WHAT we need is Miss Bassett... She would never have let the debt-ridden society happen in the first place.

Personal finance is to become part of the national curriculum. Children are to be given basic lessons in savings, debts and interest, financial terms and implications. And not before time.

Students can now leave university with debts of £20,000 or £30,000 - unimaginable sums to earlier generations - and not a clue of how they got into that mess. And even less about how to get out of it.

No wonder they think they might as well borrow another thousand or so and have a decent holiday. Nearly every day, students get glossy offers from banks offering them credit cards and loans - instant holidays, cars, and the prospect of money.

Payback time? What payback time?

Enticing a student with a credit card is like the genie of the lamp offering some poor sap three wishes - without mentioning any of the catches. Does the average 18-year-old actually understand what 20 per cent interest really means?

They would if they'd been taught, as I was, by Miss Bassett.

I remember hours of working out sums involving compound interest - back in the days of pounds, shillings and pence. The complicated calculations wandered over page after page. And when you finally finished, there was that shock of realising how much 12 per cent interest over five years actually was.

From the beginning of the sum to the end, the penny - many hundreds of pennies - certainly had time to drop, or rise.

No wonder earlier generations were reluctant to take on debt - they'd done all those scratchy sums, they understood what it meant.

We have to pass a test before we can drive a car. Why not have a test before we are let loose with a credit card?

No computers, no calculators. Just a few nicely hard sums about compound interest should do the trick. Even better, if we got the Miss Bassetts of this world out of retirement to run the scheme.

Barclaycard would hate it. Sounds good to me.

A NEW trike for toddlers is going nowhere. A mini version of an adult exercise bike, it lets tots pedal away while staring at a TV screen with an image of a moving road. What with virtual scenery, virtual exercise and virtual friends on sites such as Facebook, your average child need never leave home for fresh air and the real world until he's about 20.

Why stop there?

Why not wire the trike so it actually powers the television? No pedal, no picture. Then do the same for all televisions, everywhere. If you want to watch TV, then you have to ride your bike to power it. That'll make you think if you really want to watch the shopping channel.

In one stroke you've solved the couch potato obesity crisis, saved a load of electricity and made the world a better place. Al Gore would be proud of you.

GOOD manners cost nothing, my mother always used to say. How wrong she was.

Schools in England are to get £13.7m to teach pupils manners, respect and good behaviour.

It should, of course, be the parents' job to teach such things. Schools should just reinforce them. But if parents are failing so badly in their responsibilities, maybe they, not their children, are the ones who should be getting the lessons.

THE Tories are considering a bigger tax on alcohol to cut down on binge drinking. Well yes. But wouldn't it be simpler to cut down on drinking hours. Even my booze-loving Senior Son was taken aback to realise his local drinking den in Richmond was open until 3am.

"And there are people who live near there," he said in sympathetic horror.

Quite. Cut the hours. Cut the booze. Cut the number of drinkers, noise, fights and pools of vomit. And the rest of us might get our town centres back. Or is that too simple?