I HAVE just spent a Friday evening on patrol with the police to find out more about local anti-social behaviour problems.

In Harleston, there were large groups of youths hanging around in different parts of the town, especially in Budgens car park.

For young people the key problem is that there aren't enough places to go. For the police, stopping anyone officially means filling in a form which takes about six minutes or so.

Stopping a group of, say, ten youngsters could take over an hour. This is bureaucracy gone mad.

Later, I toured Diss on foot with the Police Community Support Officers. The town was quiet that evening, which could have been due to the presence of a police response vehicle from Norwich.

Common sense suggests that visible policing means less trouble.

JUNIOR DOCTORS

LAST week I met with consultants at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.

They are horrified by the new automatic application process for junior doctors applying for specialist positions, which is preventing the best candidates from getting jobs.

Junior doctors must apply on-line but cannot attach a CV, an employment history or any published academic papers. Even a Nobel Prize would only earn two points!

This means senior hospital consultants who are already hard-pressed have to sift through hundreds of applications from junior doctors with no information to help them distinguish between good and poor candidates.

In Norfolk, some 30 per cent of junior doctors do not have interviews for the next stage of their careers.

The result is that many excellent junior doctors whom the NHS has trained at a cost of millions of pounds are being forced to apply for jobs in Australia and Canada. Sheer madness!

SPORTS CLUBS

LOCAL sports clubs and associations are the backbone of British sport and they deserve our support if they are going to produce the champions of the future.

Dame Kelly Holmes, Michael Vaughan and Jonny Wilkinson all made their first steps into their chosen sport through local clubs.

Norfolk Gliding Club, whose annual awards I was pleased to present recently, is a perfect example of a growing sports club and I am delighted to support them.

The club is based at Tibenham Airfield. It has around 300 members with a range of membership options from a full flying member to an associate.

Norfolk gliding club also offers flights and a wide variety of gliding courses run by qualified instructors.