AS WELL as the main organ, we have a lovely 19th Century chamber instrument in our church which is chiefly used for the anthem during the Holy Communion.

This organ is in the south aisle and the choir leave their places in the chancel to stand beside it and sing the anthem. This slight distancing of the voices from the centre lends enchantment to the music and subtly blends atmospherically with the ritual and red wine which is the holiest part of the service - except not last Sunday because a thief had stolen the electric cable that conducts power to the instrument.

Now I don't know what degree of "under-privilege" or "social exclusion" makes someone steal an organ cable. I would rather put the theft down to malevolence, for the thief must have known when he took the flex that he would deprive a congregation of their sacred music.

It is this mean-spiritedness that irritates me more than the physical loss of the cable. Who would do such a thing?

We can probably replace the loss quickly for about £30, but what the theft brought home to me was the experience of crime rather than merely the contemplation of crime statistics.

The fact remains that the statistics make for chilling reading: 190,000 more criminal offences in 2000 than in 1999; violent crime is up by 16 per cent and robberies by 26 per cent.

Not altogether surprising when you consider that, despite all the Government's propaganda and spin about being tough on crime, police numbers have actually fallen since New Labour came to power.

Let us be tough on spin and tough on the causes of spin: the Government is deliberately fighting with two hands tied behind its back when it comes to the battle against the criminals - and nothing Mr Blair said yesterday at Pentonville prison has done anything to alter that fact.

We are missing a length of electric cable, but there are far worse crimes upon which the "liberal" elite in the Government and the judiciary might do well to meditate. To take just one horrific example, 3,000 women were raped in London last year. That's about 60 per week or one every three hours.

The response of Scotland Yard is to promise to open two new centres for rape attack victims. This is a laudable and humane, but wouldn't it be better to put more resources into prevention?

Now we learn that Britain has the highest crime rate in Europe, higher than the US and among the highest in the world. Two crimes that must not go unreported are New Labour's lies about police numbers and their other lies about being tough on criminals.

CAN bias and sheer stupidity in the BBC become any more extreme? Now they say Sir Winston Churchill may go down in history as a xenophobe who made belligerent speeches. Since xenophobia means fear of foreigners, we do well to remember that the particular foreigners Churchill was anxious about were Nazi Germans.

Thank God Churchill did make belligerent speeches. How, according to the BBC, should he have spoken instead? "Please, nice Herr Hitler don't drop your bombs on us. We'll sign the surrender anytime you like?"

The Beeb also numbers Sir Winston among the Europhiles, quoting him as saying that he was in favour of a United States of Europe. He was indeed, but the BBC conveniently forgets that Churchill saw no part in this for Britain. But don't let the truth spoil a good story eh?

Published: Tuesday, February 27, 2001