age

If it qualified me to eat Welsh Cakes all year round but pass on the leeks, then no problem

It takes hours in the make up chair to make Gary Lineker look like that

Letitia Dean = Tim Roth

Katie off 'I Can Cook' in the £1.5 million plus bracket. Amazing

Blimey, not only is The One Show's Alex Jones played by a woman, it's a woman getting paid over £400 grand! I could be Alex Jones for a fraction of that

That the brand of cat food I've fed my cat for nearly 17 years actually kills cats, according to a visitor today who I expect may be completely mad

That would have been unpatriotic

In fairness, when I was looking at it, there were more voices of encouragement from those in the profession than there were folk trying to put me off. I got the impression that a lot depends on a few factors, like at what stage of your teaching career you're at. It's certainly very hard work to start with, but then you get on top of it and if you're lucky enjoy a period of career progression. The most negative people I've spoken to are those who've been doing it for quite a long time, have gotten fed up of the constant changes and are just knackered. I've also spoken to some who still love it after 20 years plus, but they seem to be people that have got winging it down to a fine art, and cheerily acknowledge that if you did everything that's theoretically expected of you, you'd be broken. Another big thing is the individual school - I did my teaching experience in a school where the head was pretty much revered and whilst expecting a lot from his staff was known for being very supportive of them. I've also heard about schools where teachers have effectively been bullied out of positions for supposedly flimsy reasons

My cat's got cancer so that's helped the local wildlife no end by taking the edge off her already shite hunting prowess

If things had panned out differently I'd now be in the process of trying to get myself on a SCITT course, having not long got my week's classroom experience to get the one remaining box ticked for me to satisfy the entry criteria. Being in the classroom was great, but although I got a lot of encouragement from both folk on the course and newly qualified teachers that had been through it, everyone kept saying how hard work it was. I kept telling myself that I'm no stranger to graft and all, but when I came to research what it actually meant in practice, I basically had to say 'f*** that'. I therefore remain in my current position, where the odds on me murdering my colleagues before turning the gun on myself grow a tiny bit shorter with every day that passes

Well to be honest my objections are a bit vague. There's presumably an issue with second hand smoke as if I can smell it from yards away the kid in their care must be breathing in at least some of it. I think I'm more worried about the casual normalisation of something that isn't yet generally accepted, and a bit irritated at what I see as naivety. Yes, you may not get arrested, but you'll get judged by people, and although that matters not a jot when it's busybodies like me, if it's, I dunno, your older kid's teacher, your boss, your social worker, your gran's mate, your mum or dad or whatever it just seems like there's a risk of making your life harder than it would otherwise be for little advantage. I expect this makes no sense at all. If they were smoking it in their own kitchen after they'd put their kid to bed I wouldn't give a toss. Don't disable the smoke alarm though, kids!

Not especially impressed by young couple walking away from the Western Park festival openly smoking joints. Wouldn't have minded as much if they weren't pushing a baby in a pram