This week we've been enduring the special hell that is buying a new terms' worth of school uniforms, and cursing our short-sightedness in not snapping them up in July, when they first hit the shops. How we laughed then, as a whole summer stretched balmily before us. How we cry now, as we bicker over skirt-length with a sulky pre-teen who's spent summer in denim cutoffs and a Jessie J t-shirt, and simultaneously lever a beanstalk twelve-year-old into ten-year-old trousers (the only size left on the rails).
Afterwards, this article by Suzanne Moore got us thinking. Why do we do this to our children (and ourselves)? Do school uniforms, as Suzanne argues, exist only to turn our children into faceless conformists? Or are they an important social leveller, allowing poorer children to opt out of the pressure to consume, and protecting them from bullying?
So our blog-prompt this week is all about uniforms. A quick poll at Bloggers HQ reveals one super-conformist who loved her Clarks' t-bars, and two defiant gals who hitched up school skirts till they were, effectively, belts. What did you think of yours as a child? Have your opinions changed since then - or do you still rail against the tyranny of uniform? Do they serve a useful social function, or do they really belong in the past?
Over to you - do let us know if you blog on this subject here on the thread, and we'll tweet them far and wide. Or if time's against you - perhaps you are busy ironing on name-tags 
- let us know what you think here on the thread.