MOBILE phones are to be banned from classrooms in a government bid to halt the growing menace they present in school.
The extraordinary thing is that head teachers allowed them to be taken into lessons in the first place.
Classroom discipline is in the frontline in the war against teenage yobbery following a series of unprovoked assaults last week. The craze for Happy Slapping - attacking victims and picturing it on a mobile phone to send to friends - is particularly disgusting.
Education Secretary Ruth Kelly has her work cut out, claiming back the playgrounds and classrooms from the yobs. She will need the full support of the notoriously-awkward teaching unions.
If the prime minister is to succeed in his determination to claim back respect and banish low-scale vandalism, casual violence and foul-mouthed thuggery then they are the right places to start.
New rules and regulations can only go part of the way. Teachers can enforce discipline, but only if they have the support of parents. There are too many examples of the adults being just as bad as their children.
A new code of conduct is fine in principle. But what happens if parents ignore it? What do we do with children living in dysfunctional or violent homes? If they are banned from school we are back in the same position as we are now. Creating outcasts is no way to win back respect.
Regaining the ground lost by years of decline will be long and arduous.
Yet it is essential if this country is to be one in which we can all live together without being terrified by an undertow of uncaring violence of which Happy Slapping is only the most recent and obscene example.
DECISION MUST NOT BACKFIRE
IT should be one of the great nights of European football with an estimated 20,000 Liverpool fans backing their boys to win the Champions League Final against AC Milan.
We remain deeply troubled, though, by UEFA's choice of venue. It must rank as one of the biggest risks taken by a sports governing body to nominate Istanbul for a game of such magnitude.
That statement isn't based on any hint of anti-Turkish xenophobia. The brutal truth is that the standards of safety, policing and crowd control inside Turkish stadia remain some way behind what we've come to expect as the norm in northern Europe.
Memories of the two Leeds United fans brutally stabbed to death five years ago when their heroes were playing Galatasaray inevitably loom large when an English team goes to Istanbul. While the murders of Kevin Speight and Christopher Lofthouse remain the nadir they were not, unfortunately, isolated incidents.
Istanbul will be a volatile place this week. Liverpool fans, more than any, know they must behave properly. It has taken 20 years since Heysel to restore their reputation in Europe.
We hope Liverpool win. We want to see a great game. But most of all we hope everybody behaves themselves and all the fans return home safely.
HIGH HOPES
TEST cricket returns to our shores this week with England taking on Bangladesh.
We all know playing the minnows is a warm-up for the main event - the Ashes series against Australia.
It's often impossible to compare outstanding teams from different eras but the wisest men in cricket all acknowledge the impressive merits of the Aussie class of 2005.
But we must live in hope and our optimism should take a leap forward with the sight of Steve Harmison at the top of the wicket-takers in county cricket this season.
If we are to stand any chance of regaining the Ashes our attack must be capable of taking 20 wickets in each game. Against a team with the Aussie depth of batting that is a tall order. But that is the challenge facing Harmison and his strike partner Freddie Flintoff.
Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne have been the Aussie match-winners for the past decade. We need two bowlers to eclipse them now if our Ashes dream is to come true.
Over to you Steve and Freddie.
GETTING RICH ON THE NHS
THE Penny Streeter story is a rags-to- riches fairytale.
Once she lived in a hostel, now she's a multi- millionaire who made her money hiring nurses to the cash-strapped NHS. Last year her pay packet was £3.5million - 200 times as much as a health service nurse.
Nurses are prepared to work for her rather than the health service because they have better pay and working conditions and can choose the hours they work.
The NHS spends £1.4billion a year hiring agency nurses to plug the gaps caused by staff shortages - money the Royal College of Nursing says would be better spent on improving the NHS.
If only it was that simple. Agency nurses are hired by hard-pressed hospitals because they need staff cover immediately. They can't wait to save lives. It takes years to train nurses and even now more are leaving than joining.
For decades the NHS was underfunded. We are now paying the price of that failure. A failure that has made Penny Streeter a very rich lady indeed.
TAKING THE ..
WATCH out for the "Original Whizzinator" - the latest fad to hit American sport.
It's a false penis, available in five different shades, plus a false bladder and vials of powder which are dried urine.
The aim is to help cheating sports stars beat drug tests. Already an American gridiron star has been caught in possession.
The equipment is available for just £75 on the internet.
Who said what the Americans do today we'll be doing tomorrow?
NO LOVE LOST
THE so-called stars of Celebrity Love Island have shone about as brightly as a 40watt bulb with viewing figures in freefall and ITV executives fearing a £15million flop.
Yet the mounting friction between co-hosts Kelly Brook and Patrick Kielty could make it worth watching.
Stand by for trouble in paradise.
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