Without in any way wishing to diminish the excellent work of James Brindley School I spotted Coun Les Lawrence, Birmingham City Council's cabinet member for children, young people and families - didn't we used to call them education chairmen? - telling readers of the Birmingham Mail about how a new status and grant for the school "creates a firm link between standards and the inclusion agenda".

I asume it means something . . . somewhere . . .

I see the annual pancake race at Ripon has had to be cancelled this year after the jobsworths of the local council, aided by those bundles of fun from health and safety, decided to have a meddle.

First the organisers were told to pay £250 to close a road then the elves wanted risk assessment forms, medical staff on hand and all manner of bureaucracy completed before any pancake was tossed.

No doubt whoever rang the cathedral's 15th century pancake bell had to wear earplugs and mittens as well just in case. The cathedral is involved, by the way, because pancake day, Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, is a Christian festival to mark the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday.

I shudder to think how the poor people of Ripon have managed without such help and concern for the past 600 years.

Just to prove I am not moaning all the time, I was on the Clinique stand in House of Fraser in Sutton Coldfield last week wearing my best frock - which, before you get the wrong idea, was to promote Aladdin, a panto I am in from Wednesday at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School.

While I was there, happily disrupting the place, all the ladies on every perfume stand were brilliant and great fun to work with.

I did notice though that customers do not seem too keen to buy from a department happily slapping make up on a bloke in a dress - unless of course they were rushing off to bring their husbands in to try the new service.

Why is it people feel the urge to walk around when they use a mobile phone?

Is it the mobile in the name that confuses them? And why do they have to get up from their desk for privacy or to avoid disturbing their colleagues or because they have worms or whataver and stand by your desk bellowing down the phone and pretending you are not there?

Do they know how painful it is to have a phone surgically removed I wonder?

Whoever is in charge of the The National Secular Society really should get out more.

It seems they have reported The Scout Association to the Equality and Human Rights Commission for refusing to take To do my duty to God out of the pledge made by new scouts since Baden Powell first donned his woggle a hundred years or so ago.

It forces non-believers to lie apparently although I suspect you would be hard pressed to find any teenager who has lost a nanosecond's sleep over it.

Ignoring the fact that most scout troops are attached to churches with church parade a regular feature, if the NSS really do have concerns about a youth movement for non-believers they could always get up off their backsides and start their own with whatever pledge they like, I am sure no one will stop them.

Otherwise we might just start to think they are much happier sitting on a high horse meddling with something that really has nothing to do with them in the hope of a bit of cheap publicity.

What is it with all this celebrity malarkey? Is it just me or do most people have slightly more interest in watching puddles dry than seeing pictures of minor singers, actors, soap stars and the like going out for a newspaper or shopping in Waitrose . . . or, put another way, doing the ordinary everyday things that any normal person would do.

Bit patronising of us really isn't it? You mean TV stars know how to work a supermarket trolley as well? And they can buy a newspaper on their own,without any help? Aren't they clever!

This country is obsessed with celebrity - a term which covers anyone who has ever been on TV, or, let's be honest, even near anyone who has been on TV - and that includes any of the shopping channels.

There are so many celebrities thesedays we must be getting close to I'm known by someone other than my mum,get me out of here.

I make no bones about blaming my own profession, the media, for feeding this obsession either. They are happily chucking buns in the cage at every opportunity. It is cheap, easy copy and pictures to fill pages and screens at minimal effort and cost - a management dream. The old Fourth Estate was sold off for development years ago.

What poked this particular bed of embers into flame was the news that Andrew Lloyd Webber, who seems to be picking his West End leads through televised karaoke contests these days, has now found a new wheeze.

Find a new Maria, do a deal with Channel 4 and bung her in Hollyoaks for four months as a wannabe West End star who eventually gets a chance to audition for . . . wait for it . . . Andrew Lloyd Webber. You would never believe it but she then gets the role she got in reality months ago.

It blurs reality and fiction says the producer - and makes money for all concerned. The saddest thing of all is that a significant number of those taking out bank loans to buy a couple of tickets for the West End show will go there believing she really is a Hollyoaks star who got the role in an audition in a soap they already think is real life - some sort of long running documentary. The worrying bit is that they are also allowed to vote.

Just had to shell out £1.16 for excess postage on a late birthday card we didn't really want because it was a staggering centimetre wider than the permitted width for a letter.

As it only had a second class stamp it was 16 pence light. At least I assume it was a stamp and not a description of what has become of our postal service under Adam "why should I care I am on £1.25 million a year plus bonuses" Crozier - another Scot gaining some sort of revenge on the English by the way.

The other £1, the handling fee, presumably helps to pay for an army if men with rulers delving though postbags measuring miscreant mail.

Some of us are old enough to remember the days when a letter posted in the morning to an address in the same town might well be delivered that afternoon.

For the benefit of younger readers there used to be at least two deliveries a day

How have we managed to get to the stage where anyone with any pretentions to be management - whatever that is - feels the need to invent their own language with words that flow across the ear like bricks dropping on glass.

English is a perfectly good language which has managed for quite some centuries now to cover just about every situation yet we now have a generation of suits, male and female, with the literary ability of DHS pamphlets, who are either unable to cope with the language of Shakespeare or the King James I Bible or, even more frightening, think they can improve on it.