Many shocked by the killing of eight-year-old Sarah Payne will say the person responsible should be executed or locked up for life.

They are also worried there are 160 sex offenders registered with Sussex Police.

Now the News of the World has decided to name and shame every one of the 110,000 known sex offenders in England and Wales.

There is every reason why there should be a national register of paedophiles. Adults working with children should also be vetted. Sex offenders should be treated while they are in jail and there should be tight controls on them after release.

Papers have every right to name paedophiles.

But there is a danger in letting everyone know where they live rather than people such as teachers, doctors and community beat officers.

It can lead to vigilantes taking the law into their own hands. There has been at least one case when a mob committed murder only to find later the wrong man had been killed.

The result will be that paedophiles will go underground instead of remaining at addresses known to the authorities.

Emotions are rightly running high while Sarah's killer is still at large. But the solutions to dealing with sex offenders lie in measures to protect children from them rather than naming them in a national newspaper.

'Private' patients The closure of asylums and the advent of care in the community were big steps forward in the way people with mental health problems were treated.

But the move against mental hospitals went too far and in towns such as Brighton and Hove, there are simply not enough beds.

Whether we like it or not, there are still many people whose problems are so acute that there is no alternative to hospital.

Yet South Downs Health NHS Trust is having to send 20 people a day into private beds at a cost of more than £2 million a year.

Modern hospitals which deal with mental health are a far cry from old asylums and we desperately need more of them.

Punk, pop and pins Helen Reddington used to be a punk complete with blue hair, amazing make- up and the obligatory safety pins.

Now she's a university lecturer who's undertaking research into what punk meant for other women in the Seventies.

Helen finds today's female singers, with their emphasis on glamour, a world away from the studied ugliness of the punk scene.

The only thing punks had in common with today's female pop performers is a nice pair of pins.