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....