AM I the only person to wonder just why we are talking about a new identity and background for nursery pervert Vanessa George “when she gets out of jail”?

I’ve seen several pieces along the same line, going on about how she’ll need to “disappear” after she is freed.

Freed? The evil old mare hasn’t been sentenced yet, for pity’s sake.

The fact that she’s refusing to name the victims she has abused should ensure she never sees daylight again but of course, it won’t.

If you want a fur-lined, ocean-going example of just how mired our legal system has become, the case of Vanessa George is it.

She should not be freed, ever. She should be horsewhipped through the streets of Plymouth, locked up and the key thrown away.

BECAUSE the kids and the old man are besotted with cooking programmes, I have sighed my way through Jamie Oliver’s yawnsome trail round America, for six weeks now.

This week he pitched up in the Navajo Native American reserve to ponder why their cuisine wasn’t popular with their own kids or anyone else’s.

I suspect the fact that the dishes featured consisted of grey soup made from cedar ash, and barbecued sheep’s heads and entrails might have something to do with it.

THE “Rocking Egg Man” sculpture – a papier-mâché balloon stuck on rocking chair legs – that’s been shortlisted for the annual fruit-loopery that is the Turner Prize has already received the customary bucketload.

But I won’t hear a word against it. Enrico David’s sculpture is so bad, it’s good.

They should really market it as a cure for depression because every time I see it, I can’t stop laughing.

THE UNISON union has published a long list of all the types of workers it says could be put out of work by public spending cuts.

And I agree with them. Every single one of the jobs they feature, from paramedics to hospice workers, are valuable and important and we mustn’t lose them.

However, what Unison doesn’t mention are jobs like the £30,000-a-year “myth buster” advertised by Lancashire’s Tory administration, to “bust myths” about immigrants.

They don’t mention non-jobs like Bournemouth’s own £80,000 a year Director of Transformation.

They don’t mention the street football co-ordinators, diversity outreach workers, travelling community liaison officers, five-a-day supra regional co-ordinators and the people whose job it is to spy on parents who try and get their kids into decent schools.

Unison doesn’t say anything about them. But axe all these non-jobs and we could afford to employ more of the people we love and want. Like lollipop ladies and child protection officers.

I only mention the above because cuts, in all their shapes and forms, are going to be a major issue during the next election and beyond.

I don’t know a single person working for the private sector who hasn’t suffered from wage freezes, trimmed expenses or redundancy, and most of those people don’t see why money can’t be saved on what the State is paying out, too.

Over the next few weeks this newspaper will publish a series of features called the Axe Factor, looking at what our local authorities may have to cut to balance their books.

This subject fascinates me because I have always believed that no matter what they tell you, councils could save huge amounts of money if they put their mind to it.

I find it astonishing that when people like me ask their local council why they provide free sandwiches for councillors at meetings (for which they are already paid handsome expenses) I’m told the saving would be “a drop in the ocean”.

Fine. But what I don’t understand is this: if the chairman of a council or a government minister saw £10 fluttering along in the street, they wouldn’t glance at the note and say: ‘It’s only £10, what can you do with that?’ They’d grab the thing as if their life depended on it.

If they are sent a £1,000 cheque from the Premium Bonds they don’t say: “It’s a drop in the ocean, I’m not bothering to bank that.”

It would be cashed at the speed of light. Because money is money. A tenner will buy you McLunch, several coffees, a couple of litres of petrol. And more than an hour of home help time.

So why is it, when it comes to saving money, the same people won’t bat an eye when they tell you that a sensible, cost-cutting measures will “only” save £2,000, or £200,000 or £1 million?

This money is no different to my hypothetical fluttering tenner. It’s still money and it buys stuff.

Why is it that when reporters approach councils to ask if they have considered buying cheaper petrol/loo rolls/ biccies for meetings, everyone gets huffy and says it’ll only save a few quid.

I don’t care if it saves just the £1. It’s my £1 and I want it saved, so it can go towards something I do approve of, like the old folks’ lunch club or the children’s adventure playground.

Council and government cutbacks are always presented as the Devil’s work, something evil to be avoided at all costs. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

No one who pays taxes wants that money spent on translating official documents into Russian, as my local council does. They don’t want their council tax being spent on ensuring that illegally-camped travellers have everything they need.

And they certainly don’t want to see binmen and lollipop ladies sacked while diversity outreach workers and cheerleading development officers continue to bleed the system.