A return to the old school of agony aunting might be just what we need...

MAYBE Ann Widdecombe's time has come - and it might do us all a bit of good. The former prisons minister, now newly blonde slimmer, novelist and twinkly person, has started a new job as an agony aunt. But if you're expecting sympathy, empathy and a consoling pat on he head, forget it.

The new column in The Guardian is called Buck Up! and is trenchantly no nonsense. "Get a life," she tells one correspondent. "Don't be wet," she tells another.

And to a couple of divorcees having problems in their new relations, she says that they should have stayed in their original partnerships. "Then you wouldn't be in this silly mess."

It will no doubt, of course, degenerate into a caricature of itself. And as someone who has lived mainly just with her cat, maybe Ann Widdecombe is not quite in tune with the complex realities of sharing a house, a life, a family and a bank balance with someone else.

But gosh, she's certainly a breath of fresh air.

Agony aunts always used to be like that, of course. Not quite as brutal, but they certainly didn't mess around. In the glory days of Marje Proops and Claire Rayner, they treated their correspondents as grown-ups and expected them to take some responsibility for their own lives and actions. If that hurt, well tough. No one said life would be easy.

Meanwhile, doctors are giving out record numbers of anti-depressants, some, of course, to people who really need help, but many to people who could probably do a lot more to help themselves.

The compensation culture has taken such a hold that we are positively encouraged on all sides to look for someone else to blame instead of taking responsibility for ourselves and our actions. I crashed over a step in the dark last week and have the multi-coloured bruises to prove it. I was sober at the time, honest. A number of people have suggested I sue. Only one told me - quite rightly - that I should have looked where I was going.

And now a group of black Americans is suing Lloyds of London because they insured the slave ships from Africa 200 years ago. In which case, presumably, every gunshot victim has a case against the gun manufacturers. And if you've been injured in a road accident, you can claim against the descendants of Henry Ford.

It is daft, it is silly and it's all getting out of control.

So let's hope the Widdecombe style of agony aunt-ing becomes fashionable. Then we can all be briskly encouraged to take control of our own lives and start acting like grown-ups.

And know, when things go wrong, that we have only ourselves to blame.

FACED with an Ofsted inspection at Seaburn Dene Primary School in Sunderland, teacher Dawn Fitzsimmons pretended she had leukaemia. She took time off for "hospital appointments", talked about the need for a bone marrow transplant and aroused great concern and kindness in her colleagues - as she committed them to extra work.

She was only rumbled because another headmistress said she'd pulled exactly the same trick at her school before an inspection.

If so, why on earth was she given the job at Seaburn Dene?

LOOKING idly through an old cheque book, I found that the council tax in 1997 cost me £91 a month. This year - same council, same house - it's going to cost £176 a month - almost double.

Has my pay nearly doubled in that time? No. Are council services twice as good as they were seven years ago? No.

Am I paying the increase with a song in my heart and a smile on my lips?

I'll let you guess.

THERE are so many graduates emerging from universities now, that they are flooding the labour market, says a new report.

So much so, that a degree is no longer worth what it was. Graduates are getting jobs which don't need degree level skills - and don't attract degree level salaries. We all knew that would happen. The only people who seem surprised by it are those in government.

It is, after all, a simple example of supply and demand - and you don't need a degree to understand that.

So OK, Des O'Connor is 72. By the laws of nature, he might well not be around to share too much of the life of the baby his girlfriend's expecting.

On the other hand, he'll probably be there for a few years yet, wants to be there very much and will no doubt provide for mother and baby after that.

Not perfect, perhaps - but still a whole lot better than some spotty 16-year-old who might have youth on his side but who takes no responsibility for his child at all.

And maybe scarpers without even seeing it.