Editor's view

In dealing with the childcare world I hear a lot of fashionable phrases that have become pet peeves. One that probably irritates nannies too is when people talk about children being 'their most precious assets' - as if children were some investment banking venture. Another phrase, loved by politicians, is 'giving all children the best possible start in life'. Presumably the best possible start in life is to be born in Buckingham Palace with a silver spoon in your mouth, so that rules out a sizeable chunk of the population. Politicians also like to say they are enabling children to 'achieve their full potential'. I look around at my colleagues in the office and think, who among us has yet achieved their full potential? If this is it, that's pretty sad! But the worst buzzword of all these days is 'work-life balance'. Just to use it is to define your 'work' and 'life' as two separate things -sadder still. But for live-in nannies, unlike the working parents who employ them, the two are too often one and the same thing, as our feature on page 8 shows. Ask your stressed-out employer if she'd like to try your 'work-life balance' for a change. She'll probably say yes.