The Rules Have Changed - the Jug Eared B*stards want Summary Justice AND Respect

Charles Clarke was one of the bevy of ministers talking about Respect this morning as a sort of Grecian 2005 chorus to Captain Tony's Robocop.

The Captain's mantra was that as Melanie Phillips recently put it the government had to wrest back control of the streets. Or, as Charles Clarke confirmed in an interview on the Today programe this morning, that the goalpost shifting previously reserved for combatting terrorism must now be applied to anti-social behaviour as well.

In the most bizarre passage of the interview Mr Clarke proposed a fundamental subversion of Britain's property laws as a sensible way of dealing with having noisy students living next door. He explained to a commendably unamused interviewer that he was proposing a new law that would allow even homeowners - yes Melanie HOMEOWNERS - who annoy their neighbours to be exiled from their property for 3 months to teach them a lesson in good neighbourliness.

Listen if you dare here - it was on at 8.10am REALLY - he DID say that!

Mr Clarke failed to explain whether they would spend the 3 months in one of our overcrowded prisons, numbers within which are already at a record high or whether they might possibly be sent at the taxpayers expense to the Costa Del Sol to see some of their mates (oh sorry its the government that was meant to be doing the social stigmatisation isn't it, I do apologise m'lud - WOTCHA-MEAN-AH'M-GOIN'-DARN??!) - on reflection I imagine he'll propose some kind of internal exile - maybe a Prison ship could help house these undesirables - or perhaps those nice CIA flyboys could help out - lets face it 3 months in a camp in Poland is pretty much a free holiday isn't it?

I suppose the interviewer just thought 'look I've been here before and this has as much chance of becoming law as the Koreans have of getting any more cash for research into human cloning'. Still I think we should know.

ALSO what will happen to the property during the exile period - can we keep clerics under house arrest there or will the chanting annoy the neighbours? - Then again I'm told John bird wants to move some homeless people in and some bird wants to move some Johns in, no I'm just confused...

Anyway its all about regaining control of the streets, right Mel? Because in case none of us have noticed its now impossible to even go shopping without being kidnapped in the UK while trying to pop into your local mosque is positively suicidal.

Yes its true Tony really has lost control of the streets - Melanie's right and if I misbehave I hope that jug-eared fat bloke moves his mates into my house to teach me a lesson, fair do's - but one thing I'm not going to do is respect an unbalanced paranoid porker who dresses like a f**king' tramp while he's doing it - for more, in song, just CLICK - after all he is the very model of a modern labour minister..... and that is the problem...

Today's bravura performances are simply more of this government's particularly curious brand of all talk and no trousers populist hysteria. While fine at whipping the right into a frenzy, this is to be frank not so much all stick and no carrot as nothing more than willy waving - and, lets face it, if you're going to wave your willy (or shake your stick) at anyone as demanding as Melanie Phillips eventually you're going to have to give her some.... which I suppose is how we got to the all offences are arrestable section of the... Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005

Still, with David Cameron adopting all his policies, perhaps Captain Tony might just, finally, start to realise that if he persists in perpetually fighting on the ground of the right, eventually they ARE going to wise up and join him...

...So now that David Cameron wants his toys back I think its only reasonable for the rest of us to ask CAN WE HAVE OUR LABOUR PARTY BACK PLEASE?

And finally... while we are talking humour (and we are, because I'm assuming you clicked to see the Home Secretary in his FABULOUS song and dance Revue)... a few gems from the collected wit of the late Mr Tony Banks...