I know this much: Judge not that ye be not judged (taken from the Bible from the book of Matthew chapter 7 verse 1). However, I'm going to say this anyway. On Wednesday of this week I was walking through the town centre at a time when children should still have been at school when I came across a young boy walking through town with a woman whom I assumed to be his mother: the boy seemed to be around 12 or 13 years old and this is how he looked: seriously overweight baggy trousers tee shirt four or five sizes too big a baseball cap a ring hanging from his pierced eye brow This boy is coming to epitomise modern Britain where weak parents of single minded children are allowing those children to walk roughshod over everything they see and come up against. This boy is fat and I blame his parents for allowing him to be fat: I work hard with my own children if I think they have a problem with their diet and their exercise levels. The boy was wearing trousers and a sleeveless tee shirt: it was chilly and his mother ought to have made the child wear something more substantial. I don't like baseball caps on anyone but that's my personal preference but it set off this boys attitude and that turned me off, too. That such a young child could have had his body pierced, though, is as much of a crime as allowing him to become overweight. Doubtless the child will have a tattoo by the time he is 18 years old: another crime against the body in my opinion. These are my observations and opinions: I know many of you will think that I am a fuddy duddy who should lighten up a bit; but I can't. In a sense I want to protect these children from their weak and misguided parents and themselves. This nation is following the USA into obesity just as we have followed them into an appalling standard of spoken and written English. This nation has become one where it's no longer good enough, for example, to wear trainers but that they have to be a certain brand of trainers. The trainers are very expensive but yet their true manufacturing costs are very small: we allow ourselves to be cheated out of as much as £50 or £60 a pair in some cases as we pay for advertising, sportsmen's sponsorship deals, multi stage mark ups and retail profit margins. The boy in my story was wearing a "designer" baseball cap, a "designer" tee shirt; and probably "designer" trousers and trainers. Could his eye ring have been "designer" too? End of rant for now! DW