IT has all the key ingredients of a Hollywood blockbuster - conflict, passion and a fierce battle played out in the back alleyways of a Northern terraced street. The women of Skipton are fighting for their right to hang their washing out, as they always have done, across their own back lanes.

Newcomer David Painter has complained to the police and council because he can't drive his car along the alleyway without being assailed by rows of flapping sheets, towels and underwear. Think Billy Elliot crossed with Calendar Girls, although no one, I hasten to add, has bared their breasts yet.

The women say Mr Painter, a British Airways steward with new-fangled ideas about tumble driers and rotary wash lines, will never be accepted. He has only lived in their street, they point out, for 16 years.

These no-nonsense matriarchs are determined to preserve a great British tradition. One of them even got so worked up she hit Mr Painter with a pillow case. He, in turn, sawed off the washing-line hooks from three houses.

The police and the council appear to be on Mr Painter's side. But the women refuse to give up the struggle: "We're not finished yet. You don't think we're going to stop now do you?" said the leader of the women Mr Painter has come to know as the "housewives' mafia".

In the Hollywood version, I picture Russell Crowe in the role of Mr Painter and Catherine Zeta-Jones as the feisty leader of the washer women fighting tooth and nail to protect their heritage. Mr Crowe and Ms Zeta-Jones would, of course, end up disappearing off into the sunset to create a whole washing line full of babygros and Terry nappies together.

I can't imagine how the real-life drama will end, although I know whose side I would rather be on. One day, there may even be coach trips to Skipton, where the star-struck can see the very spot where the famous battle of the washing lines was drawn. Perhaps the ladies of Thornton Street should get themselves an agent.

DID the fact two of the American soldiers pictured abusing naked Iraqi prisoners were women make their behaviour all the more shocking? Most press attention has focused on 21-year-old Lynndie England, pictured leading a naked Iraqi on a dog-leash, and her blonde colleague photographed smiling grotesquely beside a heap of bound and hooded Iraqis.

There have been countless commentaries, alongside interviews with their families and neighbours, yet hardly a mention of the male soldiers pictured with them. I suspect this is because most people expect higher moral standards of women.

But the feeling of disbelief that women can carry out such crimes is dangerous. On the one hand, it can lead to the demonisation of those who do break the rules. But on the other, blame is too readily placed elsewhere.

Several commentators this week have accused Lynndie England's abusive, bullying soldier boyfriend of being responsible for her appalling behaviour, just as Maxine Carr has been portrayed, by some, as a victim of Ian Huntley, and therefore, like a child, not responsible for her own actions. Perhaps we will achieve true equality when we learn to accept women are every bit as capable of carrying out vile acts as men.