I HOPE Tory councillor Sam Cohen, who has been appointed to represent Bury on the Greater Manchester Police Authority, agrees with me that the Government seems to be endlessly presenting its policies on a never-ending loop system, a regurgitation of "exciting new initiatives and action plans". I also hope that Coun Cohen keeps this fact in mind when he attends GMPA meetings.

Take crime, for example. Twelve years ago, Tony Blair famously announced that he would be "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime". Recently, after seven years in power, he announced that he was going to be tough on crime, again! Only this time he really, really means it and, to prove it, he is now dismissing the entire "causes of crime" part as a namby-pamby leftover from the decadent 1960s.

What took him so long to find that one out, I wonder?

Nevertheless, New Labour have been busying themselves in the intervening years. There has been a veritable blizzard of extra paperwork from the Home Office for police officers to fill in, drug-action teams, youth offending outreach-workers, tagging, curfews, anti-social behaviour orders, community justice centres, and the cosmetic re-branding of the Probation Service. The net result, according to latest crime figures (England and Wales), has been a rise by 12 per cent in violent crime, with particular increases in offences of wounding, threats to kill, harassment and rape.

Similarly, in 1997, the Government promised us "joined-up thinking" leading to "an integrated transport policy". Since then, the thinking has been about as joined-up as a plate of spaghetti; the railway system is in melt-down, road congestion continues to get worse and the much-needed Metrolink extension has been cancelled.

The same picture emerges in education. Labour ministers, who were implacably opposed to selection in 1997, now think it is quite a good idea (and, for the first time, not just for their own children). A government elected as the champion of the comprehensive system in 1997 has now decided it is going to be its executioner.

Remember, "Just 24-hours to save the NHS" was the mantra seven years ago. Now we have the special care baby unit at Fairfield Hospital under threat of closure. So too, the party that said "Council house tenants will have a better deal under New Labour" is the same party now encouraging councils like Bury MBC to transfer their interests in council housing management to a faceless board of part-timers, or something called an "ALMO", whatever that is.

"You can fool some people, all of the time" . . . may soon be this government's epitaph.

JEAN ALLISON (Mrs)