Thomas Hobbes, writing in the wake of the Civil War, believed that only law and an agreed sovereign power stood between civilised people and a return to natural savagery. That might be a bit later than the millennium cancellation which Keith Flint and his fellows are calling for. A shift is also needed in the strategy of the IMF and the World Bank, which currently encourage Third World economies to shrink and stagnate whereas they need to be helped to grow and diversify.Done properly, this would go a long way towards meeting the levels of poverty alleviation that the rich nations have said should be achieved by 2015. They will then have the impetus to overcome the over-cautious reservations of those bureaucrats in the Bundesbank. If that can be done the other main objectors, the Japanese, will fall into line, since they hate being isolated within the G8.More than that, a suitable mechanism exists in the Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative. This was introduced by the rich nations three years ago and was the first comprehensive debt relief scheme. But the levels set were niggardly, and hedged around with unnecessarily restrictive conditions and thresholds.

These need to be relaxed substantially to produce relief that is far faster and much greater than at present. For the problem has always been one of political will rather than economic feasibility - and campaigns by pop stars have an important part to play in creating the kind of public will which politicians cannot ignore. But the appeal is radically to extend the consideration of debt relief on a country-by-country basis, so that conditions remain tough for corrupt places such as Nigeria, but are eased substantially for poor countries, such as Uganda and Mozambique, which are struggling under burdens that are contrary to natural justice.All this is eminently realistic, especially since the change of government in Germany has ousted the old intransigents in Bonn. And the notion that the debts are unpayable is shared by increasing numbers of economists and politicians. There will be plenty who dismiss the Jubilee 2000 campaign - and its backing by music industry luminaries from David Bowie to Robbie Williams, and from Luciano Pavarotti to Catatonia - as simplistic idealism If the call were to cancel all debt, that might be so.

To be asked to provide the third service with few extra resources is absurd. The Government is "doing something", but we should be clear that that something is unlikely to prevent future tragedies.. CONSIDERING THE physical abuse which the front man of Prodigy has perpetrated on the rest of his body, an additional tattoo may not seem much of a mark of seriousness. And yet the news that Keith Flint is having the words "Drop the Debt" needled across his back for tonight's Brit Pop Awards is, in its way, a significant event Flint is in good company. The Pope is of like mind (on the issue of cancelling Third World debt; not, so far as we know, on the matter of tattooing).

John Paul II had it high on the agenda of his private conversations with the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Vatican at the weekend. That represents a vast range of genuine and distressing sicknesses Mental illness is often intermittent. It is sometimes associated with great verbal but little physical violence. It is, in short, all too easily prone to "dustbin diagnosis" by hard-pressed professionals.Our mental health service has long been starved of the resources it needs to care for those in the community, in hospitals and in prisons. Mental health experts suggest that perhaps 10 per cent of all Britons suffer from a personality disorder at some time in their lives. What is highly doubtful is that the policy will be a practical success. The effectiveness of the "third service" will depend almost entirely on the resources it is granted. Health professionals in the front line implementing the policy will be faced with an impossible task - to determine, on evidence that is often far from overwhelming, that an individual should be committed to secure accommodation.One obvious factor is that some of those who ought to be placed in secure accommodation will not, like Michael Stone, be begging to be incarcerated, but will go out of their way to evade the attentions of the "third service".Those who do find themselves being attended to by the new policy may easily be the wrong people.

"Third service" is not, in and of itself, an unacceptable proposal. There is an obvious argument for those such as Michael Stone to be securely detained, although even in such apparently clear-cut cases, appropriate safeguards such as regular reviews need to be retained. The Home Secretary wants to introduce a "third service" which will allow, in effect, the indefinite detention of people diagnosed with non-treatable personality disorders even if they have not been convicted of a crime. The Government was right to respond to the public's desire that "something must be done" Now we know what that something is - lock 'em up.