As an arm of of the Civil Service, we are expected to be, and are, absolutely neutral between the various political parties scrabbling for votes in the months ahead. So it will be no surprise to you that we are doing our bit to shape policy not just for our current Government, but for the clowns due to replace them next year.

And what fun we have been having.

We believe very strongly in education here. Some of us have degrees and things; and when the Conservative Party's Education Spokesperson Mr Gove rang us up and asked us for our cutting edge thinking about schools, we said we had never heard of him. But he was quite persistent and so we asked him to pop in.

The big problem, he said, in our schools, is unruly behaviour. Schoolchildren are really naughty nowadays; always ragging around and not doing their homework. So what they need is discipline. In a brainstorming session one of our staff came up with the idea of sending troops into the classroom, initially to restore order, and then to help establish a framework for the school to manage its own affaits again. It has been tried in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so it should work in Doncaster.

The problem is that we are short of troops right at the moment. And then came a moment of ultimate clarity and inspiration. The Conservatives have recently forged links with a Latvian political party with access to the services of a cadre of experienced, if a little elderly, soldiers used to following orders, and devoted to discipline....

Local Homes for Local People

Now at last we can reveal what we have been working on for so long. The Prime Minister's announcement yesterday of proposals to prioritise local housing for people who have lived in the area for longest is the cumination of months of careful research and consideration.

There are some people who will be unkind about this proposal: who will carp that it will take us back to the days of the Poor Law (Amendment) Act of 1834. They will allege that local authorities will assess need on the basis of residency and will drive the sick and needy across borough boundaries. That will not happen. Times have moved on. We now have a network of public transport which will allow the removal (and I use a technical term) of alien indigents in comparative comfort.

By adding a further layer of enquiry to the already complex mass of rules relating to housing need, additional delay will be built into the system, which of course will mean additional housing will become available through the death of some applicants and existing occupiers.

This seems to us to be a win-win situation, although the question of the burial of non-locals at the expense of residents is one we propose to address next. It is complicated by the general refusal of bus and train operators to allow corpses to purchase tickets or occupy luggage racks.