● WORCESTER as a university town, tree-lined boulevards shading diners in the heat of the noonday sun, bateaux mooches plying the Severn… perhaps the sound of a Spanish guitar threads its way through the willows.

Right. That’s the dream, here’s the present reality. Unlike the working population, Worcester’s students enjoy at least three Saturday nights a week, all of which are dreaded by the people who live in St John’s.

Noise, litter and casual vandalism… and it will be arriving in Barbourne very soon once the campus establishes itself across the river. Yes, I know, the authorities don’t want to talk about the disagreeable aspects to this educational lebensraum, but problems exist, all the same.

The fact remains that no one has yet found a way of converting former working class neighbourhoods into bedsit land without considerable pain for the dwindling numbers of original inhabitants. The politicians will come out with the usual trite “this has got to be good news for Worcester” but most of you will notice that they tend to live in the posher and therefore quieter areas.

True, there is a university help line available to residents. And that’s a real comfort when you’ve been woken at two in the morning with a full day’s graft ahead.

● IT would be nice to think that the incessant bombardment of food programmes on the telly will eventually start to permeate the national consciousness.

I don’t imagine we have seen the ultimate reality TV by any means yet, but it’s fair to say that the present gorging on the goggle box is not yet at the coffee and piece of chocolate stage.

I’m starting to come round at last to the idea that perhaps food is the new rock ‘n’ roll. This new music now has everyone from Nigella Lawson (Doris Day) to Gary Rhodes (Engelbert Humperdinck) and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (Eric Clapton) to Pru Leith (Mary Whitehouse). Sorry about the last one but something went wrong there. Anyway, just as in music, it seems that every conceivable taste is being catered for. Surely it cannot be very long before this healthy eating frenzy starts to have some effect?

● THE Government’s gift of our money to failures of the financial world will not ultimately make the slightest difference to the way they are managed.

The fat cats will find a way – they always do – to pocket their obscene bonuses, laughing not just all the way to the bank but in our faces, too. It must be the only endeavour where abject failure is rewarded.

Only one major benefit is likely to transpire from the Government’s largesse with our cash and that will be the freezing of any planned tax rises. Ordinary folk have suffered enough because of New Labour’s 10p tax starting rate scandal and it’s about time working people were given a break.