WHO designs kitchens? All those cupboards under worktops and sinks, cupboards that you put stuff in and it never see the light of day again.

You know that tasty sandwich toaster you bought in a mad moment and used constantly for a couple of weeks and then when you had sickened everyone to death with every variation of filling under the sun, you stuck it in that hidey hole under the sink.

Two years later when you are looking for that something that makes froth on milk, the one you also sickened everyone with, it's 'hey guess what I've found?' Yes, it's the dreaded toasty, and beside it is a thingy for making God knows what, plus various unmentionables that should have hit the bin long ago.

I suppose you can guess by now that I am just a little cheesed off.

This afternoon I was talking to a young woman who has a little girl and a baby and she tells me, that 'Daddy doesn't live with her and the children because if he did they would both lose their housing benefits'.

She told me this quite openly, but what really concerned me is she didn't think anything about the situation was wrong and I suppose from her financial viewpoint it wasn't.

We as a country started the welfare system to ensure that the poor and needy didn't go hungry or homeless, but now it is being abused and what's more the ones that are abusing it don't mind who knows it.

I find it so sad that young healthy folk can have so little pride. I feel the country is partly to blame, for nowadays no-one is allowed to feel shame and when you take away shame you take away pride, and without pride there is no ambition, no self-respect. For example they don't steal cars, they joyride.

You are not an unmarried mum, just another one-parent family. No-one is unemployed or on the dole, we are all job seekers. Everything is called by another name so as to hide the real facts. Children aren't badly behaved, they are 'misunderstood.'

I feel so sorry for school teachers. They are scared of chastising these badly behaved children, children who now have no points of reference, who won't know how far to go, because everyone is afraid to say, 'Look that is wrong'.

If I got whacked at school (usually well deserved) I didn't dare tell my mum or she would have played holy hell. She would have said, 'You must have been naughty, they don't smack you for nothing' and more than likely have given me another clip just to make sure I understood.

Parents do their children no favours by not backing the school. They must help, do their bit, make sure their kids know the difference between right and wrong and then let the teachers get on with their job. All of us, children and adults need guidelines. We all need to know 'so far and no further'.

Well back to the dreaded sandwich maker, I thought that I had better give it a try just to make sure that it is working OK before I give it away, and do you know, they don't taste at all bad.

So it looks like we are in for another week or two of the damn things before it goes back under the sink.

Until next week. . .