I WAS delighted to read in our property supplement the other day that "inoffensive" teak benches are now widely avail from garden centres and even Really, there is nothing more upsetting than to be gratuitously offended by a teak bench, and you minding your own business.

It's even worse to bring home a polite looking bench and then find to your horror it is full of cheek and impudence or to visit a neighbour's house and be rudely turned on by a vulgar guttersnipe bench probably purchased at some seedy all night furniture store.

Thank God those days are gone. I am not at all surprised that most of these new inoffensive benches are imported from the Far East they have better manners out there. Here in the West, where liberalism runs riot, things are unfortunately very different.

Anyway. I am always interested in crime prevention add was pleased to read recently that the Garda is to acquire two aircraft with night flying capability, plus the latest "thermal imaging" equipment.

Some kind of fancy photo copier, is it?

No. The equipment will allow the Garda to track a person running across a field at night.

Expensive, I suppose?

No one could begrudge the mere £200,000 allotted for this purpose.

Dear enough for a couple of small planes.

Excuse me, you misunderstand. The £200,000 generously set aside by our Government was for the initial feasibility study. The fully equipped aircraft, when they come along, will cost rather more.

Would it be feasible to do feasibility studies on feasibility studies themselves?

I am setting up a company to do just that, or hope to as soon as my feasibility grant is approved.

Tell us approximately how many people might be running away from the police across fields on any given night?

I'm sorry, these statistics are not available.

Is it that the Garda running after them across the sell same fields can not keep up with the lads running a way?

I'm sorry, this information is not available.

Would the Garda not spend the money on fitness classes instead?

You are being unnecessarily cynical.

Sorry. So the Garda is going to have a flying corps?

Not exactly. The Garda is unhappy that the new toys for the boys beg pardon, aircraft for after dark cross field criminal chasing, will be under the ultimate control of the Air Corps.

But surely that makes sense?

To you and me, perhaps. The Garda believes the Air Corps personnel are decent types, yet are, according to a recent report, "obliged to work to an Army `culture' which focuses on following orders and discourages a change of plans in mid air."

The Garda would prefer rugged individualists in the air, Top Gun types who will work on their own initiative, disregard orders from unimaginative bosses, make their own split second decisions, speak in the urgent monosyllables, provide information only on a need to know basis, despise bureaucracy and those who practise it, and somersault in mid air if that's what the situation calls for?

So it seems. But look I suppose you think the Garda sometimes worries about lack of education contributing to social problems, and thereby crime, in disadvantaged areas?

I'm sure they do.

I have news for you.

That's no more than I expect in the newspaper.

At the international crime conference held recently in Dublin, the outgoing Garda Commissioner, Mr Patrick Culligan, noted that among the challenges facing the Garda were improved educational standards.

Higher educational standards worry the Garda?

According to the Commissioner, these rising standards increase the demand for public accountability of the Garda, with citizens putting a stronger emphasis on their personal rights.

The cheek of them I mean of us. If we could only appreciate that ignorance is bliss and forgot the nonsense about higher education, we would make the Garda job easier is that it?

That appears to be exactly "it". However, there is good news in this area.

There is?

The Minister for Finance, Mr Quinn, has pointed out that the money to pay for the expensive new anti crime package will have to come from other priority areas of public spending.

And have any of these areas been specified?

Not officially. But Mr Quinn is understood to have told a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party that there would be little point in reproaching the Minister for Education for delays on school extensions, since the money would be spent on fighting crime.

You mean education will suffer and public accountability pressure on the Garda will thereby decrease, so their job will be made easier?

Your logic is incontrovertible.