Cartoon by John Sadler

• EXTRAORDINARY how a street sweeper with 15 years’ service for the council can be sacked for failing a random drugs test by Veolia who employ him on behalf of Camden Council, (Street sweeper sacked after random drug test takes legal action, January 3).

Are Veolia board members subject to such random tests? Or Camden councillors? The victim admitted he’d “done something a few days before the test, but it’s not like I came into work high”.

“Drugs and alcohol impede an individual’s judgment,” is the best justification Veolia can come up with. But that also applies to City gents who invest our pension money and to councillors who take crucial decisions about or lives.

Nobody objects to disciplining if there are grounds to suspect a person’s judgment is impaired. But random tests? It seems that nothing warps the judgment of humans so much as an excess of puritan zeal combined with a total lack of common sense. What are these people on?

EF WILSON
NW1