DO YOU want to know a state secret? This one does not affect the security of the nation. It won't hurt ourselves or benefit our enemies. All it will do is reveal the identity of two young men.

In a High Court hearing this week, the sort of dust-dry occasion that wouldn't normally cause the ordinary person to stay awake for a moment, three newspaper groups have joined forces to resist an infringement of free speech.

Nine times out of ten, I'm all for openness. Secrets are there to be prised out. Disclosure of what's hidden should be part of the democratic process.

But this case is different.

My introduction above is a tease. I don't know this secret and so couldn't pass it on. Besides, I wouldn't even if I did know.

The secret in question concerns the future identity and whereabouts of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, the boys who killed toddler Jamie Bulger. They are likely to be released next year and will be given new lives and fresh identities. An injunction granted in July bans the media from taking or publishing photographs or reporting anything about the pair.

Lawyers for Venables and Thompson want this ban to be made permanent, and they have been putting their case to Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, president of the family division of the High Court.

If granted, the unprecedented lifetime injunctions would prevent the media from ever disclosing information which would identify the two released killers.

Normally, I would consider such a ban to be wrong, not least because for ever is a long time. Placing a permanent reporting restriction on these young men would certainly be a strict measure. But what are the alternatives?

Writing about this awful case is always to venture nervously into difficult waters. So much heightened emotion surrounds this killing of a small child - understandably so, heaven knows - that it can be difficult to step back, ignore the braying and just think.

Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were themselves deeply troubled children when they killed Jamie Bulger eight years ago. To admit as much is not to deny what they did, just to point out another side to this modern day horror story. They were ten years old when they committed the crime, an age when many European countries would not even have prosecuted them at all.

If our justice system counts for anything, rehabilitation has to run alongside punishment. To some no punishment fits such a crime, and these people honestly believe Venables and Thompson deserve no sympathy at all, and should not be released soon, if ever.

But if we accept that Venables and Thompson are likely to be released some time next year, what public benefit would disclosure bring? National tabloid newspapers like to whip up a frenzy of false fears about crime. If these young men were to be hounded by tabloid reporters, their lives would be put at risk, quite possibly turning one death into three and further deepening an awful tragedy.

If Venables and Thompson are allowed to live out their new lives in peace, we will all be none the wiser - and, for once, such a lack of knowledge would surely be a good thing.

THE release this week of 1, the latest Beatles compilation, has unleashed all sorts of nonsense about the Beatles versus Westlife. Watching bands such as Westlife on Top Of The Pops makes me wonder what's wrong with the youth of today (did I really just write that?).

This is because Westlife, a boy band even more dreary than the last one, are so bland I can't believe any self-respecting young person would listen to them for a minute.

As to the Beatles, wonderful as they could be, won't there ever come a point when we can step out of their shadow?