Only six months old and failed already

8:50am Monday 19th May 2008

SIR - So yet another Worcester News Baby of the Year competition has been and gone (Worcester News, May 14).

The conclusion, as usual - one random baby is apparently better than all the others. He is the winner-baby.

Sorry to the loser-babies. You may be only six months old, but you've already experienced your first failure. Come back next year.

I like the quote from the father of one of the runner-up-babies: "I always said it does not matter if she won or not because she has won my heart."

To all those who don't share my intuitive dislike of baby-rating competitions (which, apparently, is just about everyone) doesn't the above quote begin to hint at how peculiar this whole competition really is?

What on earth in a million years makes someone qualified to judge another person's baby, anyway?

Why this X-Factor-ish need to judge everyone, even people too young to be judged for anything?

No wonder Worcester News editor, Kevin Ward, sitting on the panel, says: "We had a difficult task of coming up with the winners and the overall winner". Is that because the criteria for differentiating babies are so arbitrary and completely pointless?

Bob Churchill, Worcester.