DON'T the do-gooders ever tire of their nannying nagging?

I'm sure the kids on the receiving end this week must be punch-drunk as they are exhorted to bike or walk to school and have a banana when they get there -- though, of course, a nice tropical fruit or cool, crisp apple is just what youngsters are sure fancy when they arrive soaking wet through on a dark, cold, chucking-it-down winter's morning.

"By 'eck, that bracing open-air trip doesn't half give you an appetite for a satsuma," you can hear them saying. "Who'd want a burger instead?"

Yes, we all know the reasons for the cycle-to-school plan -- dusted off last week by County Councillor Alan Whittaker, the man with the portfolio for Lancashire's kids, from a 1944 penny-a-mile incentive scheme that operated when wartime petrol rationing meant that most of what few cars there were then were off the road for the duration.

The same thinking applies to Walk to School Week now afoot, if you'll pardon the pun.

It's aimed at getting today's supposedly slobby youngsters fit and cutting the pollution and congestion created by them being dropped off and picked up at school by car. The so-called 'school run,' after all, accounts for 20 per cent. of all cars journeys during the weekday morning peak.

But what if droves of unfit kids are being driven by car? What business is it of councils to interfere with the choice of their parents? What business is it, too, of the government to fork out £20 million a year of taxpayers' money on free fruit for tens of thousands of four and six-year-olds to make them healthy -- when they may not want it?

I'll tell you why parents don't want their kids riding bikes or walking to school. The streets and roads are not safe -- from either paedophiles or fast traffic. But even if they were, who -- apart from the patronising, anti-car health brigade -- would want their kids to trudge or cycle even a few hundred yards in the rain, snow or cold to and from school?

It's a question of freedom of choice and what parents are understandably choosing is the better lifestyle for their kids than the ones they had. It may not be a healthier lifestyle and it may create congestion and pollution outside schools, but if that's what they prefer and if it means kids munching junk food snacks in the back seat as they are chauffeured, they have every right to it.