Expensive gimmicks

What is going on in the Treasury? They are ditching plans to promote good behaviour among "young people". The scheme that was to bribe the worst behaved kids on our streets with a £25 gift voucher for good behaviour. Has common sense prevailed over No.11? Have they realised (albeit rather later than one would have hoped for someone who is touted as our next PM) that this was the most ridiculous hair brain idea to come out of their loony policy machine yet? Have they realised that wasting millions of pounds on paying off these so called anti-social youths with a gift voucher was never going to work? No. Of course they haven't.

The reason we won't be pouring money away in this stupid scheme is because the Government IT system doesn't work. What is it with this government and IT systems? None of them seem to work - in this case it's a good thing. They have also realised that they don't have enough money to implement the idea - because if they did, they would. Incredibly we have already wasted £2m on the development of the brilliantly named "Youth Opportunity Card" (YOC). A spokesman for the YMCA has described the whole thing as an "expensive gimmick". A bit like the New Labour project, really.