A skin cream advert used by the English Teacher Training Agency to encourage new recruits to the teaching profession provoked anger. You have to be pretty upset to get steamed up about an ad that says nice things about your profession. But some 15 people protested to the Advertising Standards Authority about what they saw as the failure to reflect the stress of the job.
The ad suggested that teaching was "better than any anti-ageing cream" for keeping people young. It was misleading, said complainants. One claimed the reverse was true. According to BBC Online, another believed there was no scientific evidence to back it up and believed the training agency was being "ludicrous".
That's 15 pretty stressed people. But despite their evident pain, the ASA ruled against them. There had been no suggestion that teaching was an easy profession, it said. The advert had shown that working with young people could be "rewarding".
Yet the chances are that the ASA is not an expert on stress. For that we need to drop in at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society's Division of Occupational Psychology.
Delegates reported on a large study comparing stress levels of 24 occupations.
They concluded that jobs in which you have to hide your true feelings and emotions are the most stressful. That left ambulance service staff, teachers, social services staff, call centre workers, prison officers, and the police as among the highest stressed.
- The possible health risks to children of mobile phones received extensive media coverage. Observer columnist Richard Ingrams was blunter than most.
He pointed out that Sir William Stewart, chair of the Health Protection Agency, has been issuing health warnings for five years or more, "but nobody has taken a blind bit of notice".
Ingrams isn't short of explanations for this. "The Government, which gets paid billions of pounds from the mobile phone industry, is unlikely to discourage their use. The press is also constrained by the amount of hugely lucrative advertising that helps to keep the leaking ship afloat."
- Let's think about putting on citizenship ceremonies for people celebrating their 18th birthday, says Home Secretary Charles Clarke. Hang on a sec.
The assumption there is that you don't get to be a citizen until you become an adult - an outrageous sidelining of children and young people.
The arguments for a ceremony for 18-year-olds could equally apply to younger people. Why not a citizenship ceremony for 11-year-olds? Or four-year-olds? The Government is keen to drive down the age of criminal responsibility.
They should remember that reciprocity cuts both ways.
SOUNDBITE
"Homework, like the national curriculum, is a dinosaur"
Patrick Hazlewood, head of St John's School, Marlborough, explaining why he is scrapping homework for year sevens.
