WHAT on earth has happened to geography? I remember reading, a couple of years ago, how British youngsters were completely lost when it came to the subject. That less than half the 900 children aged eight to 16 who took part in a national survey could point out London on a map of Britain and more than a third had no idea that Edinburgh was in Scotland.

Showing my age, I remember during the Falklands War that half the population of Britain thought the islands we were fighting over were off the coast of Scotland.

It's all very depressing. And now, worse still, Education Secretary Charles Clarke has described Harrogate as having a beach.

Apparently, he is not the only minister to have made the error of sticking the North Yorkshire spa town on the coast - in March last year Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt made a comment about "all that seaside air" in Harrogate.

People seem to have completely lost interest in the world around them.

When I was a child I was fascinated by where things were. For hours I would sit and look at my dad's old atlas, seeking out the world's capital cities, mountain ranges and oceans.

It was the same with maps of Britain. I had a counties of England jigsaw, with wooden pieces which I learned to do blindfold, by touching the shapes.

I really wanted to know how far away from London we lived - sadly too far for me to cycle - where Newcastle was (our local TV programmes came from there), and which English county had the highest mountain.

My parents satisfied our curiosity by taking us to all these places.

Every summer we would visit a different corner of Britain. I remember being furious as friends flew off to Majorca, while my dad dragged us across the Lleyn Peninsula (North Wales to you children and Labour MPs) in search of ancient stone circles, or along the top of pebbly Chesil Beach (Dorset, south coast, in between Hampshire and Devon).

But now I'm grateful - it helped me to get to know the country where I was born and brought up. I despair as, on an almost daily basis, London-based PR poppets with Sloane Ranger accents ask: "Where is York - is it near Newcastle?"

People travel far more than they used to and a lot further than in the past. We think nothing of hopping on a train to London, Edinburgh or Bristol.

We drive the length and breadth of England and take ferries across the sea. Some people even have cars with in-built mapping systems to guide them on their journey.

But, handed a map of Britain, it is doubtful whether most of us could accurately place our own home town, let alone other towns and cities.

Then there's the part played by the geography lesson at school. We studied the Nottinghamshire coalfields, the North East shipyards, the fishing industry on the Humber. They're dying trades now. Children are probably learning about shipbuilding on the Baltic, the coalfields of the Ukraine and dolphin-friendly tuna fishing off the Seychelles.

In the days when we didn't travel as much we were more inclined to trawl through gazetteers and guide books to learn about other parts of Britain. Now we don't know and we don't care, and it appears that Cabinet ministers are among the worst offenders.

I only hope they've got enough deckchairs and Kiss-Me-Quick hats in Harrogate should they choose it as their next conference venue.

Updated: 10:55 Monday, July 28, 2003