Children must come first, Tip off, The hard sell

Important questions in the appalling Brighton child abuse and neglect case revealed last week by the Argus have still not been answered.

The most pressing of all is why the parents of these poor children were allowed to continue looking after them when two of them and a cousin died as babies in the couple's care and others were in a shocking state.

Brenda Robinson Fell, an expert in child abuse, is backing our call for a public inquiry into the whole affair. Like us, she is not looking for scapegoats, only explanations. There was no doubt about the close attention paid by social workers and other professionals caring for children to this problem family.

But they seem to put the bond of keeping the family together over and above the need to get the children into a place of safety. Maybe it was simply that faced with financial and other pressures, they simply did not have the time to look at the intricacies of the Children's Act and how it should have been put into practice.

That's what needs to be drawn out at a public inquiry so lessons can be learned and the chances are reduced of this kind of tragedy happening again.

Tip off

Brighton and Hove Council was quite right to stop traders using the tip at Leighton Road so they could dump rubbish there free. The tip, meant for householders, was being abused and the council was losing a six-figure sum each year as a result.

Now, thanks to the blockade by these traders, the tip has had to close temporarily as a health hazard, causing even worse problems for householders.

The council and police allowed the protest to go on too long. They should have removed them after the traders had made their point.

But when the tip is open again, Brighton and Hove must make it completely clear to the traders they are not welcome at Leighton Road.

The hard sell

Researcher Paul Marsden has made a study of why people go for shopping crazes in the way they do. The University of Sussex student has concluded it can be easy to plant an idea in people's minds so others follow it like sheep.

But the three words that influence people most in the way they behave or in what they buy have been known to retailers and advertisers for years.

They are sex, status and survival. Put them all together and you won't go far wrong.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.