SO nice Mr Blair is back. Despite Iraq war backlash, he has been returned to Government with a majority the other parties would have gleefully accepted, although it is viewed by the media as a bit of a damp squib.

I am sure that, while he is at Chequers, Tone demands a sight of the Bucks Free Press, so I am taking the liberty of focusing his mind on how to make good use of his healthy-enough majority over the rest of this decade.

I speak for many in suggesting that a reversal of the descent into social anarchy comes pretty high on the list.

We must have more visible policemen, among whose law and order priorities should be the reclaiming our city centres for the majority who simply want to go about our daily lives without being intimidated, offended, irritated and abused by (a small but significant percentage) of young people who have benefited from little discipline at home. They know that school staff are virtually powerless to do anything meaningful to limit the destructive effect of their behaviour in schools.

Even in primary schools we have lost the old culture, familiar to my generation, of "owning up " along the lines of "The whole school will serve a detention unless the person who let off the stink bomb in assembly owns up."

Nowadays, there are no effective means of persuading even infant miscreants to admit culpability. And instead of being highly regarded by students for "doing the decent thing" in saving their peers from blanket punishments owning up is now considered derided as weakness. A generation of deluded, indulgent parents must take the blame for the problem.

Parents who think little Genghis is showing initiative when he "persuades" younger children to sell him their mobile phones for 50 pence; parents who are all too ready to believe their little precious one's version of events rather than their teachers'; parents who say "Don't do that Atilla" and then smile indulgently and affectionately when they continue to violate your home.

Now, lessons that should have been learned from their parents will have to be delivered more painfully elsewhere.

There should be no "no-go areas" in Britain. Civic amenities should be available to all. With the benefit and use of CCTV in town centres, all antisocial behaviour should be followed up, as a matter of course, by police action and appropriate sanctions. This requires additional manpower, judicial support and the communal will to reclaim our environment.

I work in the theatre, which has traditionally expected audience attendances to peak on Friday and Saturday nights. The reverse is now the case, principally because theatre-goers have the expectation that town centres are unsafe and unappetising at the weekends.

Over to you Prime Minister.