A “MANIAC” driver who killed a four-year-old girl in a hit-and-run crash while high on drugs was sentenced to 13 years in prison today.

Daniel Jackson, 31, had sped away from two earlier crashes, his tyres “smoking and squealing”, before mounting the pavement hitting Olivia Donachie and her mother as they walked home from nursery.

The youngster suffered horrific injuries and was killed instantly, just yards from the family’s home in Redford Drive, Colinton.

Her 33-year-old mother Rachel was seriously injured and later had to have her left leg amputated below the knee.

Drug addict Jackson, a married father-of-three who lived in the Grassmarket, last month admitted a charge of culpable homicide on May 30.

Jackson’s vehicle - which police described as being in the worst condition they had ever seen - was so dangerous he wouldn’t let his wife Michelle drive it.

Sentencing Jackson at the High Court in Glasgow today, Lord Menzies said: “What possessed you to do the awful things you did in the quiet residential streets of Colinton? You drove your Jeep in a furious, dangerous and wholly irresponsible manner apparently without any thought or consideration for pedestrians or other road users.”

Olivia’s dad Paul Donachie said afterwards he hoped the sentence would help prevent similar tragedies from happening again.

He said: “I can only hope that this sentence will help to deter other drivers who may otherwise choose to drive in such a reckless way under the influence of drink or drugs.

“I would like to thank Lothian and Borders Police and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service for their professionalism and compassion during what has been a very stressful time for our family.

“We are also very grateful to relatives, friends, medical staff and the local community for their continuing kindness and support.”

Lord Menzies described the trail of mayhem left behind by Jackson, who had taken a cocktail of drugs, including morphine, the heroin substitute methadone and diazepam. He said: “You caused a series of accidents and near accidents, you collided with other cars and caused injury to their drivers and to pedestrians on the pavement; you drove on the wrong side of the road; you drove through traffic lights when they were red against you; you drove at speeds that were grossly excessive and well over the legal speed limit. You drove as if you were on a racing track rather than on the narrow streets, busy with pedestrians and vehicular traffic.

“You were involved in a head-on collision with another car, causing injury to the driver of that car and to a passing pedestrian, each of whom required hospital treatment. You caused a bus and lorry to pull in and swerve to avoid you.

“Your tyres were squealing and your car was tilted to one side. It is little wonder that several onlookers described you as driving as if you were being chase by the police and that you were driving like a maniac. You were driving like a maniac.”

Lord Menzies said that Olivia and her mum “weren’t on the roadway, but where they should have been safe, on the pavement.”

He added: “The hearts of all right-thinking members of society must surely go out to the whole of the Donachie family for the terrible wrongs you have inflected on them.”

Jackson had previous convictions for robbery, assault and theft.

Inspector John Beresford of Lothian and Borders Police also welcomed the tough sentence, and thanked everyone involved in an “extremely difficult and harrowing enquiry”. He paid tribute to the Donachie family for their dignity.

“Daniel Jackson’s actions were both criminally reckless and showed a total disregard for the safety of the public.

“He chose to drive his Jeep motorcar whilst under the influence of drugs and knowing full well that there were significant problems with the braking system. After being involved in two collisions of increasing severity, he chose to drive on in a reckless and dangerous manner. Eventually he lost control of the jeep and it collided with Olivia and Rachel Donachie with tragic consequences. By driving his vehicle at speed and in such a terrible state of repair his actions can only be described as criminal and the sentence today reflects that.

“This should send an extremely strong message to all road users who may consider driving whilst under the influence of drugs, those who fail to maintain their vehicles to the required standard and those who drive with utter disregard for the safety of the public.”

Jackson was arrested three days after the crash at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, after turning himself in with slashed wrists.

Detectives said they believed he had faked a suicide attempt in a bid to attract “sympathy” from the authorities.

He told a doctor at the hospital: “I have done something bad” and added: “I killed a little girl.”

While he was in a police cell he said: “I deserve life for what I have done- a life for a life.”. He added: “I deserve everything I get.”

After fleeing the scene, Jackson took refuge in the homes of friends in Dalkeith, who supplied him with drugs. Police believe he went on shoplifting raids to fund the massive binge.

Earlier, advocate depute Dorothy Bain QC told the court that an expert said the condition of the Jeep driven by the accused was the worst he had ever examined in his 10 years of working in this field.

