The murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky will have prompted many people to rethink their attitude towards the police.

Certainly there's plenty to criticise about the service they're able to provide and the way they seem to organise their priorities. The popular perception is that they don't respond quickly enough, and sometimes not at all, after people have been burgled or had their home attacked or their vehicle stolen.

They can seem too quick to arrest those who seek to protect themselves or apprehend criminals.

They focus too heavily on the easy target of motoring offences.

All those criticisms, I'm sure, are true to varying degrees. But they're organisational problems, the responsibility of those who manage the force at national and local level, setting targets and priorities.

The cold-blooded killing of PC Beshenivsky has dragged the spotlight away from those issues and on to the ordinary officers at the sharp end.

Except "ordinary" is the wrong adjective. These, as we have now been made to realise in such a brutal manner, are extraordinary people who are paid to stand between the criminals and the public at considerable risk to themselves.

And in this case the whole system made liars of those who claim it's slow and cumbersome.

When the alarm went off at that Morley Street travel agency the procedure the police have in place worked speedily. Within a couple of minutes the two officers were at the scene, not knowing what to expect but apparently thinking they were checking on what was probably yet another false alarm.

The story of what happened next has been told often enough in the days since. Within seconds one of them lay dead and the other was injured, and their colleagues, who were swiftly alerted, raced to the scene - again, not knowing what to expect.

These really are special people.

This tragedy has served to remind us of that. We should cherish them and be thankful for them at the same time as we grieve for Sharon Beshenivsky with her family and colleagues.

Another thing this tragedy has done is remind the people of Bradford that whatever our ethnic or religious background, this is one community and the police protect us all. If any good can be said to have come of it, it's that the people of this city have become united by their sense of outrage that something like this could happen here.

It has given a tremendous boost to community relations, and to the relationship between the police and law-abiding Bradfordians of every background.

Switch them off

It hurts to write this, but even before Tony Blair had announced his new enthusiasm for nuclear power, I'd reached the same conclusion.

The British coal industry has been killed off and our own reserves of North Sea gas and oil are rapidly running out, leaving us dependent on imports. If there's a global shortage, those countries which supply us will jack up the prices they charge (which is already happening) or refuse to send their gas to us because they need it for their home mark et.

What do we do? Wind and wave turbines, admirable though they are, can't fill the whole gap. And nor, alas, can efforts to conserve energy - though together those two measures will certainly help. So despite the obvious risks it presents, the only solution left is a nuclear one.

Even so, it will be many years before new power stations can be built and commissioned.

In the meantime, efforts to save energy have to be redoubled. We could start by turning off the lights at large shopping complexes outside business hours.

I drove up the M1 past Meadowhall early on Sunday evening, when it was closed.

Thousands of light bulbs outlined it against the night sky and hundreds of bright lamps shone down on empty car parks. I bet it could be seen from the moon.

What a waste! We're being threatened with the possibility of power cuts this winter if cold weather continues. If that does happen, we'll know where some of the blame lies.

A good example

"Happy Christmas" declares the sign strung across Hall Ings, in the place where the other week a similar sign said "Happy Diwali".

This is not a city where people of different faiths and cultures are discouraged from celebrating their festivals for fear of upsetting others. In that regard at least, political correctness does not rule here. Long may it stay that way, setting a good example to other towns and cities which have a less-mature, less-balanced, lessexperienced approach to such things.

No sympathy for this pervert

Are we supposed to feel sorry for Gary Glitter (above), who apparently will face the death sentence in Vietnam if found guilty of having sex with a 12-year-old girl?

Glitter wowed the nation in the 1970s with his glam rock act but then went and spoiled it all in 1999 when he took his computer in to be repaired and it was discovered to be packed with 4,000 pornographic images involving children.

People like Glitter (or Gadd, as he's more properly known) create the demand for these sick images and other people are more than happy to supply them. So children suffer, horribly. Young minds are corrupted and young bodies are damaged, sometimes fatally.

So I for one won't shed any tears over this man, whatever happens to him in a country where they're prepared to take much firmer action in defence of their children's innocence than we are here.