Stuff the stats...

Another week, another survey by the Office of National Statistics, this time indicating it costs 90,000 quid to raise a child to the age of 11.

This comes into the statistical category of the blindingly bleedin obvious. Of course you need money to raise kids. It was ever thus and the expense hasn't put people off having offspring so far. I also don't hear many requests from parents to hand their little darlings back once they work out what Snuggies and baby food are going to cost them on a weekly basis.

It's different once the weans get to the teenage years. I suspect there's many a parent would like to do what a secondary teacher once suggested: have them raised by wolves from the age of 10 to 18, since wolves can give them a sharp nip when they need to be kept in order, which is more than parents are allowed to do these days.

Anyway, what children are we talking about in this survey? Ordinary - heaven help me - 'normal' kids? Maybe the Office of National Statistics could now work out what it costs to raise a child with a physical or learning disability. I'll bet it's a lot more than 90,000. If we had this information, we could target financial support at families with a disabled child. It would be great if we could no longer say: disabled child = disabled family.

And don't start me on surveys about the 'cost' of looking after the elderly (that was last week's blindingly bleedin obvious survey). I think it's a mark of the contempt felt for the elderly and our western obsession with youth that we feel we can ignore the contribution of older people, deny them a living pension, take them out of their homes and park them in death's waiting rooms, aka old folks' homes.

Which society do we most want to copy: the old Inuit society which left their elderly to die on an ice floe? Or the ancient Greeks? Remember Aeneas fleeing Troy with his old father on his back? If you need a clue: Aeneas went on to found Rome. I like to think that was the gods rewarding his family loyalty. Call it karma.