They are all ruthless drug dealers who have left a trail of misery and destruction in their wake.

Between them they represent a cancer that is eating away at the heart of our society.

Countless lives have been wrecked by the drugs they have supplied, families torn apart by the addictions they have fed.

Yet they also share something else in common.

Each has seen his ill-gotten gains wiped out by a confiscation order, stripping him of money made on the back of other people's pain.

Police in West Yorkshire have used the orders to seize £1,155,561 this year from convicted traffickers and dealers.

It's a good start but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

There are scores more out there and we hope next year's seizures will be double this year's figure.

Drug lords must be left with nothing to ensure they are put out of business.

Not just in the short-term but permanently.



Housing lottery

A COUNCIL house in Leeds becomes available... and 463 desperate families scramble to move in.

The scrap for the modest two-bed property on Lickless Avenue in Horsforth is a sad indictment of the chronic lack of social housing in the city.

And it lays bare the folly of selling off the nation's local authority-owned housing stock to private buyers.

There are 31,000 on the waiting list for a council house in Leeds, demand the city council say would take £24 billion to satisfy.

The lack of affordable private housing available to rent means social housing is many people's only hope of getting a home of their own.

Plans to build 27 new council houses in the city – the first in nearly 30 years – cannot come soon enough.

Yet it is still only a drop in the ocean when set against what is needed.

Investment on a massive scale is required if this desperate lottery is to come to an end.



An unfair fight

YOUNGSTERS have organised a huge pillow fight in Leeds via social networking site Facebook.

It sounds a lot of fun – but the venue is Woodhouse Moor which is still being cleaned up after last weekend's wrecking spree by revellers.

A previous event of this kind staged last week trashed Millennium Square.

Police are right to step in and ensure the pillow fight doesn't go ahead. There is nothing wrong with having a laugh... except when it comes at the expense of everyone else.