Peter Hill

BRITAIN’S education system has been the victim of multiple experiments, few of which have been improvements. One of the most idiotic changes has been the idea that everyone should go to university.

Students used to get grants to pay for their keep with parents contributing according to their means. The state picked up tuition fees. Now that more than half of all school leavers go to university that system is deemed no longer affordable and the now discredited student loan was invented.

But an even bigger mess is on the cards with variable tuition fees. Under this scheme degree courses that lead to potentially higher salaries will cost more than arts and social science subjects. Lines will be drawn inevitably leading to unfairness and many students will end up on courses that are wrong for them just because they are cheaper.

Many young people would be far better off following a practical career but the accent on academic achievement has made that choice seem inferior and in any case genuine apprenticeships are rare. One of the reasons East European tradesmen have become so popular is that they are better trained than homegrown workers.

The whole thrust of our education system needs to take a big step back in time to when it reflected individual abilities and the country’s needs instead of some idealised dream. q THERE are two conclusions to be drawn from Jeremy Corbyn’s meetings with Czech spy Jan Sarkocy during the 1980s: he either knew that the man was a secret agent or believed he was a harmless diplomat.

If the former then Mr Corbyn was potentially betraying his country to its enemies. If the latter then he must be thick.

Whatever, the Labour leader is unfit to be prime minister and his party, now in the hands of the Britain-hating ultra-Left, can’t be trusted with power. q IT MUST be spring. Well, the sun was shining at the weekend and immediately people were eating outside and driving around topless – in cars with their hoods down, I mean. I also saw many walking around in shorts. Yet it wasn’t that warm. Apart from a couple of months a year, and even then the weather is dodgy, Britain will never be a Mediterranean-style country. But we live in hope and that gives me a warm feeling. q THE cost of renting a home is nearly £1,000 a year more than buying, the biggest gap ever, according to the Halifax, but the high price of property makes it increasingly hard for young people because they can’t find the deposit. Only one in four young middle-income families has their own home and most are stuck renting.

Home ownership and its obvious benefits should be the backbone of Conservative Party policy and much more needs to be done to give young people a start.

We don’t want another sub-prime crisis but Britain is one of the world’s leading finance centres and surely we have enough brains to work something out, perhaps on the lines of part ownership at first. q FLYING kites “annoyingly” and climbing trees “without reasonable excuse” will become crimes with fines up to £500 in the London borough of Wandsworth. They are among 49 activities such as impromptu football, cricket and metal detecting to face a ban. The council claims that 87 per cent of local people are in favour of the new rules.

We are entering a new dark age in which freedom is gradually slipping away: freedom to speak, even to think, freedom to play. Enough laws already exist to deal with bad behaviour but councils are becoming drunk on power to control people, and collect fines.

Suddenly I feel a pressing need to climb trees and fly a kite annoyingly just for the hell of it. That’s the danger of rules – they’re meant to be broken. q I DON’T know how we shall fill our time once the Winter Olympics is over. In common with probably everyone I’ve become an expert on short-track speed skating, aerial skiing and skeleton, but I just can’t get into curling. And why would anyone need to take drugs to do it, as some Russian has been accused of? I suppose curling must be interesting to those taking part but as a spectator sport it’s about as exciting as lawn cultivation. q THEY can’t help it. I’m talking about the NHS’s addiction to hiring managers. Their number has increased by a quarter in the past five years, far outnumbering new doctors and nurses. More than 150 NHS organisations were abolished in 2013 in reforms designed to cut bureaucracy but since then more than 6,000 managers have been appointed, many rehired in places where they had been given redundancy payoffs.

There has also been a big increase in senior managers earning average salaries of more than £77,000. The pensions bill for all these bosses will be a monumental drain on taxpayers.

A doctor friend who works in an NHS hospital despairs that new managers are being hired to manage the managers, often countermanding each other and getting in the way of treatment. Madness. q I RECENTLY bought one of those shopping bags which scrunch up into a little pouch that fits into a pocket. I feel intensely smug when the checkout person asks if I need to buy a new plastic bag then I produce my magic carrier. I adore the cute thing and won’t let anyone else use it. It’s become a kind of pet. Daft or what!