NO doubt it seemed a great idea at the time.

At the heart of the UN building in New York, symbol of the world's optimism after the Second World War, why not display a picture by the greatest artist of the 20th century? An anti-war picture naturally, because that's what the UN is all about.

So, at the portal of the UN council chamber went up a reproduction of Picasso's Guernica, a picture that shows, in the artist's unmistakable style, a chaotic scene of violence, agony and grief beneath a sun blazing in a dark sky. Mankind, we infer, is indifferent to the goodness of creation.

Alas, the idealism that underpinned the choice of this picture - a visual proclamation of Never Again or Goodbye To All That - is too good for this world.

When Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, turned up to address the council, urging the case to attack Iraq, Guernica was discreetly covered. And I'm sure you will agree that it wouldn't do to have someone talking about making war against an unsettling backdrop of what war looks like and feels like.

MUCH of our present government is carried out not in Parliament but by telephone. Many calls at the moment, of course, between No 10 and the White House. And almost certainly another last weekend from No 10 - to the Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine.

Of course Lord Irvine might have decided for himself not to accept in full his inflation-busting 12.6 per cent pay rise, set to net him an extra £22,000 a year. But since the news that he was forgoing most of it pending a review came within hours of his office announcing that he intended to take it, some arm-twisting looks likely. And who has sufficient political muscle except the PM, Tony Blair?

What is most depressing about this incident is the apparent failure of anyone in Government to recognise before the pay award was announced how inappropriate such a massive rise was to an already highly-paid official, and how it was bound to inflame public feeling. The attempt to present the rise as unavoidable because of some arcane rule was an equivalent to the Royal Family claiming that 'protocol' prevented the flying of a flag at half mast on Buckingham Palace when Princess Diana died. Out of touch, out of touch. And this by a party supposedly of and for the people.

To reinforce the above point: When Tony Blair played carpet bowls at Hartlepool, I wonder if anyone present seized the golden opportunity to tell him, politely, that the central fault with his Government can be summed up in a two-word bowling phrase: Wrong bias.

A reader challenged my unstinting admiration for Judge David Hodson's handling of the Ian Carr death-by-dangerous driving case. "Carr deserved the maximum prison sentence and should have got it even if he did plead guilty" said my (and Judge Hodson's) critic.

Ah, but by lopping off six months from the available ten years, Judge Hodson guarded against the possibility of an appeal, which might have produced an even lower sentence. Leniency towards serious motoring offenders is now notorious from the bench, and Judge Hodson, we might fairly speculate, was anxious to create no chance. Yes, brilliantly done.