Prisoners are, by definition, among the most governed people in the country. Every waking and sleeping moment is regulated and directed by the authorities, the judiciary, and ultimately the government. Yet they are not allowed to vote in national and European elections.

Quite right, too, says Middle England. They have broken the law, so they have no right to help make the law. Wrong, says the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which ruled years ago that the blanket ban on prisoners voting, imposed in 1870, was an infringement of their rights. Now the House of Commons has voted overwhelmingly against the court, and in favour of retaining the ban.

Or has it? The vote was certainly emphatic: 234 to 22. But more than half of MPs abstained, or couldn't be bothered. And the motion came from the backbenches, which means it is not binding on the government, which has until August to comply with the court (and thus uphold our treaty obligations) by lifting the ban. Defying the Strasbourg judges could be costly: there are more than 2,500 outstanding claims for compensation for the lack of voting rights, and the potential bill could run to £70m ($112m).

The issue is further coloured by prejudice and ignorance. Eurosceptics are hollering about our sacred sovereignty, and the intolerable threat to it from Strasbourg. Many clearly do not realise that the ECHR sits under the auspices of the Council of Europe, which has nothing whatever to do with the widely loathed, derided and utterly misunderstood European Union.

Cutback on checks

Criminal record checks are intrusive, but they have been deemed necessary for people working with children and vulnerable adults. Now the regime is to be eased by a protection of freedoms bill, intended to roll back state interference in private lives.

Vaguely anodyne in its aim of reducing criminal record checks to "commonsense levels", the bill will nevertheless affect many millions of lives. More than half of the nine million people who have needed to be checked will no longer have to be vetted. The bill will also regulate the use of the 4m or so closed-circuit television systems in use in the UK, local authority surveillance powers, and the police DNA data base.

The last Labour government was fiercely criticised by civil libertarians for its none-too-stealthy approach to monitoring the public. Tony Blair in particular was wedded to the idea of national ID cards, linked to a massive data base. Now the coalition says it is determined to reduce bureaucratic tinkering. But not quite yet: the changes are unlikely to be introduced until the middle of next year.

Centralised medicine

It's quite easy to arrange an appointment with a family doctor. You just pick up a telephone, dial the surgery number and, er, make an appointment. But that's much too easy for a government obsessed with market forces and bent on running the National Health Service (NHS) like a supermarket. It is encouraging doctors to sign up to a centralised appointment booking service offered by NHS Direct, an online and telephone health helpline.

NHS Direct will soon run trials of its service, which will involve patients dialing 111 for appointments and out-of-hours services. They will be directed to their local family doctors, or given the (much cheaper) option of speaking to the helpline, or using the extensive website.

The new system fits in with the huge shakeup of the entire NHS landscape, with general practitioner consortiums sharing £80bn to commission services, free-market style, for their patients.

Blue badge abuse

Blue badge parking is among the most civilised and practical aids available to the disabled. It is also among the most abused. The badges allow disabled drivers, or whoever is helping them, to park in designated spaces on the roads, or in public and private carparks.

The Audit Commission recently found that 16,535 blue badges were still in operation, though their registered holders had died. There are 2.5m of the badges in circulation. The annual value of benefits to holders, including free parking and exemption from the London congestion charge, is estimated at more than £100 per badge. But now the level of abuse is beginning to erode the privilege: genuine card holders are having difficulty finding spaces.

The government is expected to introduce a new design for the badge, making it more difficult to forge. It will also allow local authorities – which issue the badges – to check applicants' identities. It is also likely, in the spirit of our times, to raise the current £2 cost of a blue badge.

RAF's wings clipped

Pilot training in the Royal Air Force is long, arduous and exacting. Those who win their wings are the cream of the crop, skilled in the use of some of the most advanced technology there is. But their training is also breathtakingly expensive. That is why, as part of the remorseless slashing and burning of the defence budget, 100 trainee pilots, a quarter of the total, are to be sacked.

They are understood to comprise 20 fast jet pilots, 30 helicopter pilots, and 50 transport aircraft pilots. Some are only a few hours' flying time from earning their wings. Their training so far has cost the taxpayer some £300m, which the Ministry of Defence will have to write off.

Under last year's strategic defence and security review, the total strength of the RAF is to be cut by 5,000 to around 33,000.

Late due to the dew

Train operators have always entertained us with their ludicrous excuses for delays and cancellations. They have blamed leaves or "the wrong kind of snow" for their inability to make the trains run on time. Now they have come up with an absolute purler: dew on the track.

Commuters on the Southern train company's busy services into London were taken aback to hear that they were being delayed by "poor railhead conditions", in spite of mild weather. A company spokeswoman was only marginally less enigmatic. "This is a railhead phenomenon that happens at this time of the year. Dew gets on the tracks and makes conditions difficult," she said.

We've been running trains in this damp little country for nearly 200 years, without realising that they can't cope with a spot of wet. But then for most of that time "railhead" meant the end of the line, and not the liquid on it.

Hero with a handbag

The four would-be jewel thieves were clearly prepared. They had a sledgehammer and a getaway car. But they had not reckoned with Ann Timson, a retired market trader in her 70s. When she caught sight of a kerfuffle in the doorway of Michael Jones's jewellers in Northampton, she mistakenly thought that "a kid" was under attack.

"My mother's instinct kicked in and I ran across the road shouting at the lads to stop it. Only then did I realise that they were smashing glass and that it was a raid. But by now I was in full flight and I started whacking the lads over the head with my shopping bag," she said.

Pictures of Mrs Timson were captured by at least one mobile-phone wielder who, like several others, did not try to intervene. They didn't have to: the four robbers made off empty handed, defeated by a remarkable lady and her shopping bag.