be extinguished As East Lancashire is rocked by a spate of cars and telephone boxes being blown up by illegal monster fireworks, Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service's complaint about these things being used in a "totally inappropriate, dangerous fashion" is, surely, a frail understatement of the this trouble.

For what is happening is potentially-murderous, criminal madness. And it must be stopped.

A teenager has already been killed by one of these fireworks. Only last week, an 86-year-old woman in Burnley was terrified when a van was blown up outside her home, hurling debris through her window.

Also, in the past fortnight in Accrington, a phone box, two cars and a park pavilion have been destroyed by commercial fireworks that should not be sold to the public.

Yet, if it is the case that these huge fireworks should not be available, the prime question is: Where are the hooligans getting them from?

Obviously, rogue traders are involved and are just as criminally irresponsible as those setting them off. But is it not amazing that the police and fire chiefs are so mystified as to where they come from that they are appealing to those involved not to sell them and asking for anyone who might know the source to tell them?

Surely, there should be some record -- either from the point of their manufacture in Britain or that of their import -- of which businesses deal in these commercial fireworks. Or is it really the case that the trade in explosives in this country is so lacking in control that no-one knows?

Tightening up of the regulations is clearly urgently needed -- and the book thrown at everyone convicted. For if it is lethal madness that these explosions are taking place, that is also the case when they are so easily able to.