UKIP often boasts about how tough it wants to be on crime, but that message doesn’t appear to have filtered down the party ranks in Worcestershire.

You may have heard the alarming case of a 17-year old hit-and-run driver who miraculously escaped jail despite ploughing into two pedestrians after a police chase ending in Tunnel Hill, Worcester.

The outcome sparked utter meltdown among WN readers, who called it “crazy”, “beyond a joke”, “sickening” and quite frankly unbelievable.

The magistrate who presided over it?

UKIP’s county flag-waver Peter Jewell, who boasts of lunching with Nigel Farage and stood for parliament disastrously in Redditch.

* AS creative as ever, Harriett Baldwin made good use of her lofty position as City Minister on Budget day, tweeting a picture inside the Treasury of the snazzy Worcestershire flag next to the famous battered red briefcase.

This got The Source wondering how wacky she could make this event in future by smuggling in other county exports.

How about a Thatcher sculpture carved out of a pear?

* JOYOUS, it’s celebrations all round at County Hall, where scrimping council officers have managed to switch off 11,000 street lights at night with barely anybody noticing - but has there been an impact on crime?

Mark Holston, from the council’s street lighting team, puts it thus: “We’ve had people report crimes to us, believing it was down to the part-night switch off, but we’ve taken them up with policing teams who don’t think that’s the case.”

Translation: we haven’t a ruddy clue, but let’s hope not.

* BARON Fullstop, of Official Monster Raving Loony Party fame, has annoyed Worcestershire County Council so much by asking one awkward question too many, he’s been blocked from its Twitter account.

Isn’t this how Nazi Germany first started?

* FORMER Worcester Mayor Pat Agar has a deliciously accurate description of bus services post-council cuts.

“It’s like Swiss cheese, full of holes - and the later you leave it the bigger the holes.”