What a moral tangle we seem to have got ourselves into over healthcare in this country! New drugs are being developed all the time, many of them to treat cancer. But it seems to take a long, long time for them to become available on the NHS - usually because the National Institute for Clinical Excellence holds things up on what many people suspect are cost grounds.

So if a patient being treated in an NHS hospital offers to pay for one of these new drugs, you would think there'd be no problem - especially if it was to replace one of the "approved" drugs, thereby saving the health service that cost.

Not according to the experience of Colette Mills, the 58-year-old ex-nurse from North Yorkshire who has breast cancer and has told South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust that she's prepared to pay £4,000 a month for a drug called Avastin, which she believes will have more chance of stopping the cancer in its tracks than the drug she's currently being treated with.

However, the trust has said that if she buys the drug her entire treatment must be on a private basis, pushing the charge to her up to between £10,000 and £15,000 a month - following the Government's line on "co-payment" which is that it's not acceptable as it would lead to patients in the same NHS ward receiving different drugs purely on their ability to pay.

This, of course, is in line with the great levelling-down principle which is so dear to the heart of the Labour Party which I once so admired. If the Government can't or won't fund the NHS to buy new drugs for all patients, then everyone must do without.

So those who are prepared to forego holidays or buying a new car, or to take out a second mortgage on the family home in exchange for what they see as a chance of extending their lives, must be cast out of the NHS entirely - or throw away that chance.

In a sensible world, new drugs that offer hope to cancer sufferers wouldn't cost a mint and the NHS would be able to afford them for everyone. In the real, wrong-headed world, though, a compromise needs to be struck which will enable the drug companies to make their obscene profits and the NHS to save money.

Allowing those patients who choose to spend some of their own money on new drugs, while having their nursing care, blood tests, scans and all the rest of it carried out within the NHS, would seem to be a way out of the dilemma. Instead, it's been turned into a way into one.

Plain crazy, on reflection

What's the most important thing you need in a clothes department, if you're trying on jackets or holding garments up to yourself to see if they fit or if the colour suits? A full-length mirror - right?

So why are they so hard to come across? Go to somewhere like M&S, for example (a proper big store, I mean, not the scaled-down Bradford one) and try to find somewhere to examine your image. You'll discover plenty of other people doing the same.

And when you eventually do track down a mirror, there'll more than likely be someone already looking at themselves in it and someone else waiting in the wings for their turn.

It's all well and good having lots of mirrors in the changing rooms, but who wants to bother with all that? Surely it would be better for shoppers' tempers, and consequently for trade, if mirrors were visible all over the place rather than having to be searched out.

By gum, it looks good

Get away from the mounds of rubble in Forster Square and Bradford looks half decent as Christmas approaches. The trimmings around the central area are cheerful in a restrained sort of way, as befits a hard-up city doing its best to scrub up well for the festive season.

Highlight, though, is Darley Street which following its facelift is an attractive shopping thoroughfare. It makes you realise just how tired-looking it had become.

What a shame, though, that it's often littered with tab ends from people smoking outside the shops and the Kirkgate Centre and - even worse - that its new flagstones are already starting to show traces of chewing-gum abuse. It deserves better than that.

A real joy to watch!

With no more Cranford to watch, Sunday viewing won't end on the sort of high we've been able to enjoy these past few weeks. What a joy that series was - a terrific story packed with strong characters played by a host of Britain's leading actors and actresses, wonderful to look at and superbly produced.

This was BBC period drama at its finest. Add to it a varied range of TV gems such as Alan Titchmarsh's fascinating series on the world of nature, the top-notch escapist hokum of Spooks, the drama and excitement of Strictly Come Dancing plus all the other routine bits and pieces we tend to take for granted like Have I Got News for You and Antiques Roadshow, and there can surely be little doubt that the TV licence is good value for money.

The BBC has its problems, certainly, and too often it seems to feel a need to compete with lesser channels at the lowest-common-denominator end of the market. But when it does what it's meant to do - produce programmes which aim primarily for excellence rather than ratings - it's unbeatable.

And what's more, when word gets round about how good these programmes are, the ratings tend to follow as well.