JAN MOIR: That judge was right about snowflakes. We've turned into a nation of whiny milksops

A judge has said children must not be brought up as coddled snowflakes, unable to walk across a street themselves – but is it already too late for all that?

Judge Rupert Lowe was speaking out after hearing how a divorced father had refused to let his children (aged eight and nine) walk 100 metres from his car to their mother’s home in Gloucester.

Instead, Extra-Careful Dad breached a restraining order by driving the precious little darlings to within 30 metres of their mum’s front door.

‘But they know the way, don’t they?’ asked the judge incredulously, adding that he feared overprotective modern parenting is harmful because it stops children from learning how to ‘live a life’.

He also said he wasn’t surprised so many kids today complain about anxiety and depression.

He has a point. Agreed! For a start, fresh air hurts no one.

Judge Rupert Lowe (pictured) was speaking out after hearing how a divorced father had refused to let his children (aged eight and nine) walk 100 metres from his car to their mother’s home in Gloucester

And being ferried around like a Faberge egg, cocooned from the vagaries of weather and the outside world, cannot be good for anyone, especially not the little ones, with their half-formed psyches and noses buried in their iPads all the time.

How will the little horrors learn about stranger danger, self-reliance, nature or even the joys of a puddle if they only breathe air-con and view life from a car window? No one wants them growing up in a vacuum, all withered and weird and oddly entitled, like an Elon Musk, Britney or a Beckham.

Of course, walking to school is not the answer to society’s ills, but surely it has to be a healthy first step on life’s journey? And if a child cannot walk or take public transport to school, independent travel in other areas of their schedule should be encouraged. Consider that in 1971, 80 per cent of children walked to school, but by last year, said the judge, it was only 25 per cent.

That makes me feel absolutely ancient, like a crone in a bonnet and bustle from another age. Even from primary level we all walked to school ourselves; through howling gales and snowdrifts, in heatwaves and in rain storms.

We walked through Scottish winters when it was dark in the mornings and dark when we trudged back home at 4pm.

We walked in summers without recourse to applications of suncream, without constant parental contact via a mobile phone or without regular hydration from fancy bottled waters flavoured with a hint of lychee.

A judge has said children must not be brought up as coddled snowflakes, unable to walk across a street themselves – but is it already too late for all that? (Stock photo)

Without any kind of hydration at all, come to think of it, except maybe a disgusting slurp from the manky drinking fountain in the school playground on the two days in the year when the temperature rose above bracing.

And we even did it without being comforted by a barrage of sustaining yet nutritious kale-rich snacks packed each morning by our loving mothers. If you got half a Wagon Wheel and a clip around the ear, you were lucky.

And don’t forget – I’m warming to my theme here – there was no thermal clothing for kiddies back then; no lovely, padded winter puffer coats with fur linings and no fleecy insulated anoraks.

Our only protection against the elements were woolly tights – girls had to wear skirts back then, while little boys’ knees turned blue in their shorts – and duffel coats that offered little protection in a morning blizzard. They just got heavier and heavier as the storms raged on, and smelled more and more like wet dog.

Hate to come over all super-virtuous here, but Captain Scott and his polar expeditions would instinctively have recognised the trials of the average 1970s British schoolkid, plodding through a white-out with only their wellies and a pair of mittens on a string to protect them from the elements.

It was the same for everyone; generations of us who grew up without central heating or being the centre of attention all the time – children who were expected to suffer a little and get on with it a lot. And it did none of us any harm at all.

Now it seems that schools close down at the first hint of a snowflake, literally and meteorologically. And it is not just children who are mollycoddled – it is everyone.

Being ferried around like a Faberge egg, cocooned from the vagaries of weather and the outside world, cannot be good for anyone, especially not the little one (Stock photo)

When offence isn’t being taken at everything, grievances are being nursed and selfish behaviour is indulged.

We’ve turned into a first-world nation of whiny milksops, a place where Government ministers can’t do their jobs because the first time they tell a civil servant to buck up their ideas, they are accused of bullying. A place where people don’t want to work in offices any more because, do you know what, WFH is so much nicer and relaxing, and you can just snuggle when no one is looking. A place where a video of a crying young woman on TikTok went viral because she complained about the constraints of her 9 to 5 job.

‘How do you have time for life?’ she whined. A follower agreed. ‘The 40-hour work week is beyond outdated and your feelings are totally valid,’ she said.

What is going on out there? This sense of entitlement, that all good things should pass your way and arrive without effort or hardship, is becoming all-pervasive.

But the truth is that no one ever got anywhere worth going in life without working damn hard to get there. So you might as well pull on your wellies and get on with the struggle, even if you are only eight years old. Correction: especially if you are only eight years old.

A short cut to love for Meryl? 

Meryl StreeP and Martin Short met when they starred in the Only Murders In The Building TV series. Seated together at the Golden Globes this week, the stars have denied rumours of a relationship and say they are just good friends.

