The John Blunt column

TONY and Cherie Blair, it seems, are at it again.

Unfazed by the row over sending their two sons to the elite, grant-maintained London Oratory School which is alleged to select pupils in a back-door fashion through parental interviews, the couple are apparently eyeing for their daughter's secondary education a top-rated London comprehensive which is accused of operating a secret admissions policy based on pupils' ability.

If Mr and Mrs Blair are seeking the best education for their children, they are absolutely wise to do so. It should be every parents' right.

But that's the point - it isn't. And it is Labour policy to ensure it isn't. For not only does it insist that the old baleful recipe for mediocrity in education - the hallmark of the comprehensive system - must be stuck to rigidly by refusing schools the right to select pupils on the basis of academic ability, it is ramming the message home with a total ban on selection next year.

Yet if the Blairs are happy to give their children the benefit of selective education - even if, as alleged, it operated on a nod and a wink basis at the schools they prefer for them - does it not pong of double standards when the policy for everyone else's kids is denial of the same kind of opportunity.

Full marks, then, Tony and Cherie, for wanting the best for your sons and daughter. But a star for hypocrisy may be merited too.

Drug bill could be cut at a stroke

QUITE rightly, the government is seeking to reduce the £5billion a year that it costs for the pills and potions prescribed by family doctors.

But they are going about it the wrong way when, according to leaks this week, they may limit the number of prescriptions a GP can write.

For isn't the real problem with the ever-rising drugs bill, now rocketing by eight per cent a year, that too many people are exempt from payment of the £5.65 per item charge?

Go to any chemists and see how many in the ever-present queue actually hand over any cash. The last time I had this experience, a young woman in front of me with enough diamond rings on her fingers to open a jeweller's shop was happily signing the exemption form on the back of her multi-item prescription.

The system is too lax. Three out of five people qualify for free medicines, but it is ridiculous to assume that 60 per cent of the population is too hard up to pay.

If the set-up was tightened so that only the truly poor - those qualifying for Income Support - got free prescriptions, then the government would not have to stoop to the dubious dodge of putting the half-nelson on family doctors to bring down a drugs bill which they could themselves address at a stroke if they had the sense and political guts.

Punishment did not fit the crime

EVIDENTLY, Judge Raymond Bennett believed that the pair of Blackburn wrong 'uns up before him last week deserved jail.

Would-be burglars Hugh Liddy and Gareth Cox had, after all, been caught after they kicked their way into the town's Comet store.

And Judge Bennett told Burnley Crown Court that he would not like it to be thought that people who tried to raid commercial premises would be dealt with in any other way than by a custodial sentence.

Owners of commercial premises, I am sure, would agree.

So why did the judge then give this pair probation?

Amazingly, it was because an accomplice in the crime had already been let off just as lightly by magistrates - though he was older and had a comparable criminal record to the "appalling" one of 28-year-old Liddy.

So "purely for the sake of parity" he let them off lightly too. Well, parity may have been served. But justice? Is it not a double insult to that premiss when, just because the magistrates have been too soft, a judge in a higher court must mechanically endorse that folly?

It is a pity Judge Bennett did not heed his own opinion of what punishment fitted this crime and, in sending the pair down as they deserved, delivered a rightful rap to the weak JPs.

Besides which, isn't there supposed to be a system for upping the sentences of those deemed to have got off too lightly? Judge Bennett's opposite way, it seems, was to round the rest down in such an instance.

Pampered to the point of disgust

CLEARLY, East Lancashire couple David and Jil Atkinson have plenty of brass, having spent £20,000 on diamond-studded collar for their cat. But, really, aren't they a hard-up pair?

For isn't there a rich naivety in the explanation for this extravagance? "If you can afford it, why not pamper your pet," says David. Yet, for that outlook, never mind the expense, to have a real reward, it would require this mollycoddled moggy, with nought but the intelligence of a dumb animal, to know and appreciate the fact that it has got 40 sparklers strung about its precious neck.

Can it? Of course, not. For all it knows or cares, it might as well have tapeworm. Pampered it isn't.

Thus, either Mr and Mrs Atkinson are dearly deluding themselves or, as I am sure many others believe, have simply found a fancy way of pampering themselves. It's their money and they can do what they like with it.

But they ought not to be surprised if the reaction of ordinary folk in East Lancashire is not one of envy, but disgust - when there are so many poor people and animals in the world that might truly benefit from a bit of pampering on this scale.

The opinions expressed by John Blunt are not necessarily those of the paper.

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