WHEN portly PC George Dixon plodded the pavements of Dock Green, villains wilted into inactivity or thought about getting an honest job.

Dixon of Dock Green, on BBC Television around 50 years ago, represented law and order in an era when bobbies still patrolled streets on foot and checked any ne’er do wells with firmness and polite authority.

Alas, PC Dixon’s easy-going, gentlemanly approach is an attitude of the past.

The truth of 2007 is much more alarming than the fiction of 1957.

George Dixon has been replaced “on the box” by real-life policemen in documentaries like Street Wars, Street Crime UK and Cops on Camera, which are not for the faint-hearted.

Fists fly, feet thud into collapsed bodies and petrol bombs whiz. Some film shots are blood-curdling.

The uncensored records of late-night mayhem provide a grim reflection of British life in 2007. They stress, as never before, our indebtedness to hard-pressed police officers who have to deal with persistent thugs, vicious vandals and crazily reckless motorists.

WHY NO PUBLIC INQUIRY?

The man in the street (otherwise known as the average reader of this newspaper) may well be bewildered by apparent inconsistencies of local government.

Recently, a two-day inquiry took place to investigate a claim that land at Lark Lane, Penrith, is a play area and, therefore, should not be used as a site for housing.

In support of the bid to save the area for the community, evidence was given to a planning inspector of the playing of football, cricket, rounders and other games.

Democracy was at work, as on many occasions in the past when wide-ranging proposals have caused concern. Public inquiries have probed everything from the route of the A66 into West Cumbria to the threat to a right of way running off Penrith’s King Street.

But what men (and women) in the street are asking is why there has been no public inquiry into a matter causing much greater concern than the Lark Lane plan — the long-running saga of the Southend Road redevelopment which has hovered over Penrith for years and caused more anguish than any other in living memory.

The town’s top sports venue — the football stadium, with adjoining recreational land — will be wiped out, and it seems amazing that, over the years of build-up to the now-imminent development, there has never been a full-scale public inquiry.

Another football season looms, possibly the last at the town’s traditional “home” of the game, dating back to 1894, before they move the goalposts to a new stadium at Frenchfield.

Major changes to trading patterns are also envisaged as a result of the Southend Road upheaval, but “inquiries” have been limited to town chatter in pubs and coffee houses.

One theory is that the failure to hold a rigorous public inquiry into the development of a new superstore, shops and housing may stem from Penrith’s long-time lack of a town or parish council.

SEASIDE IN WAR-TIME

A book of war memories with a difference is RAF Silloth, loaned by a West Cumbrian reader.

Originally built as a maintenance unit, the airfield was later a Coastal Command base, where hundreds of young pilots honed their flying skills.

The book is a team effort by men and women once stationed at Silloth, who recall that the accident-rate among trainee aircrew was very high, which led to the Solway Firth becoming known as Hudson Bay because of the number of planes lost, many of them Hudsons!

Among contributors to the book is George Lancaster who, as a member of Penrith Air Training Corps, attended a camp at Silloth in late-1942, which gave cadets a glimpse of life in the RAF.

Two Penrith colleagues, both aged 17, went on a training flight, from which they never returned, George recalls.

There are happier memories in other contributions, such as the quality of Silloth fish and chips, dances and sing-songs in the NAAFI and the strange story of a pair of large bloomers, seen fluttering from the church spire!

NEWSMAN LOOKS BACK

The years dissolved with the arrival of a heartwarming letter from a former colleague.

John Lawrence recalled that it is just 25 years since he began a career which has embraced three principal forms of news reporting — for a weekly newspaper, on radio and on television.

His first job was that of junior reporter on the Herald and, like many newcomers, before and since, he was given the task of compiling the “Looking Backwards” column, made up of choice news items of 25, 50 and 100 years earlier.

John Lawrence then spent some years as the Herald’s Keswick-based reporter before leaving the newspaper in 1989 to begin a career in broadcasting.

Nowadays he is a producer at Look North, BBC Newcastle’s half-hour television program of news and local interest, managing a team of around 15 journalists and technical staff.

John’s taste for newsgathering is as keen as ever and he still finds his job exciting. He says: “I still love writing. I still love finding out things and telling people about them.”

He recalls his years at the Herald with affection and his feelings of regret on leaving the paper: “It had been such a happy place for me and what I had learned was to be the foundation for the rest of my career.”