TODAY we report on Ray Mallon's wide-ranging plans to make Middlesbrough a better place to live.

His philosophy is populist and simple: remove the lowlife, as he calls them, and let the majority of decent people flourish.

It is exciting and we wish him good luck in his laudable aim of reducing crime by 15 per cent.

Mr Mallon, though, has to be careful that he doesn't become too single-minded in his obsession of clearing up the streets. Drug-dealers, beggars and truants might be unpleasant and repeatedly hitting them hard might make the streets feel safer. But the underlying reasons of why people turn to drugs, why people are homeless and why children play truant must also be addressed. There can be a fine line between loud music being one person's acceptable party and another person's unacceptable anti-social nightmare.

This isn't, though, just a Middlesbrough story. Many of Middlesbrough's problems can be found in other communities. Many of those communities will be looking hopefully at Mr Mallon's experiment and, if it makes any positive impact on crime figures, will be asking why their town halls aren't adopting a similar approach.

In political circles, there is a feeling that the time of directly-elected mayors has come and gone. This is largely because independents like Mr Mallon so embarrassed Labour.

But mayors were designed to reinvigorate local government by putting a single, powerful, dynamic person in charge.

In Hartlepool, the monkey-mayor is doing his best but his social trips to see strippers do not cast the town in the best of lights.

In Middlesbrough, though, Mr Mallon is accepting the chance to try and make a real difference to the quality of people's lives.

A major reason for low turnouts in local elections is the perception that all councils do is empty the bins once a week and plant a few floral displays. They appear to have so little power, they're not worth wasting a vote on.

Mr Mallon, though, will change that perception if he is successful. If he fails, local government will become an irrelevance. There are high stakes being played for in Middlesbrough.