THE words of the week appear to have been stress and pressure. Certainly Gordon Brown looked as though he was feeling both during his battering at PMQs.

By all accounts Mr Brown is not the only one feeling the strain. A national report published yesterday says children face excessive pressure to do well at school and conform to the commercial values of the modern world, family life is breaking down and the culture of respect is disappearing. Youngsters are also worried about safety and security in their immediate environment as well as more global issues such as climate change, pollution and, somewhat implausibly I think, the gap between rich and poor nations. If we take this report at face value, then we've got a huge problem on our hands. How to dispel what can only be described as a depressing mood of national anxiety among our assessed, obsessed and depressed future adults. If they feel this bad now, heaven help them and society in general when they grow up.

Solutions? I don't have any except a rather vague notion that we ought to be more optimistic in our outlook, rather than relentessly gloomy and pessimistic - difficult words for you to swallow from a journalist, I am sure. David Cameron was derided for saying something about letting the sunshine in during a speech last year, but he may be onto something. Barack Obama, who may yet be the next US President, wrote an entire book on the subject called The Audacity of Hope. And Ronald Reagan was hugely popular for his eternal optimism. This may all sound like a lot of political psychobabble. But the alternative is just to depressing to dwell on for too long.