I COULDN'T help but chuckle when I saw my colleague's front-page story about his attempts to track down the recipient of North East Lincolnshire's first ever Asbo.
With the words of Humberside Police, who insisted that Asbos were an effective way of controlling offenders, ringing in his ears, he went in search of Kye Green, hoping to hear how he had turned his life around since that historic day 10 years ago. Sadly, the trail ended when Peter discovered that 24-year-old Kye was in prison, awaiting sentence for an attempted handbag snatch.
I'm sure for many people this rather farcical episode is yet further evidence that Asbos don't work.
As someone with limited experience of Asbos (from reporting in court, I hasten to add!), they have sometimes struck me as overly bureaucratic – what is the point, for example, of an Asbo banning behaviour which is already a criminal offence?
Even those in the legal profession have sometimes questioned their usefulness.
In March last year defence solicitor Geoff Ellis slammed the "nonsense" and waste of public money of repeatedly prosecuting Grimsby alcoholic Colin Osborne for breaching his anti-social behaviour order, which banned him from being in certain parts of the town centre at specific times of the day.
Mr Ellis branded the terms of the Asbo "unfair" and said it had cost many thousands of pounds to bring Osborne to court for 18 breaches of his Asbo, even though on many occasions he was not behaving in an antisocial manner.
I can appreciate how the imposition of Asbos, and the publicity around them, can help local communities and police keep track of well-known troublemakers.
Andy Everett, Humberside Police's crime reduction manager argues that Asbos make it much more straightforward to put repeat offenders behind bars.
The question is then, if Asbos are so good, why are we getting rid of them?
LAST week Scotland's eight regional police forces merged into one unified service.
Aside from the predictable concerns that local accountability will be damaged by such a move, I was more struck by the name given to the new nationwide force.
Something like Scotland Police or would have been a logical choice you might think.
And it would seem the powers that be agreed – except that they decided, Yoda-style, to swap the words around and plump for Police Scotland instead. In doing so they appear to have adopted the nonsensical fad beloved of sporting bodies both here and overseas of inverting the words in the titles of public organisations, institutions and national sports teams.
So instead of the Great Britain team at athletics we have Team GB, instead of the England football team, we have Team England, while a few years back the Australian Cricket Board decided to rebrand itself as Cricket Australia.
I can only assume that this is done to make the institutions in question sound more impressive, but sadly all it does is make them sound pompous and utterly preposterous.
And if this craze continues, how long before we pay our rates to Council North East Lincolnshire, go watch Town Grimsby at Park Blundell, shop in Place Freshney or heaven forbid, read Telegraph Grimsby?
TWO weeks ago I rather absent-mindedly left a pair of trainers on the bus into work.
I discovered this only at the end of my shift when I went to change into them for my walk home.
Still I consoled myself with the thought that they would have been picked up by the bus driver at the end of the day and handed into lost property.
After all, the trainers had clocked up quite a few miles and were not exactly new.
Alas, when I rang Stagecoach the following morning I was informed that no such items matching that description had been handed in.
And last week, it emerged that one of my colleagues had previously experienced the same thing – with his smelly and sweat-soiled gym kit!
I know money is tight, but are things really as desperate as that?