I'm generally in favour of the citizenry trying to get one over the Revenue, being as it's generally the Revenue trying to get its sticky fingers into the citizenry's pockets to relieve said citizenry of its hard-earned cash.

I know that if the Revenue doesn't get enough of the folding stuff to allocate to the various functionaries to do their thing, the country will go to hell in a hand-basket and all the services we get from the state will stop being provided. Cynics among you will say that this is not a million miles from where we are already but, in truth, we do actually have a relatively decent infrastructure (which could do, as could all infrastructures, with significant improvement) so cash is needed to keep it working.

But the anarchist in me still likes the idea of the great unwashed trying to get its own back, so the Labour Party's idea of trying to relieve the Revenue of some of the money it liberated from car buyers over the years finds a bit of favour with me.

Where I part company with Labour, though, is the way they're jumping all over the place with the PR side of the thing. I won't bore you with the procedural difficulties a bunch of cases like this faces, because such things only interest lawyers and then only two types of them: the ones who have their job to do (and, therefore, have to look at procedural issues) and the ones who enjoy such things for the sake of them (it's a bit like liking tax law, for instance).

I'm not a member of either group, so I'm not particularly interested.

That having been said, where does Labour get off demanding that the government foregoes any procedural pleas available to it and decide the case on the merits? Procedural law is there to guarantee due process, which is an integral part of guaranteeing the rule of law, and promoting the idea that procedure is somehow not important is but a short hop, skip and a jump from saying that the courts should decide things on the basis of what the populace thinks is important from time to time.

Which itself is just a little bunny hop from promoting the idea that we might as well have done away with law courts altogether, putting people's courts in place instead of them. If you want proof positive that this is a ludicrous idea, I'm not asking you to give consideration to the quasi-hysterical online debates (debates!?!) that accompanied media discussion of the Renzo Piano or St John's projects because that is guaranteed to raise the hackles of the defenders of the national cultural heritage.

No, all you need to do is take a look at some of the comments that fetched up below my blog Stitched Up. Clearer evidence that some people have absolutely no compunction about deciding what the law should be from their own blinkered perspective and about laying it down, hanging all considerations such as freedom of choice or speech, you would be hard-pressed to find, anywhere.

The mere idea of people's courts, therefore, fills me with dread and that's quite apart from the fact that the idea used to be bandied about by none other than Dr KMB, the veritable political colossus whose preferred slogan at the moment seems to be "Go forth and multiply". He's bellowing it in the context of his rather peculiar notion that immigrants are taking over the world or something like that but it gives you an idea of where he's coming from.

Labour's debasement of the nobility of their cause isn't restricted to their current position about how the government should roll over and play dead, however. They've made it clear that if and when they're returned to power at any stage in the future, they're going to give the people who bought new cars and paid VAT on the transaction some of their money back.

Which leads to the conclusion that they only reason they've started that confounded court case is for the fun of it, since they're going to ignore the eventual finding anyway. Which is not why you start court cases.

Not if you want to show due respect for the institution of justice, that is. Labour have enough trouble trying to make us forget their past in this context, without going to such lengths to keep our memories alive.

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