The John Blunt column

THE latest in a long line of loony lottery "good causes" is a 19ft-high column of chalk that looks like a giant loo roll being plunged into the sea in the name of art.

For my money, £60,000 of the punters' cash goes down the drain with it.

Even more ridiculous is that this sculpture, or whatever it's called, dumped in the Humber estuary, is designed to disappear - so that artist Anya Gallacio, subsidised by the poor old punters, can discover how chalk will erode.

Why can't she shove a stick of it under a tap if she's that keen to find out?

Yet if her crazy, 65-ton column doesn't vanish in the waves by the end of the time of the art festival it is connected with, it will be fished out of the water anyway - making the whole barmy exercise dafter and more wasteful still. But, surely, the rate at which the National Lottery is shoving money at stupid art projects - this particular festival has been given a thumping £1.7million of lottery money - suggests that it's time for the government to step in and end the madness.

For, in ordinary people's books, this sort of thing is not a "good cause" but more like a flaming insult to their intelligence.

But it's not as if there are no genuine good causes going begging - such as all the poor lottery players in permanent pain while they wait ages on the growing NHS waiting list for a hip replacement operation.

Or the victims of crippling multiple sclerosis who are in a cruel lottery over whether they will be prescribed the new drug that will help them - because some health bosses say it's too dear.

Or the fed-up, put-upon nurses who have been told their pittance pay rise must be in two stages.

What's wonder boy Tony Blair waiting for? The NHS is struggling, desperate for dosh and there's the National Lottery, coffers bursting with billions, giving it away to frills and follies that may be all very nice for some, but a long way short of vital.

What's good about village cricket clubs or crackpot chalk columns being assisted when the same money could be helping the sick - and no-one, barring a few feather-bedded artists, would complain if it did.

Ireland's quest for peace - a Major place in history

OBSERVING the reluctance of some 45 per cent of Protestants in Northern Ireland to abandon their bigotry or their fears while the IRA hangs on to its weapons "just in case" I find it hard to be wholly optimistic about the historic "Yes" vote in the referendum on the Good Friday peace deal. The political wreckers and terrorists are still holding a good many cards. But I pray that my pessimism is unfounded and that Ireland is capable of putting its foul past behind it for good.

And should that prove right, let one forgotten figure be given the credit he deserves - John Major .

For all that Tony Blair has done along with Dublin, Bill Clinton, Mo Mowlam, peace talks chairman US senator George Mitchell, and the political parties involved in the Good Friday deal, it ought to be remembered that Mr Major was a principal architect of and fighter for the peace process that has now reached this historic juncture.

He may have gone down electorally as the Tories' biggest failure in 150 years, but he already deserves a place in history as the Prime Minister who led Northern Ireland away from violence towards a lasting peace.

On a promise...

WAITING with bated breath for Labour's Commons majority to next month rubber stamp their plea for the age of consent for homosexual sex to be cut from 18 to 16, gay rights campaigners are already waging their next crusade - for the repeal of the law that bans the promotion of homosexuality in schools. Thus having gained the right to go to bed with schoolboys, gays now want the right to woo them with classroom propaganda about the joys of homosexuality. Incredible?

Far from it, they already have Home Secretary Jack Straw on their side - with a promise he made at the general election to repeal this law.

Mr Straw, and the high-minded liberals among Labour's huge Commons majority who are set to defy the wishes of ordinary decent people, may witter on about equal rights.

Saner sorts would have it that they are not only about to write a paedophiles' charter, but also determined to give it a gilt edge.

Hard to swallow

THIS little old ale drinker remembers the days when, even though the price of beer kept relentlessly ahead of inflation, it used to go up by just an old ha'penny a pint at intervals of what seemed like every Preston Guild.

Indeed, I recall a brief boycott by boozers at my old local when the addition of a ha'penny sent a pint crashing through what was deemed to be the inviolable barrier of two whole shillings. Now, it's knocking on towards two quid - as last week, East Lancashire's Daniel Thwaites followed suit with other brewers and slapped as much as 7p on a pint of bitter.

Ye gods! - the price increase nowadays is as much as the ale itself was when I first started downing it.

But, to be honest, the landlords' bleating about it has nothing to do with concerns for the hole it makes in the drinkers' pockets - not when they can themselves charge customers 60p a time for mixers without batting an eyelid. No, it's their own pockets they are worried about.

Ex-licensed victuallers' president, Burnley landlord Les Harrison, makes a good point about brewers carping about "unfair" competition from cheap continental beer and them then putting up the price of UK ale even more.

But what concerns me is that drinkers are expected to keep swallowing annual price increases - usually on top of whatever the Chancellor imposes - that are in the order of 5p and more a time. Isn't it about time the government stepped in with some price-watchdogging on the consumers' behalf to make the brewers publicly justify increases of this scale before they are allowed to impose them?

After all, when, as we are told, the price of beer has risen by 76 per cent in ten years, it would seem that the time for stopping the trend is already way overdue.

The opinions expressed by John Blunt are not necessarily those of this newspaper.

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