The Inspector

When it comes to attention grabbing logos, you have to go a long way to beat the Not Dead Yet campaign with its neat combo of a coffin and disabled symbol.

As a footballer I thought nothing of throwing myself into potentially harmful situations and taking a "whack" if required. Away from the field of play, it is a different story, with me being quite 'skittish' over lots of things.

Yesterday's decision by the House of Lords to maintain the exlusion of independent care homes under contract from councils from liability under the Human Rights Act is a massive blow for disabled and older people.

I've just come back from one of those residential management training courses. It was a sort of The Apprentice meets Big Brother, but without Alan Sugar and those annoyingly strange twin social work students.

Ever heard of the demographic timebomb? Of the fact that there will be 400,000 more older people by 2011 and that on current trends all but those in critical need will be excluded from social care services? Of the fact that many of the UK's fabled six million informal carers are struggling to cope and living in poverty with no hope even of a decent pension to look forward to in their own old age? Well, of course you have but you may well wonder whether Labour's future top brass have.

So what else will £400,000 get you?

When Remploy announced plans to help more than 20,000 disabled people a year into employment recently, it was hugely overshadowed by a parallel proposal effectively to close more than half of its 83 factories.

What a shame that the senior police officer in charge of combating child exploitation talked about "predators" when calling for a more constructive approach to working with men who are sexually attracted to children.

Elsewhere in his interview with the BBC Jim Gamble, chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) comes across as a sensible chap. And his suggestion that we deal with more paedophiles in the community rather than chucking them in jail and throwing away the key seems to make a lot of sense in view of the sheer numbers involved (and the fact that our jails are already full).

But to suggest that predatory paedophiles should remain "at large", as the tabloid press would put it, is surely pushing the argument too far. If, as is claimed, there are thousands of people in this country downloading child pornography every week then custody can't be the answer whatever Kidscape and others maintain. We already imprison more people than most other European nations - so we have to find an alternative to jail. But Jim Gamble has muddied the waters by using the language he did.