Paying the tab

obscenely high amounts: we actually need fewer men earning more than the Prime Minister. And indeed, come to think of it, every Prime Minister in my lifetime has been overpaid too.

And paying anyone a penny more than a hardworking London bus driver for the undemanding job of reading an autocue (like Fiona Bruce or Gary Lineker) is an outrageous waste of taxpayer funds. Indeed, that tax on televisions known as the BBC licence fee must surely go in the dustbin of history. into Mr Lloyd’s personal prejudices, but he goes on to say that parents can tell the difference between smacking and assault. I’d like to ask Mr Lloyd, if he and I had a disagreement over physical punishment of children which ended with me giving him a slap on the face, how would he categorise it?

Having been married to someone who spent many years working with colleagues in child protection agencies campaigning to bring about the changes in the law Mr Lloyd refers to, and the creation of the office of Children’s Commissioner, I understand something of the complexities surrounding this issue.

The fact is that if smacking is to have an effect the child will have to feel pain. Pain inflicted on a child by a parent is assault, plain and simple, and if the Scottish Government want to present Scotland as a progressive country, they need to get off the fence and get wholeheartedly behind John Finnie’s bill. I genuinely don’t believe that there are many people left willing to campaign for the right to hit their children. It’s time to rid our society of this archaic practice and join the many countries which have dispensed with it without experiencing any detrimental effect to the order of their societies. In addition to control measures “to create a smoke-free generation”, community service could be used to make tobacco companies face the consequences of their antisocial actions. Public health ministers could make them fund and run hospitals and hospices to exclusively treat and care for their sick and dying victims.