That may well be the case, but my fingers are crossed for a bloom of love between separated Meryl and the widowed Martin.

Why? Because Martin is just hilarious, while Meryl looks like she could use a laugh.

Meryl Streep attending the 90th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood & Highland Center in March 2018

Meryl Streep and Martin Short met when they starred in the Only Murders In The Building TV series

‘I’m so Greek, I could go bankrupt, and no one in the world would help me,’ moans his character in Only Murders. And who could forget his turn as wedding planner Franck Eggelhoffer in Father Of The Bride (1991), worrying about ’nuffy blue’ tuxedos and a $1,200 wedding cake. ‘A very risonable price for a cake of zees magnitude,’ he insisted.

This would be a very reasonable romance for stars of this magnitude, but what does Meryl think?

Fry’s making the fur fly…  

Stephen Fry has backed a Peta animal welfare campaign calling for an end to the use of real fur for bearskin caps worn by the King’s Guards.

It’s the kind of grandiose virtue-signalling we have come to expect from arch luvvies – but for once I was almost on his side.

Surely it is an outrage that all these poor bears are being murdered just so that the British Army can look smart on duty?

But it turns out that is not the case at all. The bears are culled or harvested by indigenous Canadian tribes, who eat the meat as a staple part of their diet and sell the fur – a vital part of their economy.

The bears would still be culled, even if the Guards did not wear their magnificent hats. So it’s a no from me.

Stephen Fry has backed a Peta animal welfare campaign calling for an end to the use of real fur for bearskin caps worn by the King’s Guards

The bears would still be culled, even if the Guards did not wear their magnificent hats

The she-bloggers who give France a bad name 

Don’t you just love the American tourist who went to France on holiday and has moaned that – pass me my mouchoir so I can mop my tears of mirth – the French are rude.

Angela, a Beijing-born blogger from San Francisco, launched a tearful complaint on social media about her chilly welcome in Lyon. Most of the restaurants were closed on New Year’s Eve, and not everyone was thrilled to see her, despite her buying a pink beret like Emily In Paris.

‘It made me cry,’ she said. ‘People here seem very indifferent.’

Welcome to the real world, cherie! Actually, I blame all those American she-bloggers who live in Paris and detail their glamorous lives to millions of followers. Theirs is a Parisian Disneyland fantasy that doesn’t really exist – all butter croissants and ballet classes, while outside the fogged windows of that cute little bistro, the real Paris simmers with racial tensions, riots, strikes and political crisis.

Most of the restaurants were closed on New Year’s Eve, and not everyone was thrilled to see the blogger, despite her buying a pink beret like Emily In Paris (pictured)

‘When I was there, no one wanted to talk to me except for the nice French lady at my hotel, my friendly guide who was from Barcelona and a couple I met when I dined alone,’ said Angela.

Isn’t that enough? And if you can’t be bothered to learn even a few words of French, why should the French bother with you?

The first trailer has been released for Back To Black, the biopic about Amy Winehouse which is coming out in April. 

Directed by Sam Taylor Johnson and starring Marisa Abela as the troubled singer, it looks sensational. 

‘I don’t write songs to be famous. I write songs because I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t,’ says Marisa’s Amy in the promotional clip. Amy’s life was brief and blazing. 

Before her death from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27, she wrote one of the greatest break-up albums of all time, as well as marrying, divorcing and creating her own brilliant and unique style. 

She died too young, which was a terrible waste and is an ongoing sadness. 

This film has to be a biopic, because if Amy’s life were fiction, no one would believe it. For a second. 

Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and starring Marisa Abela (pictured) as the troubled singer, Back To Black looks sensational

Sad news that Sven-Göran Eriksson has terminal pancreatic cancer.

‘I have to fight as long as possible,’ he said.

I admire his bravery and fortitude, although the truth is that cancer will do what it wants to do, whether its victims ‘fight’ or ‘battle’ it or not. The former England manager, 75, fears he has a year to live or at ‘worst a little less’. He is not absolutely sure and he doesn’t really want to know.

‘It is better not to think about it,’ he said, and never a truer word was spoken. If now is not the time to live in the moment, then when?

Don’t know whether to be thrilled or sickened by MPs now scrambling to show just how much they care about the plight of hundreds of wrongly prosecuted Post Office subpostmasters.

Where were they in the wilderness years, when they were desperately needed? Meanwhile, as the Post Office’s former boss Paula Vennells hands back her CBE, why would Mr Bates – the subpostmaster who exposed the scandal — even want a knighthood from a system that has revealed itself to be rotten to the core?

Ridiculous beauty question of the week: Would you tattoo your whole face with semi-permanent foundation? Tattooed eyebrows are bad enough, but a painful perma-face of full-on slap? The only sensible answer is ‘No’.