“The Jeep was in poor condition and unsafe to drive and this should have been obvious to the driver. The Jeep simply had no footbrakes whatsoever,” said the prosecutor.

Scientists later carried out tests on blood taken from Jackson and found the cocktail of drugs in his system. He told police that he had an almost daily intake of 40 of heroin, 70 mls of methadone and four Valium pills.

Olivia’s death shocked the quiet community of Colinton. She was described as a “lively, fun and affectionate little girl” and a “wonderful daughter”. She went to a nursery attached to Bonaly Primary School.

Mrs Donachie and her husband Paul, 39, have three other children, Samuel, seven, Amelia, two, and Isabella, who was born two weeks before the crash.

Mrs Donachie formerly worked as an intensive therapy nurse and her husband works with an investment firm.

Although Rachel suffered life-threatening injuries, a doctor said “in his view her physical injuries pale into insignificance when one considers the devastating emotional trauma she has incurred through the loss of her daughter”. SNP vow to tackle Scots re-offending rates

JUSTICE Secretary Kenny MacAskill today vowed to tackle Scotland’s “unacceptable” re-offending rates.

He promised a new focus on community sentences after figures showed nearly two-thirds of people coming out of prison offended again within two years.

Statistics published by the Scottish Government showed 22 per cent of offenders released from prison or given a custodial sentence in 2003/04 were reconvicted within six months, 33 per cent within one year and 45 per cent within two years.

Among those who had served a custodial sentence, the reconviction rate was 64 per cent within two years.

But among those sentenced to community service, the reconviction rate was 39 per cent - down from 49 per cent eight years earlier.

Mr MacAskill said: “This report helps to demonstrate the challenge this Government faces in achieving a progressive and coherent penal policy.

“Nearly two thirds of people released from prison were reconvicted within two years. That is not acceptable.

“I believe that the time is now right for a more focussed approach to the community disposals available to the courts. That is why we are currently reviewing community sentences to revitalise them. We want tough community sentences to protect the public and improve reparation and rehabilitation for persistent offenders.”

In Edinburgh and Midlothian, the area covered by Edinburgh Sheriff Court, 20 per cent of offenders - both those sentenced to community service and those released from custody - were reconvicted within six months.

Tory justice spokesman Bill Aitken described today’s figures as “appalling” and said the previous Labour-Liberal Democrat administration should be ashamed.

He said: “If only we could take comfort from the fact that there is a new government, but all the signs so far are that the SNP wants to jail even fewer people.”

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BEIJING: Grocery shopping has become a painful experience for Zhang Xueyi.

Meat prices have risen 50 percent in the past year, and eggs and other products are not far behind, forcing the 31-year-old railway technicians family to spend a third of its 3,000 yuan (US$400; \300) monthly income on food.

“If prices go up more, we have to pay. Well cut back somewhere else,” said Zhang as he hefted bags of eggs, vegetables and rice from the market down a narrow Beijing lane.

After a run that has seen sizzling growth top 10 percent for four years, analysts say Chinas supercharged economy is facing strains that could break out into an upsurge of inflation.

So far the worst damage has been confined to food prices, which jumped 15.4 percent in July over the same month a year ago and drove overall inflation to a decade-high 5.6 percent. But wages are rising too, as are the costs of oil and electric power. Record-setting exports and a stock market boom are sending cash flooding through the economy, stoking demand for goods.

The Chinese economy “might have entered a region where we should be on guard,” said a central bank official, Zhang Tao, quoted last week by the state newspaper China Securities Times.

If the trend goes unchecked, the impact could be felt abroad as consumers who depend on China as the worlds low-cost factory have to pay more for appliances, shoes and other goods. Pinched Chinese consumers might spend less on foreign goods, widening a yawning trade surplus that has strained relations with Washington and other trading partners.

Economists say the latest price spike is due mostly to temporary shortages of pork, the staple meat whose price soared 86 percent in July from a year ago.

Pressure is growing in energy, where Beijing is holding down retail prices by blocking state-owned gasoline and power companies from passing on higher costs, said Nicholas Kwan, an analyst for investment bank CLSA in Hong Kong.

Chinese oil refiners are losing US$5 (\3.50) per barrel of oil that they process into gasoline or diesel, he said.

