IF TONY Blair looks distracted, he may have history on his mind. The Prime Minister told an interviewer recently: "Let the day-to-day judgements come and go - be prepared to be judged by history."

This was one of those remarks that has the power to leap off the page and bite the reader on the nose.

Oh no, I thought, here we go, led to war by a man with destiny on his mind. Most of us are more concerned about the here and bloody now (the adjective is used in its sanguinary sense, by the way, and not as a mild swearword - mind you, it is tempting these days).

It's all right for Tony Blair to wonder what sort of a write-up historians will give him, but some of us are more worried that, the way the Iraq conflict is shaping up, we might all be history.

Mr Blair also sought to rebut the suggestion that he is George Bush's poodle, saying: "It's worse than you think. I am truly committed to dealing with this, irrespective of the position of America. If the Americans were not doing this, I would be pressing for them to be doing so."

So Mr Blair has an eye on the history books, he is nobody's poodle - and if you don't believe his case for attacking Saddam Hussein, "hey, guys, you'll just have to trust me on this one". He didn't say that, it's true, but he did say: "People have just got to make up their minds whether they believe me or not, I'm afraid."

The reason so many people appear not to trust Mr Blair on this grave issue, the reason hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters swarmed through London on February 15, is that he gives the impression of knowing better, while also keeping something back. He's in the know, we aren't - so we should just believe him and stop our silly worrying.

Yet, flighty creatures that we are, we can't stop worrying that, although Saddam is a catastrophically unpleasant man, the case for attacking his country now has not been clearly made. And while we fret about Saddam's weaponry, we can't help remembering that we sold a lot of it to him in the first place.

Most of all, silly things that we are, we suspect the motives of the US. This is not because we are anti-American. No, but we are opposed to a far-right administration that wants to make the US the world's unilateral power, the biggest boss no one can answer back to, over armaments, the environment or the balance of world power.

And, silly us, we haven't a chance of getting into the history books.

BRISTOL University's admissions procedure has caused a stink in certain excitable newspapers, which have accused the university of "insidious social engineering" and the like. The managing directors - sorry, headteachers - of private schools have complained loudly about a policy which has seen some of their pupils rejected.

It is true that the university selects some state school pupils ahead of better qualified private school pupils. But it is much truer that privately-educated young people continue to take up more than their fair share of university places. Any policy that chips away at such unfairness is surely right.

Of course, the problem is that parents who fork out a fortune for their children's education expect a good return on their expensive investment.

The fact remains that popular universities, such as Bristol, turn away many more applicants than they could ever accept. Rejection is hard but it affects pupils from all sorts of schools.

Updated: 10:37 Thursday, March 06, 2003