Respect!!

With the prime minister’s speech on his Respect agenda in the news this week, Sun columnist Fergus Shanahan gives his readers a succinct summary of government plans to tackle antisocial behaviour.

“A national parenting academy where social workers are taught how to speak nicely to rude parents. A youth opportunity card handing teenagers taxpayers’ money…Nuisance pubs to be boarded up…A ragbag of nonsense designed to convince us that tough Tony’s on the case. Well he isn’t,” writes Shanahan, who has his own way of dealing with the problem.

“The quickest and simplest way to tackle yobbery is to flood the streets with coppers and then enforce rigorously the laws we already have, like breach of the peace and drunk and disorderly.” So now you know.

Fifty new intensive support projects for antisocial families are to be set up, Tony Blair also announced this week. How did the Mirror, Mail, Sun and (tsk tsk) even the Guardian describe the schemes?  Sin bins.

The Sun reports that a single mum has been given an antisocial behaviour order banning her from having sex in cars outside her home. Angela Ramsden is to fight the Asbo at a hearing into 30 allegations of unsocial behaviour.  “Why would I want sex in a car outside my home, when I’ve got bedrooms? she said.

The Sun filled most of a page with the story of a gynaecologist who is taking three months off work for a sex change. The headline? Guy-naecologist to Gal-naecologist
The doctor’s employer is happy, saying the op “in no way diminishes his professional competence or ability.” The man’s wife is supportive.
Not much of a story really. Maybe it was a slow news day.

Meanwhile in Daily Mail land, Rod Stewart is called a “thoroughly modern Dad” because he carried new baby Alastair through Heathrow airport, even though fiancee Penny Lancaster was on hand. Wonder if Rod changes the nappies too and gets up in the night when young Alastair cries?