“I think its just a matter of time until they have to bite the bullet and raise domestic prices,” Kwan said. “Otherwise they risk an artificial shortage because oil companies will refuse to refine oil into gasoline if they are losing money.”

Wages rose 21 percent in the first quarter of the year over the same period of 2006, according to the government, as companies competed for labor. Even that rise might not reflect the extent of pressure faced by employers, because those data cover only government companies, not the booming private sector.

“Theres very little spare labor for manufacturing now, so we think were seeing more wage pressure,” said Stephen Green, senior economist at Standard Chartered Bank in Shanghai.

Add to rising costs the “wealth effect” produced by a stock market boom. The countrys main stock index is up more than 70 percent this year, making speculators rich on paper and fueling spending.

Exporters already are struggling with the steady rise of Chinas currency, the yuan, which has pushed up the U.S. dollar prices of their goods by almost 10 percent over the past two years.

The price surge has alarmed Chinese leaders, who remember that 1989s Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests were driven in part by anger at raging inflation that exceeded 18 percent a year.

Premier Wen Jiabao has ordered urgent measures to boost food production, promising farmers free vaccinations and other aid to raise more pigs. Local authorities have been ordered to subsidize the grocery bills of poor families.

Beijing has raised interest rates three times this year to cool the boom and avert a rise in inflation. After seeing the July price data, economists said they expect another rate hike shortly.

Until now, intense price competition in a Chinese market filled with low-cost goods has prevented makers of most goods from passing on rising costs to consumers. But economists say struggling companies might finally be forced to stand their ground and rise prices.

Last week, the government said an investigation into rising food costs found that makers of instant noodles illegally colluded to push up prices by up to 40 percent.

An official of a noodle trade group defended the increase as a response to rising raw material costs that have slashed profit margins to as little as 1 percent.

“If we dont lift the prices, there will be no profit,” the official, Meng Hesu, was quoted as saying.

BRUSSELS: The European Union and China have agreed to monitor Chinese clothing exports to Europe until the end of 2008, the European Commission said Tuesday - a move that should ease trade tensions.

The EUs executive arm said it would run “joint import surveillance” with the Chinese Foreign Trade Ministry for the next year for some types of clothing instead of lifting all quotas on Chinese textiles as originally planned for the start of 2008.

This will not cap the amount of Chinese textiles that companies can send to Europe, but seeks to keep track of real trade volumes - potentially allowing governments to know when they need to step in if a flood of cheap goods hits European markets.

Authorities will check both Chinese export licenses and European export permits for T-shirts, pullovers, mens trousers, blouses, dresses, bras, bed linens and flax yarn to make sure that trade is not surging.

“This monitoring system provides a clear picture of the likely development of trade patterns and ensures predictability for EU businesses,” the EU commission said. “Although imports of these goods will be closely monitored, their level of import will not be restricted by this arrangement.”

Beijing and Brussels hope to prevent a repeat of the 2005 “bra wars,” when excess Chinese clothing piled up in European ports after traders overshot quotas setting how much China could export to Europe just before the limits were due to be lifted.

European manufacturers - many of them in Italy, France, Spain and Portugal - were up in arms, saying they were being unfairly undermined by cheap Chinese goods that they could not compete with on price.

At the same time, retailers proclaimed they had a right to sell cheap fashion that consumers wanted.

Squeezed between shopkeepers and shoemakers, EU officials had to ask China for a little understanding - and a little more time before quotas could be fully scrapped. Under pressure - and aiming to soothe worries over its emergence as a massive exporter - China volunteered to cap clothing exports until the end of 2007.

This “breathing space” was essential to allow the EU industry to adapt to sharper competition, the EUs executive arm said.

But Europe is still asking for China to try to contain some of its ballooning exports to the 27-nation bloc, now the largest purchaser of Chinese goods.

In June, the EU trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, said Europe was concerned about Chinas high steel output. His industry colleague Gьnter Verheugen warned Monday that the European Union would step in with trade sanctions if it saw evidence that countries were “dumping” steel below cost on the European market.

“I welcome this further step in the cooperation between the EU and China in ensuring a smooth transition to free trade in textiles,” Mandelson said.

“A system of joint monitoring means predictability for EU producers and traders as well as a clear picture of future developments as we make the final step to free global trade in textiles and clothing,” he said in a statement.

Mandelson faces continued pressure over exports from China.