Sweeney Todd – The Respec’ Squad

A national ‘respect squad’ is being launched by John Reid to help in the battle against anti-social behaviour.

Local councils, MPs and police chiefs will be able to call in the squad to help tackle cases of "yobbishness".

The squad, which will work across Wales and England, consists of 10 frontline local authority and police staff.

The home secretary said: "The government’s new respect squad will ensure there is no let up in tackling anti-social behaviour."

The squad will be led by the assistant director of the government’s respect task force, Alex Rhind.

Mr Reid said it would offer the chance of swift resolution to challenging problems where other means appeared to have been exhausted.

Oh fucking hell… we’re in the shit, aren’t we?

Sorry, you’ll have to excuse me here, my comments are really meant for my fellow Labour Party members because, but let’s face facts here, if this the best that that the Home Office can come up with then we really haven’t got a fucking clue have we.

Let me translate here – ‘We are launching a national ‘respect squad’ actually means ‘we haven’t got the first fucking idea what we’re doing but we think this might play well in the Daily Mail’.

This is not a policy – it doesn’t even qualify as an initiative. This is one of those half-arsed, spur of the moment ideas, like Hazel Blears’ orange jumpsuits and Blair’s frogmarching yobs down the cashpoint, the kind that gets announced in time for Breakfast TV but turns into ‘the Minister was just thinking out loud’ by tea-time in the face of the ensuing howls of derision with which the announcement is met – only this time they’ve actually gone and set the fucking thing up before giving us the chance to laugh it out of existence.

Mind you, in the hands of John Reid, it doesn’t take long for things to get even worse.

Mr Reid said: "Anti-social behaviour ruins lives and fragments communities – particularly those in some of the most deprived areas of our country.

"We should and will be unremitting in our efforts to drive up standards of behaviour and enforce a culture of respect, for the benefit of all."

Fuck me, it’s like being back at school and sitting in one of those interminable assemblies where the headmaster is determined to lecture the entire school off the back of find a couple of fifth-year’s smoking behind the bike sheds. I’m sure you all remember the lecture vividly; its the one where where you’ve given a litany of things that the school will not accept, almost all of which have got absolutely fuck all to do with whatever it was set the twat off in the first place, coupled with all manner of vague but dire warning about anyone who doesn’t toe the line facing the consequences – whatever those were, because no one ever fucking said.

And let me ask you honestly – did you even walk out of that kind of assembly knowing deep down that you were going to make every effor to mend you ways..?

Did you fuck!

Just like everyone else who ever had to sit through that kind of lecture, no soon as you got out the hall you’d turn to your mates and say, ‘what a fucking tosser!’ and start speculating on just what it would take to wind the headmaster up enough so that the vein you noticed throbbing away at his temple during the whole charade might swell up enough to burst.

You simply cannot ‘enforce a culture of respect’ – respect is something that you earn and something than can be taught, but its not something you can simply force on people – that’s not respect, that’s fear, and fear only breeds resentment, disaffection and, eventually, hatred.

This isn’t about respect at all, this is about bullying people into submission.

Oh, the irony of it all – twenty years on and now Gripper Stebson has become the new Home Secretary

7 thoughts on “Sweeney Todd – The Respec’ Squad

  1. Of course, its becoming increasingly clear that the whole hysteria over ‘anti-social behaviour’ and abuse of ASBOs etc is increasingly dividing communities, if only by bringing in outside actors (ie the police and courts) to sort out what the community would have dealt with previously (or indeed, tries to still).
    Abuse of ASBOs is also serious, for example the family who complained about neighbours playing music too loud got an ASBO preventing them from complaining because it was ‘racist’ (the neighbours happened to be black).
    That sort of abuse hardly engenders community cohesion and respect…

  2. So what happened to the police, Community Support Officers and Local Authority Youth Workers? And have I read your quote correctly – a staff of 10 people to deal with ‘yobbishness’ (legal defnitions are welcome) on a national scale? How are they going to cover the territory – Batmobile? Thunderbird 1?

  3. Its clear that the entire Blair administration is just a trail of half assed badly thought out knee jerk legislation, mainly foisted on on because they all to busy lining there own corrupt nests. While Cherie Blair is giving freebie insider info to her mates so they can unfairly gain government contracts, and Tony is selling peerages, in the meantime they let in a million immigrants to supress wages and create a vast pool of cheap labour, and give the police highly undemocratic powers to basically invent laws on the fly to supress any politcial discussion or dissent.

    Blair is the most corrupt, incompetant politician ever to grace the Palace of Westminster in 150 years.

  4. I thought it was hilarious to see “Gripper” compared to the Home Secretary,excellent. “Gripper” for London mayor??!!

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