PAKatie Price with her children Junior, Harvey and Princess
The former glamour model revealed on the reality TV show last week that the taxpayer foots the bill for a private driver to take Harvey and a nurse from her home in West Sussex to his school in Wimbledon, south London.
Arguing it would cost her £1,000 a day to fund the 100-mile round trip herself, Price, 36, said: "Do you know how f****** expensive that would be? Ridiculous.
"To have a driver to take me to London and back is up to a grand a day."
In a stretch limo, maybe, but local mini-cab firms have quoted the return fare at around £130 per day or £650 per week.
That might be a "stupid amount" of money to us but it is pocket change to Price, who charges thousands of pounds per public appearance.
So she could afford to pay but should she?
The trouble with denying rich people taxpayer-funded benefits is where does it end?
Should Price not be entitled to have her bins emptied or use A&E, either?
Like her or loathe her, this woman has paid more in tax than many of us will earn in a lifetime.
I'm all for millionaires voluntarily giving back state handouts such as the winter fuel allowance and free TV licence but if you have paid into the welfare state you are entitled to use it as much as the next person.
Otherwise, it would cease to be free at the point of delivery to all.
Of course Price should have exercised more discretion in claiming the free transport but, then again, so should the local authority in offering it.
The mother of a deaf and blind disabled boy who has to spend three hours on buses taking him to school has branded Price's state-funded taxi "unfair" and who can blame her?
Erin Howe, 30, was told her four-yearold son Riley's free transport would be cut when she moved him to a private school because the local state school was not able to meet his complex medical needs.
Newcastle Council pays the private school fees but not the transport due to its "limited resources."
I can understand Price's local education authority, West Sussex County Council, paying to transport children within, say, a 25-mile radius but a 100-mile round trip seems a step too far.
Price's spokesman has blamed the Government for "closing special needs schools" over the past 15 years, resulting in Harvey being educated so far away but it was also Katie's choice to live in West Sussex.
I appreciate she has four other children to consider but if Harvey's needs are the greatest, she should consider moving closer to Wimbledon, not least to spare the poor lad such a long journey.
I have every sympathy with Price's predicament.
She has more than the average parent to contend with in bringing up a boy with a statement of special educational needs.
And where is Harvey's father in all this?
According to Price, Dwight Yorke hasn't "paid a penny" towards his son's upbringing, which is arguably an even bigger scandal.
In an interview in 2012 Price insisted: "I don't think if you've got money it makes it easier.
"All the money in the world isn't going to buy him a pair of eyes.
"All the money in the world isn't going to change his autism."
No, but money does afford you certain freedoms.
Unlike Price, the woman who spends three hours a day on the bus with her disabled son has no other choice.
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FORGET the mumbled dialogue, rambling plot and Charlotte Rampling's fading eyesight, the most troubling thing about Broadchurch has to be David Tennant's fringe.
How much money must ITV have spent on hair gel?
It is like he belongs in one of those Studioline adverts from the 1980s which featured overly coiffured models inexplicably playing saxophones.
That said, the second series is worth watching just for the banter between Tennant's character DI Hardy and DS Miller, played by Olivia Colman.
They remind me a little bit of Jasper Carrott and Robert Powell in The Detectives.
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I AM already champing at the bit to watch the new Shaun The Sheep movie because it is one of the children's favourites.
But news of a new character who looks more like Ed Miliband than Wallace of Gromit fame makes it an even more irresistible prospect.
Aardman Animations seemingly could not resist poking fun at the world's worse bacon sandwich eater by creating a waiter out of Plasticine who bears an uncanny resemblance to the Labour leader.
Forget lowering the voting age to 16, all Ed has to do to win the May election is to open up the polls to five-year-olds.
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AUSTRALIAN prime minister Tony Abbott's decision to give the Duke of Edinburgh the Order of Australia has been widely mocked Down Under.
The Australian newspaper described Prince Philip as a "symbol not just of another time but another country", who is "celebrated by Brits for his howlers and gaffes" while politicians on all sides queued up to condemn the move.
Perhaps The Australian should be renamed The Ageist.
Still soldiering on at 93, Philip has devoted his whole life to serving Queen, country and Commonwealth.
Exactly how many of these critical MPs saw action in the Second World War fighting for freedom, I wonder?
How quickly these Australians forget the sacrifices people of Philip's generation made for all the Allied countries, not just Britain.
This is a man who was mentioned in dispatches for his bravery, for heaven's sake, not some out-oftouch royal hanger-on.
Philip was commended for his courage during the battle of Cape Matapan in 1941 when, as a 19-year-old naval officer aboard HMS Valiant, he was charged with picking out enemy ships by searchlight.
Two years later he became one of the youngest officers to be made second-incommand of a ship and is credited with a remarkable act of heroism that saved thousands of lives during the invasion of Sicily.
If it hadn't have been for the then 21-year-old first lieutenant's quick thinking aboard HMS Wallace, the ship would have been sunk by a Luftwaffe bomber.
That, combined with almost 63 years of public service as the Queen's consort, somewhat begs the question: What more does a man have to do to deserve a knighthood in Australia?
Perhaps it all boils down to the fact that Philip is such an enthusiastic supporter of English cricket.
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