I AM certainly not the only person in the UK who finds the staging of the London arms fair during the week of the second anniversary of "nine-eleven" an event bordering on insanity.

The timing, at the very least, calls into question the sensitivity of the people responsible.

I can't believe that they have any sensitivity at all, as they must surely know that the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, still fresh in the memory, holds bitter memories and overwhelming grief for the relatives and friends of the 3,000 or so who perished.

Not that such human failings would be allowed to hinder the holding of an arms fair on this, or any other anniversary.

The sale of armaments is huge business and we -- not you or I but the government which represents us -- are among the biggest players at the table.

I'm not going to get into the debate about the economic logic behind our high-profile arms production and dealings. The Treasury justifies them in terms of income but that seems a hollow argument in a country taxed to the gills on just about everything successive chancellors can think of. Balancing the books shouldn't depend on selling deadly weapons to countries run by leaders clearly one slice short of a full loaf.

Television footage of potential buyers filing through the doors of the arms fair in London's dockland revealed a number in heavily-beribboned military uniform.

I spotted representatives of African juntas and governments and waited in vain for someone to ask them: "If you've got cash to spend on tanks, helicopters, aeroplanes, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, would not that money be better spent on tractors, farming machinery and tools and, heaven forbid, food for your starving millions?"

Perhaps such questions are forbidden at arms fairs, and the people outside, protesting at the one in London, were given no chance to put that, or any others, to the organisers or dealers. The police saw to that. In a move which must have consumed all clear-thinking individuals with disbelief, Plod used Section 44 or the Anti-Terrorism Act to deal with the placard carrying, whistle-blowing, singing and dancing protesters, searching many for "the tools of terrorism" and arresting more than 70. I haven't as yet heard of the police finding any Semtex-strapped suicide bombers during their operation and Home Secretary David Blunkett was sufficiently irate (or sufficiently aware of the public relations disaster) to ask London's finest why they went to such extreme measures to deal with what was a "peaceful protest".

Surely anyone interested in preventing terrorism, especially the police, would support the protesters, not try to stop them demonstrating against the arms fair, given that some weapons on view will almost certainly fall into the hands of terrorists (or martyrs, depending on whose side you are on) in the not too distant future.

The more I find out about the human race, the more I prefer animals.