Apparently, if we are to believe the BBC news children must not be allowed to watch TV before the age of 3 or else they will suffer untold (well autism, shortsightedness to mention but 2) harm. Not that I can find reference to this report on the web! I use the TV in my bedroom as an alarm clock, hubby uses the real clock and gets up at some kind of unearthly middle of the night hour, and to be frank the BBC news I hear subliminally as I reach levels of consciousness is damaging my psychologically. Being the kind of person who likes to hear news as it is, I have always been a BBC type person, but just recently the Breakfast Programme has turned into a tabloid of the Sun or perhaps Daily Mail proportions. Each item is given a maximum of 2 minutes and many quite important sounding type stories are given all of about 30 seconds, but in that time you could be forgiven for worrying that you cannot eat anything, do anything, go anywhere or let your children do anything without something awful happening.

Mind you I was amused to hear that the government is now suggesting round the clock surgery to clear waiting times. The very idea of getting your routine hernia repair, or hip replacement at midnight sounds bizarre beyond belief. We have PCTs who are bankrupt telling NHS Trusts not to operate on their patients before April and suddenly it is a good idea to operate in the dead of night. How much would it cost your average cash strapped hospital to run services in this way, and how many doctors would be left to cover the day time hours? Puts a new perspective on ‘day’ cases which would be come ‘night’ ones and if the hospital was in London would save money for all by avoiding congestion charges! Maybe the idea has mileage after-all?