FOOTBALL, football, football. Now I’m as patriotic as the next woman and I do know those games were important, not only to the fans but to the morale of the country as a whole.

(BY the way, we weren’t robbed, we were humiliated!) But is it completely necessary to give blanket coverage to football on two or more channels, thus depriving a huge part of the population of their favourite programmes? And now, to cap it all, we have Wimbledon.

I feel there should be a channel or, if needed, two channels, devoted to sport and let the rest of us have our programmes back and give a little thought to those whose lives do not revolve around the World Cup.

So what else has been happening? Folk keep asking me what I thought about the Budget.

Well, what you and I think will not make any difference. It will happen and it must, for as a country we have to make it evident to the world at large that we mean business and that we are a country worth investing in. It’s not going to be easy and we are all going to feel the pinch one way or another. But as they say, ‘no gain without pain’.

It’s odd the way we resort to these old sayings ‘shoulders to the wheel’, ‘backs to the wall’ and stuff like that.

I suppose in a way we find them comforting as they make you realise that people in the past have also been in similar situations and survived.

It’s in times of need that there are many people who find strength of purpose and it is said that new ideas, inventions and enterprises are often born as people are forced to take stock.

I see politicians are seeking a way out of the mess that has resulted from the change in the licensing laws.

The change that started with the Monopolies Commission stopping breweries from owning ‘too many’ pubs which resulted in them being taken over by property companies whose main concern was the rent, not the calibre of the licensee, not the upkeep of standards or the condition of the beer.

Then they brought in new licensing laws taking the responsibility away from the courts and police. To cap it all, came the smoking ban.

All of this has resulted in around 30 pubs closing weekly, devastating the social lives of many people and seeing the loss of thousands of jobs.

But that’s Government planning for you - think ‘what a good idea we’ll go continental’ but not really summing up the situation and facing the truth that we are a completely different culture.