IT’S rather like a schoolday situation when kids in a certain class have committed a particularly outrageous act, so the head tells the whole school something like: “I’m sorry, but you were warned, and you’re all going to face new restrictions.”

Or in later life when a manager is made aware of an especially annoying mistake by a particular department or even individual, and sends a stinking memo to everyone.

Why do they do it? I’d suggest because mass punishment is often simply easier for the person in authority; also the grander gesture makes them look like they’re “doing something about it” and sometimes it’s because they have a wider agenda and the specific bad behaviour gives them an opportunity to show everyone who’s boss.

I feel the current newspapers versus politicians deadlock over press regulation is a bit like that.

Let’s face it; everyone knows that the majority of the abuses which led to this situation were committed by one particular section of the national newspaper industry. And let me remind you, if I may, that Lord Justice Leveson actually absolved the regional press from blame for these shocking and often illegal acts.

Yet the new regulatory framework, which the three main political parties have agreed among themselves, is to be imposed on the whole press, including the regional industry.

It’s not just the mass punishment aspect of this I find objectionable. The objection to politicians getting their hooks into any new system is, in my view, a very real one.

It was fascinating to see David Mellor, the man who as a Cabinet Minister 20 years ago warned the press it was “drinking in the last chance saloon”, actually making a good case against new regulation (though he thought it was bound to come), arguing it was the press rather than Parliament that now held the people who run this country to account.

If that’s true, it suggests many politicians have a strong ulterior motive for wanting to bring the press to heel, as well as a (possibly subconscious) desire to avenge specific “offences” committed against them.

Politicians also have a tendency to think when “something must be done” the answer is new rules and Acts of Parliament. I think years of experience and observation suggest such tinkering all too often makes matters worse rather than better.

My fears about new rules, particularly ones dreamed up by those with little or no experience of the industry, will be familiar to anyone who struggles with red tape. It’s the drip-drip effect of ticking all the necessary boxes, which may make newspapers, already under many other pressures, hesitate if they know running particular stories will mean expending lots of time, energy and resources in satisfying the regulator they didn’t do anything wrong.

This is made worse because good journalism often involves tackling contentious subjects where issues are not immediately clear-cut, presenting plenty of opportunities for those who want to torpedo a particular story – and I’m talking about controversial happenings in local streets as well as Downing Street.

Some will say the Leveson Inquiry proved we must have new rules. I’d say if you look at the abuses which Leveson put under the spotlight the majority of them, including “hacking” people’s mobile phones, were already illegal.

The problem was it took the outrage over the hacking of murder victim Milly Dowler’s phone and the inquiry itself for the authorities to actually start pursuing those suspected of committing or conniving in these abuses.

Their cases are now going before the courts, and I’d like to suggest that, if you actually want to target people guilty of abuses rather than punishing everyone, maybe that’s the way forward.

At the very least, any new system must have greater input from the press – including the regional variety, if we’re to be included in it – than what the Westminster parties want to impose. If, as someone once said, press freedom is too important to be left to journalists, it’s certainly far too important to be left to politicians.