The Mothers' Union has stepped into the ring as champion of grandparents.

It's called on the Government to bolster their rights and stop them feeling exploited.

The two main demands made by this Church of England women's group are:

1. Grandparents who regularly look after their grandchildren should be entitled to register as professional child-minders so that their children can qualify for tax breaks linked to child-care costs;

2. Grandparents should be given visiting rights when families split up.

I can wholeheartedly support that second demand. How on earth do grandparents cope if the marriage of their son or daughter collapses amid acrimony and as a result they find themselves denied access to their beloved grandchildren? Yet it happens too often.

Grandparents who have been fully involved in the lives of their grandchildren can find themselves facing the cruel prospect of never seeing them again. What a nightmare!

So any moves to protect the access rights of grandparents are most definitely to be encouraged. Good for the Mothers' Union for marching into battle on our behalf.

I'm not 100 per cent sure, though, about the idea of putting the care that grandparents offer for the children of their sons and daughters on a tax-advantageous financial footing. That help is largely given out of love - for their children as well as their grandchildren.

It belongs to that special concept known as "family". You help those near and dear to you for no financial gain, and for no reason other than that they're kin.

Give those grandparents the status of professional child-minders (who do the job as a means of earning a living) and you risk undermining that special relationship, reducing the care they provide to purely a commercial transaction.

That said, I know that there are families in which the good nature of grandparents is taken advantage of - families in which son or daughter (and spouse, if any) work to provide a good life for themselves and expect Grandma and Granddad to offer daily child-care at the expense of the freedom they should be enjoying in their senior years.

Offering those sons and daughters tax breaks so they can pay the grandparents properly for being on daily duty is, I suppose, one way of helping to compensate the seniors for the loss of their own "quality time" and pay for decent holidays on which they can enjoy a bit of child-free relaxation and fun.

I Don't Believe It!

Well, here we are again after taking a week's enforced leave to make room for all that Debate of the Age stuff. I hope you found it worthwhile.

Personally, I think it's part of a Government softening-up process to get older people ready for hard times ahead. They're going to phase out state help and expect people to pay their way. That's my guess, anyway.

We might just about get away with it, those of us who are already seniors or near seniors. But as I've told Mrs Mildew, I reckon that future generations of oldies are in for a rocky ride.

But that's enough of that. Back to your grumbles. Mr H T Medley has one about the unpleasant voices of some people on television. His letter was prompted by a debate on the T&A's Letters page about the merits or otherwise of Harry Gration and Mike Morris. Mr Medley finds their style "bearable and down to earth". Then he adds:

"What gets up my nose are the voices of some of these so-called TV presenters. Who at the BBC is responsible for dumping Willie Carson in our laps? That whining tone of his is enough to cause nightmares. And John Francombe is another whiner on ITV.

"Does presentation and a good speaking voice mean nothing to the TV bosses? It seems that anything goes. On both main channels we get people without good voices who make a living by them.

"Some so-called singers sound like frogs in torment, and others like strangulated cats and dogs. Perhaps I'm too old to understand modern talent and always seek the smooth-toned singers of the past!"

You're not the only one, Mr Medley. Lots of people who've been around for a while can't stand most modern pop music because we can remember the days when there were proper songwriter and proper singers - the days when songs had melodies you could sing along with and poetic words that made sense.

If you have a gripe about anything, drop a line to me, Hector Mildew, c/o Newsroom, T&A, Hall Ings, Bradford BD1 1JR, email me or leave any messages for me with Mike Priestley on (44) 0 1274 729511. If you've already sent in a grumble and it hasn't appeared yet, don't worry - it will do.

Yours Expectantly,

Hector Mildew

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.