Me. I struggle to get dinner on the table seven nights a week.

There's too much happening in my little world to be concerned about what's happening in the wider world. If there are things that are going to affect me, like interest rate hikes or a warming planet, then I guess one day they will affect me, and, given what usually happens, I won't even notice and just get on with the business of getting on.

Is it just me or does everyone operate in this microclimate of existence? How do people find the time to be concerned? (If I'm honest, the answer would probably be these people spend less time watching reality television.) Are we doing ourselves a disservice living this way, or is it a good thing to focus on things that immediately affect you?

But then sometimes I feel guilty. Feel as though I should know more about things. Or at least enough information to be able to bluff my way through a conversation with a colleague.

So in the interest of knowledge here's a few news items that have caught my eye this week.

■ Public v Private: I'm a firm believer that good kids will learn anywhere. I'm the product of the public system and there's nothing wrong with me. But I wouldn't send my kids to one. We've recently made the leap to the independent system and couldn't be happier, for so many reasons. Occasionally, however, I still find myself having to justify our decision. Sometimes even to myself. It's not cheap. But you get what you pay for. And I hate the stereotype of families who send their kids to independent schools. The families of the children my children go to school with are the same sorts of families they went to school with in the Catholic system. They are mid-level public servants, single parents, builders, stay-at-home mothers, even struggling journalists. The one thing they have in common is that they want what's best for their children and believe an education is worth spending the money on. I don't know enough about the Gonski Report to get too opinionated. All I know is that I'd be first in line to send my kids to a school that provided Book Week costumes. No matter how much money it cost me.

■ Pussy Riot: Apparently this isn't referring to the feline cacophony in the neighbourhood on Wednesday night before the thunderstorm. Pussy Riot is a Russian feminist punk-rock group based in Moscow. (Thanks Wiki.) Three members - Maria Vladimirovna Alyokhina, Yekaterina Stanislavovna Samutsevich and Nadezhda Andreyevna Tolokonnikova - (three names I won't remember by the end of this column) - were last week sentenced to two years' jail after they were busted singing in a church in Moscow. Apparently that's terrible for a number of reasons.

There's suggestions that Russian President Vladimir Putin is in too tight with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. There's the fact that two of them have children. That they're women in the first place. (See, women shouldn't have opinions, it's just safer.) I did Google it all and found an interesting article in The Irish Times from Rory Fitzgerald - just search on his name and ''Pussy Riot''.

''Pussy Riot have provoked an outpouring of hypocrisy across the Western world. The very media outlets that praise the band loudest are studiously careful to censor certain facts about their newly anointed heroes for free speech,'' he writes.

''For example, few report that previous protests by members of the group include staging an orgy in a Moscow museum and publicly masturbating with a chicken leg in a supermarket. Nor are the lyrics of their songs - deeply offensive to many Christians - usually printed. Instead, we are presented with an airbrushed picture of pretty, idealistic heroines making a brave stand against tyranny. The truth is more complex than this.''

Who knows what to think now. All I know is I like their balaclavas. Such pretty colours.

■ Howzat! and The Newsroom: Two fabulous shows in the one week. Television is news. And in both cases, to some extent, news is television. Howzat! was a more than nostalgic look back at the beginnings of World Series Cricket, it was an insight into Kerry Packer and how bloody clever he was. And determined. The first instalment recorded the highest result for a mini-series in OzTAM ratings history, securing a peak audience of 2.433 million. The finale is tomorrow night on WIN at 8.30pm and I can't wait to see how it plays out. For someone who grew up on the early days of WSC I was rapt.

And then on Monday was The Newsroom. I really grew up on The West Wing, a show which made the world seem smaller, I was watching it the night the Twin Towers fell down, and The Newsroom is the latest series by West Wing creator and writer Aaron Sorkin. The series centres on news anchor Will McAvoy, played wonderfully by Jeff Daniels, and looks at how news can shape public opinion, not just report it. If you missed the opening scenes of this show, on Foxtel's SoHo channel at 8.30pm on Mondays, find it online. The bit about America not being the greatest country in the world is worth an Emmy on its own.

■ Good news: But my favourite story of the week is the one about the Brown Council, a group which ''pays tribute to the Country Women's Association and women's work'', in general.

On Tuesday the Brown Council will, in the name of art, attempt to bake all 137 cake recipes from the CWA cookbook Jam Drops and Marble Cakes in 90 hours.

''The traditional homely domestic action of baking has such positive connotations of feeding people, generosity and nurturing. But when you turn that into an endurance act and you have to bake 137 cakes in 90 hours, it will become grotesque in the sense that there will be failures of the cakes,'' says Diana Smith, a member of the Brown Council. ''We will be exhausted. We will make mistakes, and it will test our physical limits.''

Women's work indeed.

Twitter: @karenhardyCT