RESPONSIBILITY is a quality distinctly lacking from modern life.

SOME jobs I just wouldn’t have at any price. I admire those who do them, but they are definitely on my “must avoid” list.

HOW different might things have turned out for Fiona Pilkington and her daughter if they had just had someone from the police or local council to talk to face to face?

FANCY it? There’s a nice little earner going spare at £35 grand a year as a “worklessness co-ordinator” with one local authority in Yorkshire.

WHEN Esther Rantzen says she has serious doubts then you know it must be flawed. Nobody can question Esther’s prioritisation of child protection through her role in the establishment of Childline, and of course the vast majority of ordinary, decent folk believe that we do have a duty to look after the most vulnerable in society.

PEOPLE can’t go anywhere these days without a drink in their hand. We have become a nation of habitual boozers and the social effects are at times appalling.

AS another Cumbrian wind farm inquiry looms next week over plans for nine turbines, each 102 metres high, near Berrier, I can’t help thinking that the “green” message would have got itself across to locals more effectively had developers not been so hard-nosed and arrogant.

DO we need happy endings? Yes, we do. There’s enough doom and gloom in the world these days without inflicting it on children via their story books. That’s assuming kids still read and are read to by parents any more.

WE can take it that media personality Janet Street-Porter did not enjoy her “staycation” this summer. She claims to have had a rotten experience all round, although I suspect we can also take it that Miss Street-Porter might be rather more demanding than your average holiday at home punter.

IT’S the most tragic and futile waste of all. The waste of young lives like those seen recently in the television documentary The Trouble With Girls, which followed the stories of three 16-year-old girls on a Rochdale council estate as they faced up to adult problems. During 12 months of filming there were three pregnancies.