NICE as it sounds, is not there something wimpish about the scheme being launched -- on a slipway greased with £250,000 of lottery cash -- for youngsters in East Lancashire secondary schools to act as 'buddies' to final-year primary pupils in order to help them survive their forthcoming switch to big kids' school?

I mean, how did generations of youngsters manage to make the transition without suffering emotional scars before any of this mardy hand-holding took place?

The worst any new arrival at secondary school underwent was a traditional first-day playground scragging from second-year pupils who had undergone the experience themselves a year earlier.

It was all part of life's rough and tumble that beneficially taught youngsters to accept life's knocks, find their way and stand on their own two feet.

And being pitched without any fancy preparation into secondary education was part of the process.

But, now, on top of advance visits for primary pupils, we have this soppy 'buddy' business.

No real harm done, I suppose, other than the youngsters' self-sufficiency being retarded through being wrapped in layers of cotton wool.

But what I can't understand is why all of this should absorb thousands of pounds of lottery cash.

Where and on what might it be spent if all that's really entailed is one kid at one school being put in touch with one at another to swap questions and answers? Whether this process is done in person, by phone, by letter or by e-mail, I cannot see why it is costing a chunk of the quarter of a million pounds that East Lancashire schools are getting for 'out of hours' learning programmes.

I am not against lottery cash being ploughed into public services, but I can think of better candidates than nanny 'buddy' schemes -- starting with the NHS and cutting the waits for patients in the queue for heart surgery or providing cancer patients with the drugs they cannot get because of cost-cutting.