In 1998, Jack Straw, the British home secretary introduced something called Anti-Social Behaviour Orders or Asbos. The idea was simple, to prevent continuing anti-social behaviour, a court could produce an order that restricts or inhibits an individual's liberty to be anti-social.

We've all known the anti-social family from hell. Every council has them, and they rotate them in and out of council owned property usually when they've burned down the property to which they'd been assigned. They produce a one family crime wave, people are scared stiff of what are apparently children and in short make life a living hell for those around them.

The Asbos were designed to help in such cases, where prison is the ultimate sanction for repeat offenders, a milder variation on the three strikes you're out used in America. But as ever, the road to hell is paved with, well, Asbos it would seem. Here are some of the dafter examples of Asbos.

A Manchester prostitute was ordered not to carry condoms, the idea being that if she couldn't carry condoms she couldn't ply her trade at her usual street corner. She went to a drug clinic, where the public health officials insisted on giving her some condoms for sound public health reasons. As she left the clinic she was spotted by the police who searched her bag, found the condoms and promptly arrested her. She now faces a possible prison sentence for carrying condoms.

A disruptive youth in Southampton was ordered not to congregrate with three or more people, the reason being that he tended to form an on-the-spot army of vandals and go around smashing things. Reasonable enough you'd think. His social worker took him to a youth club to try and get him to socialise peacefully in a structured environment. He was pronptly arrested for associating with more than three people.

But Asbos have a more sinister side. One man was an habitual beggar and was ordered not to beg in 'an earnest and humble manner'. It isn't an offence to beg in Britain no matter how distasteful it may be to others. The man was caught begging again and was sent to prison where he died.

Britain has a reputation for being tolerant of eccentricity, but that tolerance now seems to be eroding away. Britain has become a nation of curtain twitching, vindictive and spiteful intolerance where everyone under eighteen and breathing is considered a trouble maker. A major tabloid released the address of a paedophile living in Southampton. A local woman took it on herself to form a vigilante group and attacked the home of a local paediatrician, unable to tell the difference between a paediatrician and a paedophile. While she was being so concerned with her 'duty' a couple found her naked children running around unsupervised on an estate and handed them over to the police. She was arrested and charged with child neglect. Even more sinister was the case of an eccentric loner in Shrewsbury who was assumed to be a paedophile and beaten to death. His name was similar to a convicted paedophile in the area.

Other cases of daft Asbos abound. One woman, slightly off her rocker, took to occasionally throwing a stick of rhubarb at passers-by. She was charged with handling 'rhubarb with malice', and will face jail if she lobs a stick of rhubarb again. A woman who persistently answered her door and did her gardening wearing only a bra and knickers was ordered to 'not wear underwear in a manner likely to cause offence'. Oooh - a woman in underwear, now that's scary. The sad case of a 23 year old woman in Bath who had tried to kill herself variously by drowning in a river, hanging from a bridge and lying on rail tracks was ordered not to go near rivers, railway lines, bridges or (for some reason) multi-storey car parks or face imprisonment. Clearly, ordering her to see a psychiatrist or someone that might be able to help her was a barmy notion.

But the pick of the crop has to be the order against the landlord of the pub called the Swan with two Necks in Bristol. Because there were a lot of butchers in the area and he enjoyed bad puns, he called the pub car-park the 'Porking Yard'. Local teachers complained that the sign was offensive and sexually suggestive. The landlord replied with evident pride that a 'dirty mind is a perpetual feast'. Leaders at a local mosque joined in and called the sign an insult to Islam and that it mocked their religion, even though it didn't either in content or intent. He was ordered to remove the sign and will face imprisonment if he displays any sign that is deemed 'threatening, abusive or insulting to anyone'.

So barmy Britain is being strangled by petty-minded malice and intolerance. Our famed eccentricity is no suitable in the digital age, or as one comedian put it, 'The English like eccentrics. They just don't like them living next door.'

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