[Stuart]

Originally Posted by andyl

So do I. What purpose would these uniforms serve? Blears says so penance can be seen to be paid. Sounds like she would like to bring back stocks. Identify people in such uniforms and they may find it harder to secure employment in the area and get on with their lives. They will also no doubt be abused by people who will have no idea what their crime has been (and here it could be something like tram-fare dodging which escalates to non-payment of fines, to breaking rocks down Cheetham Hill Road. So you're too poor to pay the tram, too poor to pay the subsequent fine and then are subject to abuse from bus loads of schoolkids and Daily Mail readers (just threw that in to annoy the usual suspects! ) as they do their Community Service.

True, you would get the locals coming out to wind up the people doing community service, but I don't think anyone is asking for the uniforms to be worn for a long time. Only while performing the actual community service.

Labour needs to be addressing the wider issues instead of dreaming up such retrograde ideas.

Also true. However such schemes may cost a lot of money and take a while to implement, so, while they may be excellent ideas, our publicity-hungry government is not going to be interested. After all, getting uniforms makes them appear to be doing something now, and getting "results" in a few months. Other ideas (such as changing education in schools, and National Service -not that I am suggesting either) may well work, but we wouldn't start seeing any impact for several years.

Call me cynical if you want, but I get the distinct impression that our government don't want to wait years for a fix. They want something cheap that gets them publicity now. Let a future government deal with the problems.. Note, I am not specifically having a go at Blair here (although I don't like him and did not vote Labour), as I believe it's something all politicians suffer from (after all, they're only in office five years, why spend billions on a scheme that will take longer than that and have some future government take the credit when they get results?)