Kirsty Bosley: Extortionate expenses, the ice bucket fund & a meteor strike

What do you get when you add up the money it costs to maintain a £65,000 Jaguar, £3,000 on first class rail travel and hundreds of meals at top end restaurants? Got a figure, class?

Now multiply that number by the amount of unscrupulous academy bosses that are enjoying spending public money on extravagances while teachers are working all hours for a relative pittance educating the next generation, hoping to mould them into decent members of society. Know what that equals?

Well, judging by the expenses of Ian Cleland and other academy bosses, you get around £1 million. A million public pounds spent on unnecessary rubbish at everyone else's expense. Cheers, guys. . .

The figures were revealed in a Freedom of Information request and they showed that the 40 biggest academy trusts in the country spent more than £1m on executive expenses in the last four years. Expenses alone!

Ian earns £180,000 a year in his role, so it's not like he doesn't have money to splash on a nice car if he, you know, actually saves for it like a normal, fair person. So you know who he is, Ian oversees operations at Bristnall Hall Academy, Oldbury; North Walsall Primary Academy; Pool Hayes Academy, Willenhall; and Jubilee Academy Mossley, Bloxwich.

The figures also showed that more than half of the largest 50 chains pay their chief executives more than the prime minister's salary of £143,000. So why are they allowed to get away with this? Well, it's quite easy to apparently. I can't imagine Ian's going to care that the public are outraged, because he'll be too busy waxing his Jag with £50 notes and then revving his high powered engine really loudly outside his lavish house to notice the fury.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world has become more wretched recently, or is it just that I only seem to notice it now I work in news?

It's like when people complain that Wagon Wheels have shrunk. Have they really? Or are our hands just bigger? Has the world gone mad? Or was it always? I think it's likely the former.

For example, earlier this week I learnt that ambulance staff lost a total of 393 hours waiting in queues to transfer patients at Shropshire's two main hospitals last month.

It turns out that they could instead have attended a potential 164 of the most serious 'red calls' in that time. I'd make a joke about how British that is – to spend your life in a queue.

But it's not funny, because it could be that lives are expiring while ambulances hang around playing a waiting game through no fault of the staff inside them.

I don't know, it just feels as though no one actually cares about our schools or health services anymore. . .

Talking about people pretending to care, it's been impossible to avoid Hillary Clinton this week as she became the first female nominee of a major US political party.

One of the biggest points that she (and existing First Lady Michelle Obama) have enjoyed making is that Hillary is a woman, therefore she's shattering glass ceilings (cue huge production screens showing glass cracking) and leading the way for any other little girls who dream of growing up to achieve great things.

And while, as a feminist, I agree that this is quite pleasant in a way, I also think it's a shame that it's not a nicer woman doing it. It's quite sad, actually, that it's not a better human who's inspiring the young women of the world. Because if you strip away the fact that Hillary is female, she just looks to me like another slightly dodgy politician with a sharp brain capable of pulling off deceitful things. And the world needs another one of them as much as a gigantic meteor strike.

But what's the other option? Donald Trump? Sometimes I wonder if a gigantic meteor strike would be a better option after all.

And then there's people that others thought didn't care but who actually do.

Confused? I'll explain. Remember the ice bucket challenge? It was heavily criticised as a stupid stunt that many took part in on social media, where people poured a bucket of cold water over their heads to 'raise awareness' of ALS. But now those sceptics can laugh firmly on the other side of their face, as the money raised has funded an important scientific gene discovery!

The ALS Association has said that scientists have identified a gene which contributes to the disease. This is a great step forward in research, and one that your mate Steve could never have expected when he half-drowned himself in the garden in 2014 showing off to his pals. In fact, the ice bucket challenge raised more than £80m, and has funded six research projects. If only photos of girls' legs in the bath or screenshots of Pokémon GO contributed to the greater good.

Talking of Pokémon GO, I can't understand why people are moaning about it.

The game gets people up off their bums and out into the fresh air. How can it be bad? It certainly gives people something else to do than watching back-to-back episodes of Orange is the New Black (though that's definitely my chosen pastime).

This week I read that those who binge telly shows for hours are at risk of dying, according to Japanese scientists. Erm, aren't we all at risk of dying? Isn't that the only thing we can really be sure of in this world?

The brainboxes have concluded that someone who watches an extra two hours of telly per day is more likely to get a blood clot in their lungs.

The researchers studied the viewing habits of 86,000 people between 1988 and 1990, and then monitored their health over the next two decades.

It wasn't great news for those who prefer to stay at home watching Sopranos than going out for brisk walks, but at least they didn't die before seeing the series finale. That would be devastating.

Hang on. Does this mean that the Japanese have discovered that Pokémon actually saves lives?!