For a recent TV programme, interviewers went out into the streets to ask people how much water they should drink and why.

Back came the twaddle put out by the bottled water industry and the alternative medicine brigade determined to extract the maximum amount of money from us for nothing.

The researchers agree that we should drink two litres of liquid per day (excluding alcohol) but that doesn't need to be water – it could be coffee, tea, fruit juices and also includes the water that comes naturally within foods.

Next time someone trying to get inside your purse or wallet attempts to convince you that you have to drink loads of bottled water to "purge your system of impurities, toxins, et al", take it all with a pinch of salt, and do what I do, drink tap water it's free (well almost!).

By the way, a Brighton restaurant wanted £2.60 for a small bottle of water. We told them what to do with it!

An end to the language of the gutter?

The good old BBC has decided that no longer will it inflict us with bad language – until after 10pm, the new swearing watershed. This follows a barrage of complaints following the pathetic nonsense of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross.

When the BBC first started broadcasting, it was the pinnacle of correctness in spoken English. I remember those commentators on the "wireless" in the '50s when I was a child, who spoke like the Queen, all with huge plums in their mouths.

OK, that was way over the top, but isn't it sad that since then the standards of TV and radio have gone down the pan.

Programmes like EastEnders with actors using language that is far from grammatically correct certainly doesn't help.

One thing that really grates with me is when I hear people saying "me and so and so" instead of "so and so and me".

I recall a teacher drumming into me never to put myself first. Now I hear people, usually in their 20s and 30s, far better educated than me, saying "me and whatever", and I flinch.

And it's dreadful to hear people uusing the word "them" when they really mean to say these of those.

Perhaps teachers today have just given up correcting bad English – or perhaps they just don't know the correct way to speak. Last week, a colleague read an email written by a teacher and it was riddled with grammatical errors – and he's got the responsibility of educating the next generation. Heaven help us.


The shame of MPs

Well, we narrowly escaped having another big bill to pay for MPs' pensions. Had it not been for the shame they have brought on themselves over their expenses, they would have been able to nod through the extra money needed to pay for a black hole in their pension provision.

Hats off, too, for some plain speaking from the governor of the bank of England, Mervyn King, for drawing to our attention the appalling mess Britain is now in financially.

Listen to Brown or Darling and you would think everything was fine – just a blip for now, but come next year and everything would be right as rain.

Cameron spelled it out that regardless of which party was in power after the next election, which can't come soon enough for me, there will have to be a huge reduction in public spending.

That's backed up by Mr King, who says there must be a credible plan for recovery or Britain could struggle to finance its "extraordinary" deficit and it is going to be a long, hard slog to get Britain back on its feet.

Oh, to have some honesty in politics.