The John Blunt column

WHAT an eloquent summary of New Labour's progressive thinking it is that the government is seeking to raise the age limit for buying cigarettes from 16 to 18 while a majority of its MPs are poised to lower the age of homosexual consent from 18 to 16.

And what an insight into their priorities.

Yet are they in tune with those of the public - a criterion Tony Blair sets for the People's Government when it comes to making policy?

Are they hell as like!

But thanks to this politically-correct philosophy for a better Britain, we face the prospect of sixth formers sneaking back behind the bicycle shed when they want a drag - and happily enjoying the freedom of openly having a fag.

What moral madness!

Lesson from tiny isle

ISN'T it a damning indictment of trendy teaching methods in our schools that children evacuated from the volcano-ravaged island of Montserrat turn out to be a year ahead in learning over their English classmates?

You would expect that a poor and tiny West Indian island could only run to a rudimentary education system and that, as a result, standards would be much lower. But they are not. Right across the board - in reading, writing, arithmetic, science and behaviour - children from Montserrat excel.

So much so that parents, fearing they will slip backwards because of the low standards to which they are exposed in English schools, are sending them to special Saturday classes to ensure their education does not suffer.

Yet should we not be learning a lesson from this? For however rudimentary education was back in Montserrat, they kept the old-fashioned rudiments that British schools ditched - at the hands of the trendies and their belief that the kids' creativity and confidence suffered if they were exposed to disciplined teaching, competition and emphasis on the three Rs.

And isn't there another clue to where we are going wrong - when we find that pupils in Montserrat were still sitting the tougher GCE O-levels that this country replaced with the virtually-impossible-to-fail GCSEs whose annually soaring pass rate suggests that our by-the-Montserrat-contrast thickies are actually all young Einsteins?

If nothing else, Tony Blair, with his pledges to stop the rot, ought to appoint every teacher from Montserrat to the schools inspection service over here - with the power to root out the trendies and their discredited claptrap.

Oddballs all at sea in the C of E

GIVEN that the Church of England finds itself capable of condoning all kinds of things the the Bible condemns - last week a senior official said homosexual couples could make better parents than married ones and the General Synod gave a silent nod to living in sin - it should come as no surprise that godlessness is now the creed of more than 70 of its priests.

They have joined a group called the Sea of Faith which does not believe God exists, but regards him as a nice human invention - and, as such, are happy to go along with religious ideas, rituals and the Christian way of life.

Not that this need trouble their flock, apparently. "I wouldn't tell people that Father Christmas didn't exist - it's the same as that," said one. It would be all very well if these abstract-minded oddballs were all locked in one church pantomiming to one another for their own edification.

But they are not - they are out there in parishes hoodwinking the faithful and living off them.

And since few of them are prepared to publicly admit their membership of this no-God cult, they are, surely, deliberate deceivers.

Time, then, for the Archbishop of Canterbury to outlaw these heretics - even if it would only be a small start in the bigger job that's needed.

One's got it wrong

SCUTTLING the redundant Royal Yacht Britannia , we are told, is not an option.

This will come as a relief to the consortiums bidding to convert it into a museum, but not to Princess Anne who says it should be sunk.

For Princess One thinks it would be impossible for anyone to maintain the old boat in the manner to which it has been accustomed and that it would be more dignified to send it to the bottom than let it slowly decline. "Do you realise that the brasses are cleaned every day - not every month or every week, but every day? Nobody could do that," she said. I wonder whether what really worries the royal One is not so much the notion of the Britannia's brasswork becoming less bright than it was when matelots used, at the taxpayers' expense, to polish it daily for the royals' delight on their winter cruises to the sun, but the thought of the hoi polloi being allowed aboard to put their sticky fingers on it.

Is it that, shuddering at that ghastly prospect, the Princess prefers to see the ship put many fathoms beyond the reach of the very people who have paid for the boat and its brasses being bulled all these years?

For heaven's sake, the royal family has had privileged, exclusive and mighty expensive luxurious seclusion aboard this floating ornament for 44 years. Isn't it time ordinary folk were allowed on it at last - even if many of them may be undignified ice cream-licking, gawping day-trippers?

Maybe, when she talks about dignity, Princess One should realise it is when the royals appear to get snootily on theirs that the latent itch among many people for them to be scuttled quite rightly flares up.

Stand by for tax shocker

WHAT good are the Government's pledges not to put up income tax for five years if it lets the town halls already in the thrall of spend-crazy Labourites send council tax rocketing by up to 10 per cent next April?

Last year, council tax across Labour-dominated East Lancashire rose by an average of 6.75 per cent - way over the rate of inflation. And that was when those horrid rate-capping Tories kept a tight leash on the councillors' itch to spend.

But now, in what is clearly a "back door" move, the Government is about to loosen the grip and give them more freedom to raise revenue to fund services.

So stand by for some shock bills as the town halls prepare to exercise that freedom to the full.

But isn't this a disingenuous dodge on the part of the government to pass the buck for a broken no-tax-rises promise?

All right, income tax hasn't gone up, nor is the Government being any more open-handed with the grant to local government from Whitehall than the Tories were. But in giving councils more power to raise money - and watch them grab it - will they not be engineering thumping country-wide tax rises while seeking to avoid the blame because they are "local"?

Who are they trying to kid?

The opinions expressed by John Blunt are not necessarily those of this newspaper

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.