SEVEN-year-old Poppy practises pole dancing and wants a boob job when she is old enough.

Her 50-year-old mother, Sarah, known as the Human Barbie, thinks there’s nothing wrong in that and anyone who dares criticise her parenting skills is a hypocrite.

Sarah Burge — she runs a swingers’ club — is one of the best arguments I know for making adults take out a licence to have children. Kids get a lot of stick nowadays. But in reality they aren’t much different from youngsters down the ages. It’s the parents that have changed for the worse.

There’s a bit of Kevin the Teenager in all young people. It’s the rebelliousness of difficult growing up years. I probably drove my parents wild playing Elvis’s Jailhouse Rock at full blast just because I knew how much my dad hated it.

And I readily confess to having supped my first pint shandy in a pub at the age of 16. It was no thrill, I assure you. Myself and a pal, throats like sandpaper after playing tennis on a steamy hot day, walloped our drinks down as fast as we could because we were terrified of getting caught.

But most of our youthful transgressions were pretty minor ones. We had parents we respected. We were taught manners and honesty, even if our tastes in music radically differed.

The vast majority of today’s young people are decent and responsible and rarely get the credit for it. But the sad fact is there is the other kind of youngster. Usually a carbon copy of his and her parents in their truculent attitude to the world at large. Because, make no mistake, that is where they learn their behaviour.

I wouldn’t want to be a teenager in today’s world. Yes, I wouldn’t mind getting up in the morning and feeling like a teenager. But actually being one? No fear.

Kids grow up far too fast. Poppy Burge, wearing her bikini top and six-inch heels as she swings round a pole, is destined never to have a proper childhood.

Nor are countless other youngsters who are forced to grow up before their time. Little adults in everything but life experience and the gradual development from a child to a teenager to an adult. We’ve got kids of 13 fathering babies and young girls in droves pushing prams and pushchairs round shopping centres at an age when they ought to be doing exams.

Round our way there’s a relatively small group of youngsters who perpetually cause problems with drinking and vandalism, especially at weekends.

Don’t tell me their parents are unaware that they are out causing trouble. They must come home stinking of booze. Of course the parents may be out boozing themselves and presumably don’t care what their offspring get up to at night.

Parental responsibility no longer matters in many families. More’s the pity. Of course it’s not feasible, but wouldn’t it be interesting if they did have to have a licence before having children and knew that, if their kids did wrong, they would be held properly to account?

STAN WASN’T ONE OF THE GUILTY ONES

MY thanks to ardent football fans who have pointed out, with reference to my note last week about England’s humbling defeat at the hands of the USA in the 1950 World Cup, that wizard of wing Stanley Matthews did not actually play in that tie.

Quite right. Matthews had been touring Canada with a group of international players and was late arriving at the England team camp. The side had already won its first match and a high handed FA official took it upon himself to not select Matthews for the game against the USA.

There were no substitutes in those days and thus Matthews had to sit and suffer the ignominy of defeat along with the other reserves.

Only one American newspaper carried a report of the match and, in this country, some of the papers thought the scoreline was a mistake and stated that England had won either 10-0 or 10-1.

Stanley Matthews is, of course, best remembered for his part in Blackpool’s FA Cup win over Bolton. I wonder what he would think of the Blackpool side that recently won promotion to the Premiership?

What a great moment. I bet the big boys are steaming with anger that such a modest little team has broken into their exalted league. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Seasiders could defy all the odds and stay up next season? Well, the USA was 500-1 to beat England in 1950 and look what happened.

EGON HAD THEM ON TOAST

EGON Ronay, the man said to have done more to raise the quality of public food in Britain than anyone else in the past 60 years, has died at the age of 94.

Ronay never accepted a free dinner and nor did he shrink from taking to task many of our grottier eateries in his long war against gastronomic incompetence.

It was to his credit that he didn’t just swan around in the posh places like many of today’s food critics. He ate and drank where you and I eat and drink.

Cumbria’s tourism industry has worked hard in recent years to improve standards of accommodation and cuisine. It’s a competitive world and people want value for their money.

Sadly, not all food outlets have followed the Egon Ronay creed. If you’ve got plenty of dosh you can eat at one of the region’s celebrated restaurants. But standards for the average punter aren’t much higher than they were years ago.

It’s not sufficient to serve lunch on fancy rectangular plates and put prices up 25 per cent. while trotting out the same tired grub with grudging service.

Without naming names, I can think of a few places in the Lake District that would have Ronay fuming as he looks down from the great dining room in the sky. We were in one place not long ago where they had roast and boiled potatoes on the counter and declined to give my friend a roast potato with Sunday lunch because it was “against the rules”.

Yes, standards at the top end have improved. But there’s a grey middle area that could do a lot better. People just want a good, reasonably priced meal without the fancy trimmings. In some establishments that is still too much to ask.

TRY TELLING CHURCHILL

REGULAR readers of this column will know that I am not in the least a cynic.

So when golfer Colin Montgomerie won his appeal against a speeding conviction in Cumbria I readily accept that it had nothing to do with his ability to hire the finest lawyers, and that Joe Public would have enjoyed similar good fortune had he or she come up before the beak for a similar matter.

Judge Peter Hughes QC, who sat in judgement on the case at Carlisle Crown Court, said it would be wrong for people to conclude that there is one law for the rich and another for everybody else. Oh yes, and the Churchill dog is on going on holiday to Balmoral with Her Majesty this summer.

Montgomerie had been convicted of driving his BMW at 37mph in a 30mph zone on the A69 near Carlisle last November. His case was that the speed gun reading was inaccurate. He’s not the first high profile person to hire legal big guns to contest a road traffic case successfully and I can’t dispute his right to have the charge thrown out if that’s what the evidence showed. But it’s not the charge, it’s the ability for all of us to have equal chance that matters.

Judge Hughes said: “Any perception that there is one law for those with the ability to dispute the evidence and another for everybody else would be wrong.” As I say, try telling that one to Churchill.