CRITICISED today by Chief Constable Pauline Clare and Blackburn with Darwen Council leader Malcolm Doherty for our coverage of the police force's crackdown campaigns against drink-driving, this newspaper accepts one of the raps and rejects the other.

Mrs Clare complains that we gave negative publicity to the campaigns. She is right - we did.

But that was not because we condone drink-driving. Far from it - we despise and condemn it completely.

Yet, what she regards as negative was our questioning of whether it was right to throw so much of her already-inadequate resources at a crime which is minimal in terms of occurrence when others are not.

We also expressed concern - and still do - about the police resorting to random breath-testing when it is not allowed by law.

And, evidently, her force shared our doubts.

Otherwise it would not have commissioned research to discover whether the public approves of these high-profile and resource-intensive drink-drive blitzes.

That they were upheld by a clear majority, we accept, although we were surprised by the findings.

Mrs Clare's policy has been endorsed and she has a remit to carry on - with our support, but with our preference for legislation on random testing to catch up with its application by the police.

What we do, however, reject is Councillor Doherty's suggestion that this newspaper criticised the police force's summer drink-drive campaign while knowing the results of the survey which said the public supported such action.

And he imputes that we did this in order that we might have a better story.

We did no such thing.

We cast doubt on the campaign before the findings were announced.

When the results were disclosed, we published them - together with our acceptance of them.

Unlike Coun Doherty we do not select our facts at random, but get them right and in the right order.

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