Students at St Bodgerington Fotheringtons, Surrey, do well in exams (again)...in the face of insurmountable social & economic challenges I'm sure

I'm really stupid. Why is that whenever it's A level results day all the photos you see of celebrating young people feature attractive girls from minor private schools with good press officers?

When a group of us got a load of good results from my Comp in Liverpool my mum wrote to the papers.* She pointed out that whilst this had gone unreported, a series of identical results from the local private girls school was front page news. For something like the third year running.

It's just so blatant. It really shouldn't take much for a journalist to ring up the head of sixth form from one of the big comprehensives every other year and ask "you got any good news stories for us this year" or something. I sometimes get the impression journalists have some sort of code of conduct which forces them to sit their behinds on their wheelie office chair motionless, until some vested interest or other rings them up or faxes them a press release they can chirrup verbatim.

Of course people will simultaneously continue to harp on about how comprehensives are crap, and continue to think that kids from comps who do well only do so because of dumbing down, but should a state school actually appoint a press officer or some such then all hell would break loose about wasted government money.

* Anonymously I think. I certainly asked her to do it anonymously but I can't remember if I won that row or not.

UPDATE: I have absolutely no idea where the photo comes from (other than that it was on the BBC website - so sue me, one man and his dog read this site daily, you'll get thruppence. Just email danielamokachi12@yahoo.co.uk and say you want me to take it down) so I have absolutely no idea whether this young lady is from a minor public school.

Whether she is attractive or not is clearly a subjective judgment and my girlfriend has banned me from considering any other female of the species attractive. This was the only one left on the BBC site at this hour of the morning - there have been a succession of them up all day; all pretty young women. And that's the BBC for god's sake. I shudder to think what the Daily Mail will look like tomorrow.