Megan Stammers, the girl who ran away to another world Even discounting those posts, the 15 year-old's messages would raise questions had they been found in the traditional teenage place to disclose: the diary hidden in the back of a drawer, or under a pillow. "Talking to my mum about how good my best friends [sic] love life is and she goes 'what is yours like then?,"" wrote Megan on May 12; "hahaha... you literally have no idea." The teacher/teenager relationship is - sadly - nothing new, but there is something different about this story. Confusion reigns: when exactly were staff at Bishop Bell school, Eastbourne, made aware of a possible relationship between a staff member and pupil? Had Megan and her teacher really held hands on a flight back from Los Angeles, and if so, why didn't the other teachers on the trip notice their behaviour? Why did nobody - not the school, nor the council, nor the police - inform both the parents of any suspicions? Didn't both her mother and her stepfather - the man she held so dear that she adopted his surname and called him Dad - have a right to know that the teacher they sent their daughter to for extra tuition was possibly abusing his position of trust? And how did Megan manage to flirt with her teacher on one of the world's most popular sites without anybody noticing? In the past decade, the landscape of adolescence has changed so drastically as to be unrecognisable. This story only highlights that. It isn't just that children now go on school trips to Los Angeles, it's that they can travel into online worlds and "social"" networks without their parents even realising they have done so. Whereas the tortured teenager of yesteryear could only hide their feelings in locked diaries or share them in muffled phone calls on landlines to which the whole household would be privy, adolescents with their own mobile phones and laptops live unguarded and unbothered by parents whom they can all too easily outsmart technologically. For many of these children - no matter how "mature," a 15 year-old is still a child - these years will thankfully pass off without incident. Others will not be so lucky. They might end up being groomed by their teacher on Bebo, as happened several years ago to two former female pupils at Megan's school. They can be contacted on Facebook by men like Nicholas Bull, who was jailed last year after he posed as a disabled boy of 13 and raped a 12-year-old girl. Or they can send personal messages to 30-year-old teachers on Twitter without fear of being found out - or at least not until it is much, much too late. This harsh virtual reality should not be ignored. It is Forrest who has robbed this poor girl of her childhood. But in truth, Megan ran away to another sinister world a long time ago. It's just that nobody noticed. Even Lagarde can't have it all In an interview with the American network NBC, Christine Lagarde has announced that women can't have it all. If you try to juggle motherhood and a career, "you must accept there will be failures." Easy for the head of the IMF to say, perhaps - but in an age of superwomen, her realism is refreshing. Ditto her way of dealing with patronising men (oh yes, despite having the top job she still gets treated like a little girl). "The best defence when that happens is a very good and solid sense of humour," says Lagarde. They are human beings as well. They have wives, they have daughters. The former French minister of finance lives her life according to the advice of her former synchronised swimming coach: "When it's tough, grit your teeth and smile." It might work for you, Christine, but best not mention it to anyone in the eurozone right now. If only Britain was more like 'Downton Julian Fellowes thinks that living the Downton Abbey life can make people happy. A huge house, domestic staff... yes, I think that would probably put a smile on most faces. Of course, what Lord Fellowes actually thinks is that if we behaved as we did in the Twenties, we'd be a lot better off than we are now. With any working society, one of the key factors is that everyone should have some respect for everyone else. Downton shows how that worked. I would like it back. He adds that he hopes the show inspires viewers to be "more courteous." Does he live in cloud cuckoo land? I'm not sure that the man I recently witnessed elbowing a pregnant lady out of the way on the Tube watches Downton Abbey. The woman I saw spitting on the street the other day - I bet you she doesn't watch Downton Abbey. And as for Andrew Mitchell - he clearly doesn't watch it either. ITV is far too plebeian. Sadly for Lord Fellowes, and for the country as a whole, I fear that the programme that informs manners nowadays is the one that immediately precedes Downton - The X Factor. It has made it perfectly acceptable for people to shout each other down. Rudeness is the norm. Bulldozing anyone who stands in the way of your dream is fine, even if that dream simply happens to be a train seat and the obstacle is a woman six months" gone. If only Lady Grantham could see the tripe that comes before her on a Sunday evening - she'd be horrified. Please put this woman in charge... I don't think the Queen should be worried about the revelation by Frank Gardner, the BBC security correspondent, on the Today programme that she found the ongoing Abu Hamza extradition saga frustrating. It may have been a massive breach of royal protocol to reveal details of a private conversation with Her Majesty, but in my eyes it only underlines how fabulous the woman is. She gets just as wound up as the rest of us. She shares our frustrations and our irritations and, goddammit, she's not afraid to let the Home Secretary know it. Would someone please put the woman in charge? It is often thought that the Royal family are out of touch with the people they rule over, and in some cases that is probably true. I don't get the sense that Prince Andrew could give much of a fig about the radical cleric's latest temporary reprieve, do you? But you can't deny that the Queen truly cares about the United Kingdom. On a visit to the LSE four years ago, the monarch asked economists what the entire nation wanted to know: why nobody had seen the credit crunch coming. Her opinion of Hamza is hard to argue with, and is yet more proof of how in touch she is with her subjects: the Queen truly is the voice of the people. A few more revelations like this, and we might even silence some republicans.