The frog speaks

MATHS for beginners. Naughty, irresponsible Mr and Mrs Bloggs take their two children on holiday to Spain in term time. The school imposes a "fine" of £100 for each child. However, while the children are away, the school is closed for one day because the teachers are on strike. How much refund can Mr and Mrs Bloggs expect?

AND, please, spare us the old, old story about teachers feeling undervalued and demotivated. Over the past 40 years can anyone recall a time when the morale of teachers (or, for that matter, of nurses, firefighters and police officers) was not at rock-bottom? Some professions seem to take a pride in being permanently demoralised.

GOOD to see Kermit the frog entering the debate on Scottish independence (he supports the Union). My interview with the Muppets in a Birmingham hotel many years ago was a highlight of my dazzling career. I can report that Kermit is unfailingly polite and hospitable and is quite the most intelligent, thoughtful and articulate latex amphibian I have ever interviewed.

MISS Piggy, on the other hand, is a shameless hussy who flirts outrageously with reporters and hints that there is something improper going on with Kermit. I shall never forget, as Miss Piggy alleged the couple were planning a romantic weekend, the plaintive voice of Kermit: "Do not believe her. Trust the frog."

YOU cannot argue, however, with Miss Piggy's latest diet advice, revealed in an interview this week. Never eat more than you can lift.

OH, what wicked people we are, ignoring two little girls, lost and alone in a shopping centre. Vast amounts of media coverage preceded this week's screening of Little Girl Lost (C5) in which the two kids, aged seven and five, were told by their mother to stand in the mall to test the reactions of passers-by. Hundreds of adults ignored the pair before one elderly lady asked if they were all right. It was promoted as a shocking indictment of modern apathy and generated lots of free publicity for C5 and the NSPCC. There was the usual crop of predictable why-oh-why columns from the usual crop of predictable female hacks. And then we saw the actual footage. The little girls were clearly in no danger. They showed no real distress. Even the dimmest passer-by could see their mother and the TV producer just a few feet away. The programme makers admitted that their camera crew was clearly visible and the TV reporter referred to the event as "a stunt." Enough said.

THREE little words will doubtless come back to haunt James Purnell the BBC's director of strategy and digital (who makes up these job titles?). Purnell says the present TV licence system "works pretty well." Personally, I'd be ashamed to work for an organisation whose money-raising activity lands 150,000 people a year with a criminal conviction. If any other organisation were funded through such an unpleasant and outdated system, every human-rights minded journalist at the BBC would be exposing it as a scandal.

AS my bank scratches around for another £400 million to keep it afloat, I look at the statement on my "free for life" credit card and wonder whose life it refers to. Mine or the Co-op's?

I ASKED readers for examples of a sixth-sense developed by people in their jobs (water divining, horse whispering, etc). A reader says he's heard of someone who could put his ear to the ground and detect not only the number of horses that had passed that way, but whether they were towing any type of wagon. I am hugely impressed. And so was the Lone Ranger.