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We're none of us getting any younger. In four months I reach my big four-Oh. I left school almost as long ago as I have working years left under the current rules at least. Yes, I like to think I'm still young, but I think I'd be right to object to being called "boy such-and-such". David Milliband is a full year and a half older than me and David Cameron is some months older. George Osborne is a little younger, but would have been in the fourth form when I was in my sixth, so not a lot.

Respectively they are referred to disparagingly as the "Boy Emperor" (apparently within his department anyway), "the Boy David", and "Boy George". On the other night's Question Time there was an audience member who looked to be in his early twenties complaining that nobody in politics really represented his generation (pace Mr Tall of course, who, so far as I am aware is not referred to as "the Boy Stephen").

Clearly referring to people nearing or past their milestone fortieth as "boy" does nothing to make them any the more representative of younger people.

Anyway - it's just a rant. Maybe we could find some better epithets to give these people. Dislike their politics, make them out to be naive, yes, but really, can we not be more imaginative than calling them "boy" (and yes, I know I've done it too). Alexander was younger than George Osborne when he had finished conquering the known world, and that nice Mr Pitt had been Prime Minister and given up by the time he got to our age.

Okay - maybe I am a little envious - my English/Latin A level teacher referred to me to some parents he was showing round school one day twenty two years ago as "looks like fifty but really is one of our sixth formers"...:)

...the Standards Board and the Adjudication Panel for England.

I have few doubts that much of what Mr Morshead says about Ken is true...Ken's jibes 'endanger' democracy.

He is abrasive, has a habit of opening mouth before engaging his brain, and as a result upsets people. But for God's sake who created a system in which a quango could set aside the electorate's democratic decision? And it's worth remembering that in Ken's case at least, his is the most democratic system of election for a single position we have in this country so far.

But Ken's is just one of hundreds of cases every year where this body of unelected gamekeeper, judge, juror and executioner rolled into one hold in the balance peoples' political fortunes.

Surcharging, which the system was intended to replace, was indeed iniquitous. To suffer potentially the loss of everything for what might have been a horrible mistake seemed harsh. But in practice, was anyone ever surcharged if a hearing found they had made an honest mistake as opposed to having been genuinely corrupt or recklessly negligent? I doubt it.

What has replaced it is a system based on tittle-tattle where vexatious claims can be used to put local politicians effectively in suspense for months, often thus far at least with no prospect of even the basic right to expect your costs covered when the claim is disproven - and in some cases this must have come perilously close to the bankruptcy of surcharging anyway...despite having WON your case!

We have a system for getting rid of politicians if we don't like the way they behave, for example if we think their boorishness outweighs their effectiveness in doing the job they were elected to. It may not be perfect. But it does not rely on a kangaroo court of appointed placepeople that has little respect for natural justice. It is in the gift of us all. It's called the next election. If you don't like him, don't vote for him. It's that simple.

If anything threatens to endanger public confidence in local democracy it is that the Adjudication Panel can stick two fingers up at the electorate.

Back in April I wrote a piece about a particular Anti-Social Behaviour Order handed down to a chap from Blackbird Leys in Oxford that banned him from his family home for the rest of his life. I was particularly concerned about the draconian nature of the punishment - a modern day banishment redolent of some Shakespearian mediaeval Italian city state run by a tin-pot tyrant.

Now today the Oxford Mail reports that this particular ASBO has been quashed by a judge on appeal, who said that the evidence presented was little more than local "tittle-tattle" and did not stand up to scrutiny. Indeed it appears that one of the complaints against him was actually made about a period when the guy was already inside - one of the best of alibis in my understanding.

Now again, I want to make clear that I don't know the ins and outs of the case or the individuals concerned. Merely from the fact that this chap has had 20 years worth of prison sentences in the same period suggests he is a thorough nuisance. Originally I wanted to know why, if we ever believed that prison was there to rehabilitate, we needed an additional sanction to banish as well on a non-criminal rap - instead of keeping him inside until the authorities felt he was rehabilitated or was well on the way to being so. Then, one would have thought, he could settle back in the community he came from, even the one he offended against, and people would have a whole new experience of him.

But now, it seems that the ASBO system, apart from compounding criminal sanctions with sentences essentially even more severe (banishment from your home area where your family has been settled for decades) can be based on little evidence, evidence in particular that does not stand up to scrutiny by the legal system itself. How many more victims are there of this politicising of the justice system - where parties can go into an election claiming to be willing to bang up as many people as it takes to get your neighbourhood how you want it? I certainly know of Labour councillors who recognize that some of the ASBOs given to young tearaways on their estates were not the right way of dealing with them or their undoubted problems.

Time for a new look at ASBOs - at both the terms (banishment for life I find unlikely to ever be "proportionate") that can be handed down and at the way evidence is collected and how objectively that is viewed (how complaints about someone while they are already in prison could possibly have been entertained by even the least awake magistrate beggars belief).

The irony in this case is that this chap is currently on remand, enjoying a further stay at Her Majesty's expense - accused of breaching this ASBO that the law says should never have been issued in the first place. I hope he's home by this afternoon - though with misgivings for those who feel, rightly or wrongly, that he is a blight on their lives.

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