JUST one weak cheer, I think, for the government's plans to curb the plague of junkie crime by making anyone arrested for a criminal offence undergo a drug test and for those found to be on hard drugs like heroin and cocaine to be automatically refused bail.

After all, this should have been made the norm years ago instead of letting the droves of addicted criminals back on the streets to thieve again and again.

But how does this new "tough" stance - if it is not party-conference season window-dressing - square with the official condonation and sympathy for the droves of criminal druggies in the form of the needle-exchanges that help them with their illegal habit, the prescribed methadone crutches that you and I pay for and which many addicts promptly flog to be able to buy the real stuff, and the army of social workers and clinic staff on good money to treat them as "victims"?

What was so characteristic of the useless rehabilitation industry that costs millions and thrives off the failure to punish addicts as they deserve and, so, encourages the burglaries and car crimes that are costing the country billions, was a fact buried away in the news last week. Tory peer, the Earl of Hardwicke, was convicted - but not jailed, mind - for supplying cocaine and it was disclosed that he had been merely cautioned two years ago for possessing heroin and crack cocaine.

It is a telling insight into what you can be let off for in "tough on crime" Britain, is it not?

And for all the supposed toughness in the government's new no-bail plans, it is hardly encouraging that just the week before the Home Office was telling us that special courts will have the power to impose lenient sentences on drug offenders if they agree to treatment, although they may have committed serious crimes like burglary to support their habit.

Of course, one does not suppose that the victims of the countless burglaries committed because of this have been asked what they think of this new "tough" approach.

But, then again, it is evident that they are the last people to be considered anyway.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.