IF EVER there was an instance of flawed priorities, it was provided by former swimming teacher Jacqui King, of Trawden, who this week railed in this newspaper against the County Council halving schools' swimming lessons.

For we carried her outburst on the same night that we carried reports of a toddler who died after falling into a swimming pool at Mellor and of the harrowing search for a seven-year-old who fell into the canal near his home at Blackburn.

Neither child, I know, could be fairly described as a victim of these cuts. But do not these tragedies underline the point that water safety for children is not some leisure aspect of the school curriculum deserving of economy, but a necessary subject which it is foolish and dangerous to curtail?

Among the things the County considers essential for funding - to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money that could pay for more children's swimming lessons - is a service duplicating those of the Benefits Agency and numerous bodies like the Citizen's Advice Bureaux, Age Concern, Counsel and Care, etc., advising people how to claim state benefits.

One can understand, therefore, why taxpayers and parents might go off the deep end about their warped sense of responsibility.

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