SMOKING is not an illness. So why are we treating it on the National Health? Smokers could soon get anti-smoking drugs and patches on the NHS in a bid to help them stop smoking. It will cost the NHS £50m a year.

Granted, it could be said to be cost effective as smoking related illnesses cost £1.5bn. But it is still a waste of £50m.

Because if smokers can afford to buy cigarettes, they can afford to buy anti-smoking treatments themselves, without troubling the public purse. What next - free hangover cures? Anti-smoking treatments don't come cheap - but neither does smoking. Think of that woman who gave up smoking and bought a whole new fitted kitchen with what she'd saved on cigarettes.

No-one is forcing people to smoke. It is not a crippling illness that has been cruelly forced on them. It is not a tragic accident that has unexpectedly occurred. It is not an environmental or genetic mishap over which they have no control.

People choose to smoke. Having made that decision, they should live with the consequences. Or not, of course.

And yes, smokers contribute a great deal in taxes to the economy - around £7bn. So they should. And if anyone other than smokers has to pay for their no-smoking treatment, maybe there should be a levy on the tobacco companies who have spent billions persuading people to smoke. That would seem only fair.

No one can claim not to know what smoking does to you. Knowing that, what kind of person spends a small fortune every day to make themselves ill? And why should they have a greater claim over limited resources than someone whose illness is entirely unexpected and for whom expensive drugs are the only treatment?

We all know that rationing goes on in the NHS. It has to. Access to some drugs for some people varies according to postcode.

Try telling them about the £50m which may be spent on nicotine patches...

Because there IS an alternative remedy for smokers. They don't have to rely on drugs in any form. They could use willpower instead. Now there's quaint old-fashioned notion.

And yes I know it's hard - I used to smoke 60 a day, which was really stupid.

But not as stupid as expecting someone else to pay to help me stop.

EDUCATION Minister Margaret Hodge has said that universities should let in state school pupils from deprived areas with lower A level grades than students from independent schools.

Well yes, if someone from a home with no books and no support, who goes to a bog standard comprehensive and still manages to get three Bs, then clearly they must be bright, motivated and determined to do well, more so, perhaps, than a student from a top public school who has been pushed, encouraged, tutored at the highest levels all his life and then, almost as a matter of routine, collects a couple of As.

Most universities have long realised this and have quietly made allowances in their offers.

But now it could be formalised, by post codes, exam results and a school's reputation. It's as if the government doesn't trust the academics and admissions officers to use their own common sense and experience.

And it can be taken too far. However grim a person's background or haphazard their education, they must reach a certain standard otherwise degrees become more devalued than they already are and graduates less well trained. Think about that next time you're about to undergo surgery...

In any case, the emphasis is in completely the wrong place. If this government thinks that state school students can't reach the standards of the independent schools, then the answer is not to change the way the universities do things, but to improve the standards of failing state schools.

We could have a long wait.

FOR years, the accepted cure to a red wine stain has been to throw white wine on top of it, which always struck me as a wicked waste of wine.

But now scientists at the University of California have discovered, what a relief, that this doesn't work.

So next time you spill red wine and someone offers you their glass of white - just drink it. Far more effective.

RESEARCH by the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for equality between the sexes, has revealed that most women keep a little secret stash of cash that their husbands don't know about. Even in these supposedly egalitarian days, there are wives who do not know how much their husbands earn and husbands who insist on the final say in financial matters.

So women do what women have done throughout the ages. Rich wives would squirrel away a little of their pin money, my mother kept a little roll of pound notes in a pink plastic soap dish in her knicker drawer, friends have high interest Internet accounts in their maiden names. High hopes and fine phrases will get you a long way. But when it comes down to it, the only real independence is financial independence.

Keep squirreling away girls.

MO Mowlam is a remarkable lady. Even my late mother - a true blue paid up member of the Tories - was pleased she was her MP.

But something about her new book, in which she dishes the dirt on her Government colleagues, and the accompanying TV series makes me uneasy.

Mo Mowlam was a Government minister. She was a vital part of the Cabinet. And now she's not, she's dishing the dirt on what it was like. Entertaining though it might be, is does not really seem the action of a grown up.

Top politician she might have been, but it's all too horribly reminiscent of those catty little revelations when teenage girl groups and boy bands split up. A sort of yah boo retort by someone who feels hard done by and wants to tell the world.

But, of course, I'll still read every word.

NEW research has proved that television really does make women look fatter - about half a stone. In which case, what on earth does Calista Flockhart look like in real life? Or is she invisible to the naked eye..

Published: 17/04/2002