Until Jack Straw copped out last weekend, leaving his deputy to take the flak over the way the branch of Government he heads had dropped ten witnesses in the Stephen Lawrence inquiry into the mire, I had high hopes for the Home Secretary.

He seemed to have been saying some sensible things of late. However, I was somewhat unsettled by his apparent enthusiasm for persuading members of the public to have a go when they see crimes being committed. This struck me as a risky alternative to putting more money into better policing.

For instance, what are the beleaguered people of Egglestone Drive, Holme Wood, to do when gangs of yobs are congregating around their flats, hurling abuse at them, smashing their electricity meter boxes and kicking their doors?

With decent policing, they'd be able to make a 999 call and officers would be there within minutes to sort out the louts. Instead, a police response is reported to be taking three or four hours.

Given the present under-resourced state of the police force, being trapped and frightened in your flat while aggressive youths rampage outside is apparently not considered to be an emergency situation demanding high priority.

But never mind. The Egglestone Drive residents could always do things the Jack Straw Way and take on the lads themselves. Some hopes! Would you?

Latest daft suggestion from a man whose gob suddenly seems to have taken to working faster than his brain is that Britain's grandmothers could become front-line troops in the fight against vandalism and street crime, confronting young male criminals.

He said, during a radio interview: "Some of the most effective people in tackling these youngsters are grandmothers, because they know how to deal with lads. On the whole, you don't hit your mother, you don't hit women. It's quite interesting, the psychology of this."

Interesting? It's nonsense and entirely out of touch with reality. Does Jack Straw never read newspaper beyond the front pages and the political columns? There are elderly women being attacked by yobs all over the place: knocked to the ground for the few quid they have in their purses, or sometimes just for the fun of it.

The Home Secretary apparently lives in a nostalgic world in which tough old girls like Ena Sharples could bring wayward youths back into line with a steely eye and a stern word.

It doesn't work like that any more, I'm afraid. The way to bring wayward youths back into line at the end of the 1990s is to have enough police for them to be able to respond immediately there are any signs of trouble, and enough tough punishments to make the yobs decide that their destructive pleasure simply isn't worth it.

Grannies' Army is pure fantasy.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.