The John Blunt column

ALREADY the whingers are complaining that youngsters from deprived areas could be forced into a life in uniform - economic press-ganging, they are calling it.

But I fail to see what is wrong with urging those without jobs to join the forces as part of the government's Welfare to Work programme that cuts the benefits of those who refuse work or training.

The forces are, after all, short of recruits. And what is the point of paying dole to youngsters when there are good jobs there to be had?

The only trouble with this idea is that it is only being tried out in trial areas in different parts of the country. The government should extend it nationwide - and use it as a test bed for the swift re-launch of National Service for all older teenagers.

Then, we would have not only the actually unemployed youth put to good use, but the rest disabused of their apparent belief that age for the commencement of a working life has been extended to beyond 21, until when it is the expected duty of parents and taxpayers to support them. A compulsory dose of forces' discipline and values would do wonders for our society, beset as it is by the yobbishness and gimme outlook of a generally over-indulged youth.

Where's the catch?

MY MATE, the retired bobby, had a hollow last laugh this week when the government announced it was giving the police new powers to pick up truants and return them to school.

For that was something he did routinely when he pounded the beat in Blackburn more than 30 years ago - until his superiors ordered him to stop doing so on the grounds that dealing with truants was not a matter for the police.

That the government has now had the common sense to make it the force's business is, of course, fine - especially when, as Tony Blair himself tells us, studies show that offences were committed by 78 per cent of boys and 53 per cent of girls who skipped school once a week.

Given the alarming, but unsurprising, level of juvenile crime associated with truancy and that more than a million children a year are involved in it, the time is long overdue when the police came to be involved.

But it will, I think, be of little avail if the police, empowered to nab the kids playing hooky, only become like dog catchers who end up chasing the same strays time after time because their owners do not give a toss what they are up to. These reforms and the police need backing up with a law that bites at the parents whose fecklessness is at the root of the awful levels of truancy.

True, in aiming to slash truancy by a third over the next four years, the government speaks of the courts being encouraged to enforce existing penalties on the parents of truants and of them being given new powers to order them to accompany children to school.

But, really, if it is serious about this problem, the government will have to do much more about getting the irresponsible parents into court in the first.

For so rare are prosecutions these days that last year in the whole of Lancashire, where truancy is as rife as elsewhere, just 149 were brought to court - and, incredibly, that pathetic figure represents something of a crackdown in that it is triple that of 1993.

Catching them is one thing, but letting them get away with it is another.

Driver in another fine mess

IF SOMEONE came and took your car away and sold it, you would be calling the police, right? But when Marissa Jennings' G-reg VW Golf GTi, which she reckoned was worth at least £5,000, went from outside her house while she was away on holiday and was sold for just £3,500 at an auction, it was with the law's blessing.

The reason? She had failed to pay a £30 parking fine - because she was still in an dispute with Camden Council in London over its legitimacy.

But, no matter, along came the bailiffs and away went her car. And all Ms Jennings got back from its sale was £1,700 - after the auctioneers, the bailiffs, court and council had all had their cut and her original fine had been trebled to £90.

I have no sympathy with people who do not pay their fines.

But it seems a long way from British justice when someone who questions a fine can end up such a loser - and apparently with no legal redress - especially when their dispute over it is unresolved.

I know that, even in a free country like ours, the anti-parking maniacs in the town halls are assuming deadlier powers with every new day.

Even so, I was under the impression that we had put a stop to the Nazis in 1945.

Labour's silent pressure on the Press

WE ARE encouraged by Tony Blair's own description of himself and by his permanent disarming smile to believe that No.10 is run by a pretty straight sort of guy. But does not something sinister lurk behind that front - when we hear claims that his office put a block on a national newspaper's appointment of a journalist controlling its political coverage because he was considered too hostile to Tony Blair?

The journalist in question, writer Paul Routledge, happens to be the author of the biography of Chancellor Gordon Brown which earlier this year said he had been betrayed by Mr Blair over the succession to the Labour leadership.

All he will say about the withdrawal of the job at the Express - whose chief executive is Labour peer Lord Hollick - is that he was offered it and then it was "un-offered".

But Labour insiders told a Sunday newspaper that the about-turn came about following advice from the Prime Minister's press secretary Alastair Campbell who was apparently "horrified" by Mr Routledge's planned appointment. Fishy, is it not?

Yet, since the government is obsessed with spin and image, such manipulation would seem to be in character, would it not?

Nonetheless, Honest Tony will I am sure assure us that this is all eyewash got up by his political enemies.

For we live in a democracy in which open and competent political leaders confound their critics, not one of those Stalinist totalitarian states - like mayor-gagging Blackburn with Darwen - where they have them silenced. Don't we?

The opinions expressed by John Blunt are not necessarily those of this newspaper.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.