The compensation culture in the Disunited Kingdom has really gone beyond the pale, quite ridiculous in fact. Is this all because of elf and safety or just about the freebies one can get for trifling accidents? A school teacher stubs her toe in class and is awarded damages of £500. Okay, you say, so what is £500 out of the education budget? Wait for it. The lawyers in the case earned over thirteen thousand! And this is not an isolated happening. Some compensation paid out is more than five hundred of course but always the lawyer’s fees are in five figures. One teacher was paid compensation for having her thumb dislocated by an unruly pupil and was awarded a nice tidy sum, but who was to blame in this incident? The school? The modern educational system that is without discipline and allows children to be as feral as they like without fear of punishment? The violence in the media and computer games? Bad vibes from the internet? The parents who would simply wash their hands of the whole thing or rush to absolve their little darling, probably putting the blame fairly and squarely on the teacher who shouldn’t have had her thumb there in the first place or what was she doing that the boy had to defend himself from possible serious injury and hospitalisation? Of course the union backs its members in their claims but the union’s officers seem to have about as much sense as Greek politicians when they cannot see the damage they are doing, the never ending drain on limited resources. It’s all very well decrying financial cuts and calling for more money and then it is wasted. Now I don’t argue that a stubbed toe or a dislocated thumb are very painful conditions but worthy of compensation? I really do not think so, not for one moment. Thank god the compensation culture has not reached Greece. If you saw the state of some of the pavements in Athens you could be quite sure Greek lawyers would make a fortune but in most cases the answer would simply be watch where you put your feet.

As far as children and the internet is concerned evidently four leading web providers are to offer customers the option to block adult content at the point of subscription.

BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin will offer the protection for smartphones, laptops and PCs.

It comes as David Cameron met industry representatives amid concern over the sexualisation of children. The prime minister also launched Parentport - a website to help parents complain about inappropriate content.

Mr Cameron said there was a "growing tide of concern" amongst parents who were concerned about children being exposed to "inappropriate advertising and sexual imagery. There's no doubt that the sort of pressures - what you see on television programmes and advertising hoardings and sort of a mixture of pester power problems but also just the sense that our children are being forced to grow up too quickly," The new measures, aimed at helping parents protect their children from internet porn and other explicit sites, follow a report earlier this year by the Mothers' Union Christian charity known as the Bailey Report.

But will it really work? How do you control mobile phones for example? Kids are also very smart and have proved themselves more than capable of getting around the filters set up in schools so it won't be long until there is widely-available "advice" online about how to avoid the home versions. TalkTalk blocks a variety of websites, including suicide and self harm, violence and weapons, dating sites, gambling sites and file sharing. Parents decide what sites they want blocked but the fact is technology is not the answer – parental control is, except these days parents just don’t seem to have any.