A Blackburn swimming pool has banned backstroke at busy times, but there are plenty of other ways for people to be inconsiderate.

IT'S not backstroke that's the problem - it's bad manners. And it's not just a problem in swimming pools. A swimming pool in Blackburn has banned swimmers from doing backstroke at busy times because it's likely to cause accidents. Easy to believe. Backstrokers are quite likely to swim the length of a pool without even glancing to see that they might be in someone's way.

The same also goes for a lot of people who do that fiercely professional crawl - all cap, goggles and nose clips - who think they have a divine right to an entire lane to themselves, however crowded the pool.

And as for butterfly... The small pool where I swim every morning gets crowded when there's more than five in. But with good manners and a bit of good humour, we can cope with a dozen dodging around each other.

Until the boorish idiot dives in, with an ego so big it needs the whole pool. And the rest of us drip, seething, back to the changing rooms.

But it's the same on the roads, in supermarkets, in bars, in flats...

What we call road rage, or trolley rage, is nothing more than other people's rudeness. Drivers who cut in, shoppers and drinkers who barge in and queue jump, neighbours who play music too loud - it's not a driving problem or a shopping or a housing problem. It's simply a problem of bad manners - people's lack of courtesy and consideration for anyone other than themselves.

And banning backstroke won't help much - because people like that can be just as obnoxious whichever way up they are.

THE chaos on the A1 last Friday was, at least, caused by an accident, something entirely unpredictable. However, further down the M1 there was another long tail back - because we were following a wide load that crawled along, taking up the best part of two lanes, while huge queues built up behind it.

Wouldn't it be better for everyone - including the wide load driver - if such vehicles travelled in the early hours of the morning, when traffic was much lighter? And if they have to travel in daylight, does it really have to be on the M1 on a Friday afternoon?

A 17-year-old girl is in the news because she has three children by three different fathers. Certainly, it seems a sad waste of her own childhood and limited ambitions. But despite a history of dodgy relationships, Courtney Cassidy seems to be making a decent enough fist of things. The worst that righteously indignant commentators seem able to discover is that her flat is sparsely furnished and untidy. So, she's a teenager. Meanwhile, Ulrika Jonsson has been voted Mother of the Year.

Funny that. She's also had some pretty dodgy relationships - think Stan Collymore, John Leslie, Sven Goran Eriksson - and will also have three children by three different fathers. But she's rich and glamorous and probably doesn't live in a sparsely furnished council flat with a second hand sofa. So that's different. Isn't it?

Why Charlie wouldn't stay in bed

in bed

THE day before his big speech at the party conference, Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy told the Today programme that he was absolutely fine and he'd been up and about and on the go since before 6am.

Why? He was clearly not well and the next day he looked so ill that his appearance aroused much comment - not helped, sadly, by the jaundice yellow background onstage.

Instead of being a big, brave macho soldier, he would have been far better off tucked up in bed with a hot drink, some Aspirins and a trashy novel - and letting that nice Sir Menzies Campbell make his speech for him.

Which is presumably precisely why he staggered on.

THE Chancellor's £100 for pensioners - meant to make up for the rise in council tax - isn't actually for pensioners, but only for people over 70.

How long before rises in pensions - already small enough - will also be limited to those over 70 as the Government gradually nudges the retirement age ever upwards?

More surgeons and more croutons, please

A TOP neurosurgeon has been suspended from work because he apparently took too many croutons for his soup. Meanwhile, he gets paid his £80,000 a year and, much more importantly, seriously ill people will have to wait even longer for their operations. It could make you weep for the simple lack of common sense that let it get to this stage.

One of the recurring problems of the NHS is said to be that it is top heavy with management. Well, if this is an example of their management style, maybe it's time to get rid of some managers and use the money instead for a few more surgeons. And maybe to increase the portions of croutons.

NEW research says that more of us are going to have to work long past normal retirement age. Ah, so that's why the Rolling Stones are planning another tour.

Published: 24/03/2004