TONY BLAIR says he has listened to the British electorate and he now knows what people want.

Unusually for a weekday morning, I'm feeling magnanimous. So here are a few things to get Tony started.

He can begin by doing something about the horrific state of affairs that led to scenes like those in Manchester Royal Infirmary a year ago, when a gun-wielding gang took over the place for a turf war.

CCTV footage, released at their trial last week, showed a bunch of thugs, some of them on BMX bikes, prowling the building until they squared up to each other in a hospital ward.

Mr Blair can examine the case of gentle schoolteacher, Linda Walker, who, after months of being taunted by yobs, fired an airgun into the ground in front of them and then got slung in the nick herself.

She said: "I've spent most of my life supporting the weakest and most vulnerable but when I needed the establishment not only was it not there but the full force of the law came down on me."

Yes, the Court of Appeal has just released her but what the hell was she doing in prison in the first place?

Over in Reading, a teenage girl is violently murdered and her 18-year-old friend is stabbed and shot in a municipal park. Police are trying to tell us that this type of act is rare.

All these random incidents have at their heart a common thread. And that is that too many people are getting away with vile behaviour and horrendous crimes, leading to a breakdown in public confidence and a dangerous cynicism about the equitable application of the law.

But it's not just crime. In case Tony hasn't twigged yet, the British people have always wanted the same things.

Whatever our class, religion or racial background we have only ever wanted clean hospitals, good schools and streets where we could send our kids out to play without fear of their being run over by a maniac, or abducted by perverts.

What we don't want is our loved ones being treated with ancient equipment by harassed, under-paid nurses in filthy hospitals. We want to be able to visit an NHS dentist without having to re-mortgage our homes to pay for the treatment, and we don't want homicidal nutters being turned loose into thecommunity because it's cheaper and it's their "human rights".

We don't want kids who misbehave in school being rewarded with trips and treats while the conscientious struggle on with inadequate teachers and resources.

We don't want our grandparents robbed of their dignity and their cash by cost-cutting councils who trim personal services and lash the savings on projects no one asked for, and we don't want welfare handouts showered on the idle and the undeserving.

We don't want our kids being able to buy and smoke cannabis openly on the streets. We don't want to have to pay tuition fees and we don't want our hard-earned taxes spent on giving criminals like Maxine Carr (said to be demanding a new home abroad because people are being nasty to her) an easy ride.

We want life to mean life for child murderers and we want internet kiddie porn merchants named and shamed and stuck in stir for at least five years.

We want a Sarah's Law.

We don't want Millennium Domes, crass public artworks and giant, self-aggrandising wastes of space like Portsmouth's Spinnaker Tower.

Will that do you, Prime Minister?