TONY and Marilyn Cheetham lost their daughter when she was just 24 in a house fire. They wanted a picture of her etched onto her gravestone, hardly an outlandish request.

But they met with strong opposition from church leaders, one of whom snootily pronounced: "I've seen holograms, utterly tasteless and really quite foul. Photographic elements should be resisted. They can become tatty." What a cold, arrogant and patronising response to a couple in the throes of grief. The Cheethams finally won a consistory court battle this week to get the gravestone they wanted. Sadly, the Church lost in more ways than one. Because, in this instance, it showed itself to have a heart as hard as stone.

WHEN I first read the story about the five young girls, aged just six months to 13 years, who died, along with their mother and uncle, in an arson attack in Huddersfield at the weekend, I thought it was oddly placed in the national press, several pages in from the main news items. Shouldn't it have been all over the front pages? When I read the last paragraph, I realised why - the family, the story concluded, were Asian. Most of our newspapers have had lots of say on the subject of racism lately - from widespread criticism of the offensive "Asians are ten-a-penny" comments of Tory MP Ann Winterton to concern over the resurgence of the British National Party and the far right in Europe. But perhaps we should all be asking ourselves how this story would have been covered if the family had been white - and face up to such insidious racism, much closer to home.

THIS may seem a minor point after the horror of the Potters Bar rail crash, but I can't help wondering why, when we have seat-belts on cars, many coaches and planes, they are not compulsory on trains. Survivors' accounts revealed how they were hurled around carriages, ending up trapped between seats and pieces of mangled metal. Would being restrained in their seats have minimised injuries? With confidence in our rail network at an all-time low, perhaps it would provide passengers with some reassurance.

QUESTIONS are being asked as to how disgraced North-East GP Ashok Bhagat, jailed for conspiring to defraud £6,000 from his Health Authority and struck off the General Medical Council register last month, landed a top job with a private care home chain. It wasn't so long ago that disgraced North Yorkshire gynaecologist Richard Neale was discovered working in private practice after being ousted from the NHS. It makes you wonder how many patients paying privately for what they think is better medical care are, in fact, being treated by NHS rejects like Bhagat and Neale?

BEVERLEY Ward's employment tribunal against Nissan exposed a bizarre practice at the Washington plant, where groups of men spent their lunch break watching porn films. Hardly surprisingly Beverley, who won her case after being accused of causing disharmony, doesn't want her job back. I know Nissan is renowned for its unusual staff bonding rituals. But what's so wrong with grabbing a sandwich or nipping to the pub at lunchtime like everyone else?