Privatisation of the British gas industry brought fragmentation, deregulation and repeated restructuring to the British gas industry, claims Panorama (Sunday, 10.15 p.m., BBC1). It asks whether cost-cutting redundancies amongst engineers have already led to potentially dangerous delays in repairing hazardous gas leaks. It examines recent tragedies and asks whether shortcomings in the industry's safety procedures played a role.
Some £1.7 billion sterling (#2.77 billion) is currently spent on the British war against drugs, but only 13 per cent of this is used on treatment, with the rest spent on law enforcement. Drug Laws Don't Work: the Drugs Laws on Trial (Saturday, 6.30 p.m., Channel 4) asks if current laws deter use or fuel abuse?
A huge proportion of the population is criminalised by these laws, even though many only take the drugs recreationally. Jon Snow introduces an in-depth debate.
The story of an Irish housing estate "from the hungry thirties to the time of the tiger" is related in Townlands (Wednesday, 8.30 p.m., RTE1). The focus is a small estate in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, where in the past nearly all suffered prejudice and hardship through overcrowding and poverty. But in 1934, 60 new houses were built in Brackernagh. The estate was called St Grellan's and the documentary examines the essence of life there, now that the estate is being demolished and rebuilt.
sokelly@irish-times.ie
