IT’S like throwing sweets at children and expecting them to say no… One of the most important things that students learn at university is not the subject they’re studying, or how to work a washing machine or cook a meal, but how easy it is to borrow money.

Debt is good. Debt is respectable. Debt is very easy. Debt is sponsored by the government. According to the charity Money Advice Service, one in six adults has a problem with debt. And that includes a staggering third of young people. Not just owing money but burdened by it. Debt can mean misery but no one talks about that. Is it any surprise?

When free tuition and universal maintenance grants were abolished in favour of student loans it opened a can of worms. No longer did impoverished students dress from charity shops, nurse a solitary pint all night and live on beans on toast because they had no money to do anything else. Suddenly they had access to funds. If you had to borrow a few thousand pounds for your tuition fees and living expenses, then why not borrow a few thousand more and have a good time? It would be years before you needed to pay it back… Fees are now £9,000 and rising. What’s the cost of a few nights out added to that? You can see the logic. Pubs and clubs that never wanted students anywhere near, suddenly flung open their doors in welcome. Debts soared.

Of course, some students are incredibly sensible. Some aren’t. It’s not just official student loans. Students have credit cards, overdrafts, emergency loans, career development loans. There are so many opportunities for them to get into a mess.

It doesn’t help that 18 is now considered grown up. For generations, youngsters were considered financially clueless until they were at least 21. They weren’t allowed to borrow money in case they – poor innocents – were enticed into spending what they didn’t have Well, human nature hasn’t changed that much. Our parents and grandparents lived in dread of debt – but they didn’t have eager governments willing to press more than £15,000 a year into their willing teenage hands. You’ve got about a week to give your students a crash course in money. Good luck.

THE very public romance between Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddleston is over. After being frequently seen hugging, kissing, wearing matching Tee shirts and going on “romantic” assignations accompanied only by cameras, Taylor Swift has apparently tired of “too many public displays of affection”. Really? She seemed as keen and as public and as affectionate as him. This particular “romance” may still turn out to have been a gloriously elaborate practical joke I KNOW the Prime Minister has one or two things on her mind at the moment – Brexit, the doctors’ strike, keeping Boris Johnson under control, making jokes at Jeremy Corbyn’s expense – but perhaps she could spare the odd second to turn her mind to tap water.

At the Cabinet’s first meeting in the grand surroundings of Chequers, the table was awash with bottled water, splendidly placed on small silver salvers. How posh. Some of the bottles might have held tap water. Others definitely didn’t. Bottled water – one of the great marketing triumphs of modern times – definitely has a role in life. On trains, planes, long journeys, or hot days when you’re out and about and don’t want anything sickly sweet.

Yes, I know you can carefully re-use a bottle and fill it with tap water to take with you. That’s very worthy – but just a trifle joyless, especially on picnics. And if you live in a really hard water area, as we do, where you can almost watch the limescale building up, and kettles, irons and washing machines choke to an early death, then the occasional bottle of water is a real treat. But that still doesn’t hide the fact that bottled water is an expensive and ridiculous waste of resources.

It’s useful when there’s no alternative but I’m guessing that Chequers has a perfectly good supply of clean tap water. All Mrs May needs to do now is lash out on a few big jugs and maybe a lemon or two and the world would be a slightly happier place. Still, at least it was Scottish water. If we’re going to spend money unnecessarily, at least we’re putting it into the British economy and not throwing it at the French.

TOP stars are known for their ridiculous dressing room demands – walls and furniture a certain colour, sofas at a certain angle, temperature exactly right, creates of specific drinks, mountains of jelly beans, meals with strange ingredients cooked just so. Then there’s Petula Clark, 83, a star for 75 years and on the road again. All she requires is an iron and a bottle of port.

“ I like to iron my own clothes before I go on stage – I find it therapeutic. Plus, if anybody’s going to burn them, it’s going to be me.”

Which is when, presumably, she drinks the port… WHY are so fascinated with the wombs of famous women? Why does it matter so much if successful women have had children or not? Recently Jennifer Aniston had a go at the endless years of rumours about pregnancy or lack of it. Prime Minister Theresa May had to refer to it in interviews when she was appointed.

And now SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has told us of her miscarriage because she feels it might, somehow, protect more women’s privacy in the future. Just reading the interview in The Sunday Times made me feel intrusive and uncomfortable, especially when they showed pictures of her at a civic service at Ibrox football ground on the day it happened.

Women are childless for many reasons, sometimes through choice, sometimes not. But whatever the reason, it really is nothing to do with the rest of us. Defining women by their ability to have children is a huge leap backwards – right back to primitive slave markets and medieval royal marriages, when women were little more than a womb on legs.

I’m sorry Nicola Sturgeon didn’t have children if she wanted them. But I’m even sorrier that she felt she had to tell us.

DANIEL Craig has been apparently offered $150 million to make more Bond films. He’s said to be dithering.

$150million and he’s dithering? Film stars really do live in a parallel universe far removed from ours.

THE slow TV bus from Richmond over the Buttertubs was meant to be a routine service bus. So why did the destination board say “Private Charter”? And how many of those chattering walkers were genuine ordinary passengers?