This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice.

10. Integrity

So about Jacqui Smith and the… erm… ‘crazy drug fuelled youth of half the cabinet’. Don’t you just cringe when politicians are backed in to a corner and have to squirm? Then they go back, have a meeting with the rest of the cabinet to orchestrate their best response.

So it would seem that, with the reclassification from C to B going on next week, Jacqui Smith let it slip that she had had a joint when she was at uni – so her mates in the cabinet spluttered out that they had too in support of their pal. Or are they worried that in Gordon Brown’s early days they need to smooth things over and this was the best way? Or was this something else?

The former drugs czar and Chief Constable, Keith Hellawell, said on TV the other night that she was a hypocrite.

Really?

Yeah - she is a hypocrite and she has no integrity.

Gah! How could she comprehend that one day she would be home secretary, when she was a goofy student? This circular movement feels so predictable. Politicians are normal people but pretend they are not. We all know this, so when they play up we don’t believe them.

But isn’t that the part of their job? To be believed? And for us to have faith in the words they say?

How refreshing would it be to have our politicians stop squirming? And actually, how much more integrity would they have?

This week’s niceness

One person who wasn’t predictable was a traffic warden that I got chatting to.

We talked about how he felt about his job. He explained that yes, while sometimes people were pretty fed up and miserable about the fact they had been caught, it was the way that he dealt with their response that was important.

Being defensive would antagonise them and ruin his day (and theirs). They know they shouldn’t have left the car there; they know he is just doing his job. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders as he said this, and you could imagine how he would diffuse any anger so quickly.

It was so refreshing to hear him talk like this – if only our politicians could see the benefits of breaking out of the stereotype.

By Liz Akers