A job for the boys

THE tragic stabbing to death of policewoman Nina Mackay has brought with it calls for the police to be armed with guns.

And, meantime, the search goes on for body armour that officers don't find too restrictive in dangerous arrest situations. Nina had, after all, discarded her heavy protective vest only minutes before she was knifed.

All this, of course, is part of an understandable reaction to the appalling and, arguably, avoidable waste of a young woman's life.

But if police forces and the authorities are now casting about for ways to stop this sort of thing happening again, they can dispense with the debate about guns, better armour and so forth.

Rather they should read the words of Nina's father, retired police chief superintendent Sidney Mackay, who revealed this week that his 25-year-old daughter had spoken to him about her worries of the risks that go with the job.

"She was frightened at times," he said.

"On one occasion in the last 12 months she told me she had been very frightened at times. She had gone into a volatile situation with other colleagues where some heavy villains were armed. My advice to her was that we don't run away."

Of course, brave officers don't run away. They risk safety and sometimes their lives doing their duty for us - and don't get paid that much for it.

But, for heaven's sakes, why are young women being put in that situation at all?

It is not sexist to say that the weaker sex is not up to it, only plain common sense. Equality? Tosh!

Is it fair that a woman, no matter how well trained in unarmed combat, no matter what armour she has or how big her night-stick, should be expected to compete on equal terms with an armed thug who is likely to be several inches taller and several stones heavier than her?

Of course, it isn't. There are simply some tasks that women cannot do as well as men. And physically competing with criminal thugs is one.

It is lethally dangerous to expect women officers to do so. And it is rash of policewomen themselves to believe they can.

This sort of equal opportunity - borne out of the political correctness that pitched the WPCs into the front line and out of their separate status and their vital background role of mainly investigating rape and child abuse cases - is madness.

For who but a blind equality zealot would want any young women to have the equal opportunity to be attacked, injured or killed? Indeed, because of their sex, women police officers may well have an unequal opportunity to become victims of violence - since criminals may consider they have a better chance of escaping arrest by using force against a woman than they would against a male officer.

If tragic Nina Mackay's death is to provide a lesson that saves other young policewomen from being maimed or killed, it ought to be that the folly is realised of expecting a woman to do a man's job.

Sound of silence stinks

YOUR friend and mine, East Lancashire Euro-MP Mike Hindley, may resort to law to fight a Labour Party decision to suspend him from the European Parliamentary Labour Party over his refusal to sign a new edict gagging members from commenting publicly on the new selection procedure of would-be MEPs and the proportional representation system in prospect for the next Euro-elections.

I wish him well in this struggle.

For there is an unwholesome stink about this business - and like anyone and, above all, an elected representative, Mr Hindley and his three colleagues who have also been suspended should be free to say what they wish on any given issue.

But, apart from the boring business of proportional representation, which only excites politicians, why should Labour want to restrict comment or criticism on the way it intends in future to pick its Euro candidates? Could it be that it intends to "parachute" into the constituencies the compliant, uncritical Blair clones who do not rock the boat?

If Mr Hindley, who, I think will agree, cannot be described as being of that tendency, smells a rat and suspects the knives may be out for him, then he and I have a similar olfactory sense.

Whether or not he has asked for the stab is not the point, he should, if he wants, be free to be critical of potential moves to deselect him or anyone else or praise or damn the way MEPs may be elected in future.

Yes, I know a great deal of Labour's success is down to silencing and ousting those who do not toe the party line, but the upshot is undemocratic when its public representatives are not free to speak their minds.

Refreshingly, many Labour Party members are concerned at the kind of centralised control that the leadership is exercising - as we saw when they recently elected the untamed "Red" Ken Livingstone to the National Executive in preference to the party's arch control freak, Peter Mandelson. And if Mr Hindley can do his bit too to disabuse Mr Blair of the party's assumed right to shut people up, better still.

Discrimination against brains

EDUCATION, education, education?

Where the heck is the government's declared aim to drive up standards when we see our universities busily dumbing down.

It is bad enough that many of them are already bunged up with hordes of students on joke courses that have little to do with academics or worthwhile qualifications.

But one of the latest strides downhill seems to have the Government's blessing.

For top Cambridge University is now joining in the watering-down process. It has decided to stop awarding places to undergraduates on merit and is now to try to give 65 per cent of its places to pupils from state schools. The potential result of this kind of positive discrimination is, of course, that some more able ones from private schools will not be admitted.

Fair? A means of maintaining standards? Hardly, but it is beautifully politically-correct.

Yet, worse than this, we now find examiners at Thames Valley University - one of Britain's biggest - rumbled over attempts to cloak thickos in caps and gowns.

There, an investigation has uncovered evidence of how the pass mark for students' work has been cut from 40 per cent to 30 per cent and how students are allowed to fail almost half their courses over a year but still continue with their degrees.

Education, education, education?

It sounds more like manipulation, manipulation to me - to make standards worse.

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.