February 20, 2001 9:58: SCHOOL'S broken up for half term and I couldn't be happier. There will now be a glorious full week of almost empty roads before parents stuff their fat kids back into the people mover and the whole circus begins again.

Come next Monday though, and you can guarantee that these parents will be the first to complain that there is too much traffic on the roads. Get real. There is only too much traffic on the road because idiots like you insist on carting your kids two yards down the road. Why not give them the exercise many of them so obviously need instead?

When I went to school, we used to rather look down on the poor pampered saps whose parents dropped them at the school gates. We would have travelled from here to Milton Keynes rather than have them turn at the school gates.

In an earlier generation, of course, people used to walk two or three miles to school or more. Certainly my own parents did and I am sure that is one of the reasons they led healthy lives. It's a wonder that some of today's kids manage to make it down the stairs to the tuck shop in one piece.

The solution I propose is a fines system for those who have driven less than a certain distance, let us say to be generous, three miles.

We could redeploy Sureway traffic wardens (I'm bored with stories about them bothering people in the town centre anyway) and have them posted on school gates. They would note the registration of parents dropping their kids off then check whether they live within three miles. If they do bang, compulsory exercise up at Handy Cross.

Mind you the Government itself is not helping the traffic problem. It says it wants to relieve traffic congestion but everything it does on schools only seems designed to get more parents on the roads and more parents driving further.

The latest idea of making half of schools specialist only seems designed to add to this. It will surely mean that a dance-mad parent will be tempted to enrol their little Billy Elliot in the (for example) Hatters Lane Ballet Academy even if the parent happens to live in a completely different town.

This does not even touch the problem of what would happen to the other half of schools that would not become specialist under the plan. Or what the point of these specialist schools is anyway. Are children really supposed to know by 11 what area they want their careers to go in?

I am baffled why we seem to given up on the idea of good local schools to serve their own communities. If pupils later in their school careers shown certain talents or interests obviously this can be sorted out on an individual basis.

But I am frankly tired of these fools who often don't even send their children to state schools, or ever use public transport screwing things up for the rest of us.

By.Paul Ryan