When I was young and naive, I believed that all women should unite in the sisterhood of feminism, to make the world a better place for us and our daughters. Now, I'm not so sure. I'm still all for the sisterhood, but I think there should be an entry requirement and it should be the possession of at least half a brain. So the first females I'd like to blackball from the universal togetherness of womankind are the three Tolland sisters from Dunbartonshire, who apparently can't muster half a brain between them.

The Tollands are avid players of swamp soccer, which evidently involves rolling around in mud. Until now, men have been allowed to play bare-chested, but women have had to cover up - the minimum clothing requirement up top being a bra. In the name of equality, the Tollands are demanding the right to compete topless in this year's tournament in Strachur, Argyll.

Pamela, 26, Lisa, 18, and Joanne, 16 (so any spectators daring to watch her will be carted off immediately by the vice squad), obviously subscribe to what I call Male Fantasy Feminism,

in which misguided females get furiously indignant and demand so-called equalities that every man in the world (and all the women with half a brain) can see pander completely and precisely to the most cherished fetishes of any self-respecting male chauvinist pig.

Not that the Tollands are alone in their blind foolishness. Many respectable feminists have made such rookie mistakes. Take the Pill, for instance. Who really won there? In the 1960s - after centuries of powerlessness, but at least being able to use sex as a bargaining tool - suddenly women were saying: “I can sleep with anybody, me! I'll take all the responsibility for contraception and guarantee I won't get pregnant into the bargain!” So the blokes said: “Prove it.” And, lo, some silly heifers did.

As for bra-burning, where did that get us? Men got to ogle more bare bosoms than ever before; we got a few years of fresh air around the baps before our nipples hit our knees. Of all the totems of femininity, I maintain that there is nothing more empowering than a well-fitting bra.

The Tollands are hurtling straight into Male Fantasy Feminism territory, but now weary swamp soccer officials say the only way to achieve gender equality sensibly is for the men also to wear tops. The lads won't like that, but if they're forced to cover their modesty, they could do worse than wear some trusty brassieres.

My child isn't even three yet, but he's already showing signs of insubordination, disrespect and - most wounding of all - ingratitude. Since I already feel like I'm fighting a rearguard action against this tiny tyrant, there's no way I'm going to encourage any of these traits actively, so I was astonished when I saw what a friend of mine had bought her five-year-old on the grounds that it was “cute”.

The offending article was a pair of pyjamas from Asda. Made for very young boys, they had adorable pictures of cartoon insects on them, but what stopped me in my tracks was the slogan written in large letters across the front of the top: “Why don't you just bug off.”

Why, in God's name, would you buy something for your kid that actually tells you to get lost? Aren't they going to do that soon enough without you doing it for them? Not to mention the useful vocabulary you're giving them for future verbal assaults?

If I wanted to bring a small creature into my home, devote myself to its welfare and then revel in being rejected by it, I'd have bought a cat. There's no way I'd deliberately buy clothing that turns the treasured fruit of my loins into a walking insult to me and my parenting skills.

As soon as your children become teenagers, are you merrily going to give them T-shirts that read “F*** off, Mum”? On second thoughts, you won't need to, as they'll have been planning to buy one themselves since the age of five, when they learnt what fun it was to tell you to bug off.

You'd have to be a masochist to buy these pyjamas for your own child. Buying them for someone else's might be fun, though. Except for the one thing that bugs me even more than the objectionable and offensive slogan itself - even if “Why don't you just bug off” is rhetorical, surely it still needs a question mark?

The Japanese think they're really tough because they dice with death by eating potentially deadly puffer fish. Now scientists at the University of Dundee have found that mould - very much like the stuff we eat in blue cheese - is capable of transforming depleted uranium into a stable mineral and cleaning up radioactive nuclear waste. So, after the mould has depolluted the uranium, how cool would it be to put it back into the cheese and sell it as the most macho food in the world?

What a marketing strategy that would be: Come to Scotland and Experience the Ultimate in Dangerous Food. No, for once we don't mean deep-fried Mars Bars. The country that brought you the unhealthiest diet known to man can now unveil the Nuclear Nibble - depleted uranium cheese on an organic oatcake. Are you hard enough to eat Dounreay Blue?

We all know that drunks are a danger to themselves and to others, so it's reassuring to hear that the Edinburgh Violence Reduction Programme may create an SOS bus service - or, as it would inevitably become known, a “drunk bus” - that anybody feeling delicate after a binge can use. Every Friday and Saturday night there'll be a bus full of bladdered strangers coming together to throw up, shout about their woes, fall over and get helped home. But I'm confused. Just how is this different from the night bus?

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