POO. Poo, poo, poo, poo, poo. Offended?

Personally, I find it about as offensive as the words "willy" and "bum" or, in musical terms, about as jaw-droppingly vulgar as an insipid Westlife record which, coincidentally, my seven-year-old says is commonly regarded in the playground as "a pile of poo".

I do find it offensive, however, when I have to tackle a veritable assault course of excreta whenever I take the kids to school or venture further afield to the shops.

In recent weeks I have noticed a definite increase in the number of doggy deposits left on the pavement. In fact, there now seems to be more poo than pavement.

It's got to the point where I have to slalom the buggy down the road to the school gates, leaving the two-year-old distinctly dizzy and her older brother hanging on to the steering bar for dear life.

And if we go to the shops three streets away, we have to leap, skip and bound over poo after poo after poo, looking like a misguided bunch of over-enthusiastic hopscotchers (or should that be plopscotchers?).

I realise that most dog owners diligently scoop up their pets' poop and pop it in their pocket for later. But there does appear to be a growing number who don't. Either that or there is one heck of a big dog loose on the streets of York with a very explosive stomach complaint.

As a cat owner, I know I should keep my mouth shut. But as a gobby cat owner, I can't.

I know my moggies are not perfect, and I'm sure my very patient neighbours will back me up on that one, but that doesn't veto any opinion I might have about dogs.

Dog doo-doo on the street is a big no-no. Pick it up, pocket it and put it in the bin.

Honestly, if I have to scrape excrement off my kids' boots with a lolly stick or scrub the buggy wheels with a dock leaf one more time, I'm liable to explode, leaving my own sticky mess for dog walkers to inadvertently stroll through.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not so offended that I'm going to dress up as a terrorist and march wielding a badly written banner in one hand and a flaming torch in the other on the local dogs' home.

But I might just draw a bitingly satirical cartoon and shove it through the nearest dog owner's letterbox (and no, that is not a bum-related euphemism).

EVERYTHING is not right with the world. There is a queasy, topsy-turvy atmosphere about the sphere at the moment and, to be honest, I don't like it.

We have a Labour government that appears to be more right wing and controlling than its liberal-leaning Tory counterparts.

If you want a juicy political scandal you have to look to the Liberal Democrats, who have dumped their knit-your-own-muesli cardigans in favour of studded, leather biker jackets.

And our education minister appears to have been kidnapped and replaced by a plucky little choir boy whose voice has just broken.

The Danes are being pilloried as racists while, closer to home, the BNP claims the high ground, wallowing like pigs in sh...ockingly muddy conditions after multiple "not guilty" verdicts.

Soldiers are dying with dreadful regularity trying to enforce democracy in Iraq, while we all pretend that Guantanamo Bay is a lovely little holiday spot off the coast of Portugal and not a shameful breach of human rights.

But that is not the worst of it.

Smash Hits, the young popsters' bible since I was in polka dot ra-ra skirts, has printed its last lyric, while Leo Sayer is riding high in the charts.

It can only be a matter of time before the entire planet spontaneously combusts.

Updated: 10:49 Monday, February 13, 2006