Community Payback Time For Slippery Jack Straw?

Another day, another headline grabbing policy which has not been properly thought through beyond "will this get me a few column inches?"

Slippery Jack's marvellous idea for making those doing so-called community service as opposed to living it up in one of Her Majesty's CentreParcs (where it is now proposed to stop calling the prisoners "inmates" in case their feelings are hurt ) wear a high visibility tabard bearing the legend "Community Payback" has not surprisingly run into some difficulty.
It seems that in those few cases where this new initiative has been enforced by the wishy washy probation service ( Motto: supervising criminals whilst they rob and maim ) the poor wee offenders have been called names and had things thrown at them. But mostly, the wearing of these tabards has simply not happened. You can expect up to 10,000 of them to apppear on Ebay fairly soon.

Now, I'm not too shocked by this. But what has actually surprised me is the reactions by commenters on the Grauniad's website - complete with some wonderful invective against Weasel Jack and his compadre, Jacqui Spliff.

"Straw is a nasty populist little weasel. Jacqui 'no-brain' Smith is little more than a lump of dough with two currants for eyes."

"All politicians should wear hi-vis vests with the logo "I'm probably lying to you". "

"New labour through and through: nothing to do with Justice, everything to do with vengeance, gestures, and overt displays of their power and control.
Humiliate a few minor criminals, let the big boys, the organised ones run riot, and give the f***ing white-collar crooks baubles and bail-outs."

"You can expect more of this weasel demagoguery as the recession bites. Labour's intellectual pygmies were bad enough when things seemed to be going well, celebrating their abandonment of decent social values with the Iraq war and a staggering rise in inequality in this country: now they will increasingly chase the trash-newspaper audience with populist stunts like this.

Generally, you get the measure of people when they face tough challenges, but Straw, Smith and the legion of other incompetents (Blunkett, Clarke, Hewitt, Prescott, Jowell — it's a very long and dreary list by now) did badly enough when, in fact, they had every opportunity to do great things and make worthwhile improvements to our society. Amazing, really. Labour's election in 97 will probably go down in history as one of the most tragically missed lost opportunities of the 20th century.

What will happen now ... well, I guess we shall see their petty-minded foolishness given full reign as they realise they have notking to lose, before we get the chance to consign them to electoral oblivion."

I am most impressed - after all this is the left wing newspaper which keeps that sad old cow Polly Twatbee in champagne and olive oil.

The Penguin