Continuing with my theme of highlighting when I'm actually impressed with Labour, given how little it has happened in the last year, I am happy to say that I'm actually glad for once that Caroline Flint has opened her gob. Usually all that falls out of it is garbage, but when it comes to rent then buy schemes she wants to set up finally there could be something at least resembling roses flowing instead.

Unfortunately with every silver lining there must be a thunderstorm of moronic proportions. Undoing any shred of good work that she started at the beginning of the week, Jacqui Smith has gone back in to nasty mode in such a way that surely the Tory old guard must be blushing.

And while we're at it why don't we throw in the fact that the Lib Dem's have announced their own strategy to tackle youth crime, one that looks like a pantheon of saintly forgiveness compared to the now fleshed out policies of Smith.

So on a day where Gordon Brown states the obvious and tells us to stop wasting food, David Cameron unveils just how pointless and devoid of content the Tories are likely to be when they're in power. Mr Cameron says that anyone carrying a knife without a good reason should be jailed. No caution, just a straight to court and unless you can prove it's because you're going to the annual knife juggling fair then you're put in to jail.

Quite aside from this rubbish that knife crime is reaching "epidemic proportions", the figures show that knife crime is largely unchanged over the last decade, what is jailing every person with a knife going to achieve? Secondly how is it any better than Labour's "jail a Muslim for political capital" 42 days legislation, given that the main people being shoved unceremoniously into the slammer will be black youths?

Let's not be coy about it, this is about as bad as it's been for Labour for over two decades. Every day there seems to be more bad news, and where there isn't bad news coming about Labour tearing itself apart there's almost always simply better news about the other parties. That is, until today.

Today marks the time that the Tories are starting to think about getting serious, and with that comes a true fleshing out of the variety of proposals that they have merely drifted over in the past. Good news for the Tories? Not when it shows the same anti-youth, authoritarian instincts of the current government in a traditionally poorly thought out Conservative manner

It is often in the name of cultural integrity as well as social stability and national security that democratic reforms based on human rights are resisted by authoritarian governments. - Aung San Suu Kyi

Or, indeed, that reforms ignoring civil liberties and running contrary to the path we've been taking as a nation are so readily pondered by authoritarian governments. I do wonder how many more times I'll have to keep writing about the illiberal nature of the Home Office led by Jacqui Smith, it almost seems fantastical just how much one person can contemplate and implement in such a short time span. Today we are adding to the ever increasing list of authoritarian practice with the logical extension of where she is going with the current clampdown on under age drinking, as well as subtly not-quite-announcing plans for a what I can only satirically describe as a thought crime unit. (Heads up to Dizzy for that)

What else can we make our kids do? We've already made it so that being out at night is probably a no-no with mosquito devices and police actively infringing on their liberties, we keep them in school until 18 and if not school then "learning a trade". We already have a culture of "you can't do that" with them and now we're moving fast in to interfering with just how they're educated as well. Quite aside from the genuinely positive move of cookery lessons (as long as they're state funded) we now have the government wanting kids to have a whole day of every week dedicated to "Culture".

We are telling our kids they can't hang around shops because of some middle age fear of all kids being out to attack us, children are now going to be forced how to be cultural and be forced to learn how to be a productive member of society for longer than ever before. They are going to be given unique numbers for lifetime records to be kept of their achievements and faults, their liberty enshrined within law ignored for the "greater good" in spite of any reality. Their parents won't even have a say in the future of their upbringing, the choice about how they will be conditioned is no longer in their hands, government retaining more and more control over censorship until it dictates what your children will see, what they'll eat, what they'll drink. Sounds familiar to me...

You'd think that a government passing an Age Discrimination bill for employers would understand that everyone should be treated without their age in mind, yet some in Parliament have commended the use of "Mosquitos" to disperse youths from areas by sending out a high pitched sound that only those under the age of 25 can hear.