It’s been a bad week for what I shall loosely refer to as ‘the Government’.  <HAHAHA>

For a start, His Majesty Andrew Mitchell finally fell onto his exquisite, hand-crafted by plebs, doubtless purchased-on-expenses sword (what’s that saying again?  Could it be “You don’t run this fucking country now, Andrew“?) bringing into question once again the judgement of the person who appointed him a mere month ago to the position of Chief Toff, namely David ‘the Prime Minister’ <SNIGGERS> Cameron.  Who personally took the trouble to announce that energy companies – in the wake of raising their charges well above the rate of inflation, just in time for winter – would be obliged to place their shivering fuel-poverty customers onto a default lowest tariff, before he reversed his position on that too (if I had a pound for every policy the Tories have come up with on which they haven’t backtracked since May 6th 2010, I’d have 47p).  But the cherry on the cake (nobody can afford bread these days) has to be multi-millionaire ‘Chancellor’ <GUFFAWS> George Osborne sitting in a First Class carriage on a train with only a Pleb Class ticket, trying to get away with not paying the difference of 160 quid.  Which is, I think you’ll agree, quite a large sum.  Indeed, for that money you could heat a small bedsit with one bar of an electric heater for almost half an hour.

Thus it became increasingly obvious to the No.10 ‘advisers’ <LIES ON THE FLOOR IN HYSTERICS KICKING LEGS IN THE AIR> that there was nothing else to be done other than employ the complicated, highly intricate, don’t-try-this-at-home politically-expedient manoeuvre of ‘Oo, look over there!’  

And so Mr Cameron was accordingly wheeled out in front of the cameras to announce his thoroughly researched and well-formulated policy (look, if a week is a long time in politics, imagine what you can achieve in a whole 3 minutes) of  ‘An Intelligent Approach to Crime’.  (My god, we’re all bloody doomed).

In a strange quirk of fate (though I’ve yet to experience an altogether unremarkable quirk of fate), I happened to happen upon David Cameron’s first draft of said presentation whilst I was ambling past Lord Snooty’s Top Hat and Snuff Emporium in Sloane Square (I can’t stand seeing the backs of old envelopes littering the street), and so it is with great delight that I reproduce the scrawlings most cogent notes here.

THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY’S INTELLIGENT APPROACH TO CRIME

1.       When endeavouring to travel First Class on a Standard Class ticket, put a paper bag over your head so journalists can’t recognize you.

2.       If you purchase a floating duck house for your moat on public money, have it made in a Third World country and list it on your expenses form as ‘overseas aid’.

3.       As an MP renting out a house you own one mile away from Parliament, whilst claiming rent for a dwelling you use yourself, tape up your tenants mouths so they can’t talk to the press about who their landlord is.

4.       Should you forget one of your children at a country pub to which you’ve paid a visit one summer’s afternoon with the family, deny all knowledge of ever having seen the girl before and have her adopted.

5.       After swearing at and otherwise abusing officers of the law, in order to ensure you’re not taken to the cells and subsequently prosecuted as the law prescribes, hide behind the Prime Minister.

Oddly, Mr Cameron must have completely rewritten his speech (yet another example of backtracking!) because for some reason, none of the above points appeared in the final draft.  Possibly this was unwise, as he ended up talking about ensuring young people were given the chance to escape the route to crime, the obvious flaw being where then will the next generation of politicians come from?

I didn’t notice, by-the-way, any more ‘Hug a Hoodie’ entreaties.  Presumably this has been relegated to the ‘Unintelligent Approach to Crime’ bin?  So perhaps now, with this ‘intelligent’ lark, we’re expected to sit them down and read them Roman poetry.  Let’s ‘Horace a Hoodie!’

If you want my advice (and I know you do), the most intelligent approach to crime I can think of is to change the locks on Nos.10 and 11 Downing Street.

I didn’t spend three years studying Politics for nothing, you know.