WHAT did you want to be when you were ten?

A straw poll of staff at Argus Towers reveals that we wanted to join the RAF, be a vet, a singer, a doctor, a radio DJ, a writer (some would say that I still have some way to go towards that last ambition...).

Nowadays, ask the same question of a ten-year-old and you may well get 'famous'. Ask for what they could become famous, and they may come up with being on the X-Factor or Britain's Got Talent.

While we would all despair of twentysomethings who should know better having the same thought, I don't feel that we are all going to hell in a handcart because a ten-year-old has it.

After all, a ten-year-old is still a child. And any answers we now middle-aged folk would have given about our future careers would have also been based mainly in fantasy rather than reality.

In my year in school, I know of those who have grown up to be bankers, doctors, teachers, a conservationist in the Scottish Isles, stay-at-home mums, and a drag artiste. Few probably dreamed of that exact, same life path while watching Starsky and Hutch and listening to Abba.

As for the ten-year-olds of today, watch out. They may surprise us all.

The government, however, is despairing of the perceived lack of ambition amongst our ten-year-olds, and has drawn up plans for career advice for them.

Ed Balls is backing this 'radical change', claiming that it is too late to be thinking about careers at 14, and that children from poorer backgrounds fall short of their ambitions.

Many, the government says, do not make it to university.

Here's a radical suggestion for Mr Balls. Instead of attempting social engineering by careers advisor, why not admit that the whole way our universities are funded has led to young people from poorer backgrounds fearing the huge debt with which graduates leave higher education and putting them off pursuing their dreams.

Instead of having a rigid class system, Britain now has a system of opportunity based upon whether your parents can afford to bail you out or top up your tuition fees.

If anything is squashing the dreams of those who have little in the way of wealth, it is the thought of the equivalent of paying off a small mortgage before they are 30.

THERE is a new craze in Edinburgh - divorce parties complete with divorce cakes showing the ex-bride in axe-killer pose over her bleeding (jam-covered) spouse.

So after having forked out thousands for the dream wedding and exotic honeymoon, women are now paying hundreds for these macabre confections. And the winner is...capitalism.

AND finally...

I PREDICT a new internet hit for Northumbria Police.

A webcam allowing the public to monitor the progress of nine German Shepherd police dog puppies is now live.

Check the puppies out on www.northumbria.police.uk