THIS weekend's teaching Oscars were as big a farce as the Hollywood variety. Unfortunately Tony Blair seems more interested in being a cosmetic surgeon than a principled Prime Minister.

The idea that a televised night out makes everything okay is ridiculous. It is the same as with 'consultant nurses' paying the few more highly to mask the real problems of low pay, morale and funding.

Is a good teacher someone whose pupils receive uniformly high grades in exams, or someone who coaxes children into fulfilling their potential, who educates a child?

If Tony Blair has any interest in the public services he should stop whining about 'scars on my back' and realise that education and health need injections of money - and not stage-managed love-ins.

He can then have his scars treated by a fairly-paid NHS nurse.

The latest wheeze for tourists to the Great Wall of China is to charge them £1.50 to watch lions tear apart live calves according to this week's Sunday papers.

It has been a while since anything I have read has disgusted me as much as this.

We are supposed to be a civilised World but barbarism is just as prevalent now as in the dark ages.

Who can take pleasure in watching a slaughter?

I suppose it is too much to expect our Government to register a complaint about such practices.

But then again, as Britain sells and has sold guns, bombs and war planes to some of the most vicious dictators in the world, who are we to talk?

ONE question raised by Sunday night's fine drama about the Liverpool dock strike was who is the trade union movement being run for?

The dockers paid their subs into the TGWU but, when the time came for dues to be reciprocated, Bill Morris was nowhere to be seen.

Clearly unions need officials and full-time officers to run them, but those employed in these roles should not forget, that without a common support system, there is no union.

Why did unions in every other country support the dockers, while their own organisation cheated them?

Perhaps the leaders are too interested in going from union baron to the House of Lords.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.