A RADIO 4 programme the other day examined the plight of so-called street children in Central and Latin America.

Radio 4, incidentally, is a glory of Britain, one of the few features of our now crumbling and crappy nation of which we can still be proud. But let's get on.

In Honduras, a particular focus of the programme, 1,395 street children have been murdered in the last four years. Few people have been prosecuted and only about ten convicted.

Yet 40 per cent of the killers are known. Who are they? When the interviewer put this question to a British ex-pat who runs a refuge, the first words of his reply sounded like: "A third are policemen.'' Aware that his listeners probably couldn't believe their ears, the interviewer sought confirmation: "A third are policemen?''

It's true. And while another third are members of gangs, the final third is scarcely less shocking than policemen. "The public.'' Killing street kids is almost a routine suburban activity.

The interviewer asked: "How can policemen and vigilantes from the middle class just walk out and murder kids?'' The reply: "They're looked at as social vermin that needs to be eradicated. They're seen as not even a dog.'' Sometimes sexually abused, the children are also often mutilated, including having their eyes gouged out. Providing the key point that concerns us here, the interviewee said: "We have the systematic state-sponsored killing of children.''

On the Richter scale of inhuman acts, this large-scale, almost casual, killing of children must rank near the top. And, with Mexico, neighbour to George Bush's Texas, implicated, it is happening a lot closer to the US than whatever brutalities Saddam Hussein is perpetrating in Iraq.

So when they've sorted Saddam, a campaign now promoted as a humanitarian mission, will President Bush and Tony Blair tackle this most appalling abuse of human rights that is occurring under President Bush's nose? How will they do it except by drastic "regime change?'' At least a UN resolution should not be hard to obtain.

HAVING so nobly given up his whacking £22,000 pay rise while the basis on which it was awarded, the linkage of his pay with that of the Lord Chief Justice, is examined, the Lord Chancellor, Derry Irvine, is left so impoverished that is obliged to keep a supermarket queue waiting while he dashes for his loyalty card - to save all of £1. Ah well, let us hope the pay linkage is approved. For, with judges poised to seek a big pay rise, Lord Irving would not only collect his £22,000 but would be in line for a further big increase as his pay once again slipped out of sync with that of the Lord Chief Justice. The canny Lord Irvine might then - just - risk burning his loyalty cards.

MORE "green' energy is on the way. It means that soon, any vista not already spoiled by phone masts and pylons will have wind turbines to do the job.

BACK to Blair and Iraq. If his patience over Saddam not disarming is exhausted, why hasn't his tolerance of the arsenal still retained by the IRA also run out?