Home Office

Just lent my copy of P.J.O'Rourke's Give War A Chance to a friend, so decided to replace my lost copies of Eat The Rich and Parliament of Whores, to re-read them (and extract a few quotes for this site in the process). Went into the local W.H.Smiths and couldn't find an appropriate section. Would it be Politics or Philosophy or Economics or Current Affairs or Humour? Strangely, there didn't seem to be sections for the former, or anything targeted at the over-14 age-bracket in the latter. There were, on the other hand, several bookcases devoted to "Tragic Life Stories" (a sub-genre of autobiography that I hadn't realised the need to distinguish, like the big sections for the "life-stories" of 22-year-old footballers and media celebrities). Rows and rows of fantasy books and puzzles, too, but nothing too taxing.

Decided I must just be being obtuse, so asked at the desk. "Is that P.J. as in the letters, and how do you spell O'Rourke?". Oh dear. Nothing in the computer. Curiosity piqued that they seemed only to offer books for the lobotomised, I enquired where I would find the sections for P or P or E or CA. "We don't really have a section for them, but you might find something in the History section." A bit of lateral thinking required: "Where do you keep your Boris Johnson, then?" This is Maidenhead, and Boris is not only hopefully a well-enough known celebrity even to oiks, but MP for the neighbouring constituency of Henley. Must be a bit of Boris on the shelves.

Taken to look at the History section. Logical enough, given his excellent Dream of Rome. But no Boris in History, which is 80% Military History, and 80% of that about WWII. Instead, tucked away amongst the Spitfires and Shermans are a couple of shelves of "General Interest", which is intended to cover P,P,E, CA and much else besides. Finally, there is Boris, but sadly Maidenhead's intellectual capacity will only stretch to his book on cars (gives you an idea of the range of interests intended to be covered by those two shelves). That, it seems, is all we want to hear about from our politicians and pundits.

Maidenhead is typical of every bland High Street in the country, and it seems that, judging by their reading tastes, the typical shopper in the typical High Street in England is BRAINDEAD. Mind you, some more than others. At least Maidenhead's Smiths carries some current-affairs magazines, though tucked away at the back as though they are a little ashamed of them. And so infrequently attended that they are still displaying the Spectator from the week before last.

Still, that beats Newton Abbot, where I once got stuck for a couple of hours on the way back from Torquay. Looking for some reading material, I walked into town, stopping into each newsagent for a current-affairs magazine. After three failures, I asked the shopkeeper if he had anything suitable - something like The Economist, or Time or Newsweek, or some other obscure intellectual magazine like them. "Not much call for that round here." But there was clearly plenty of call for magazines about tractors and carp-fishing. Jethro is not exaggerating about the west-country.

Anyway, to the point. Below the General Interest shelves (back in Maidenhead) was one for books to help with your Citizenship test (another sign of the times). The Government's official publication, Life in the United Kingdom - A Journey to Citizenship, caught my eye. A theory and a game suggested themselves.

The proposed split of the Home Office is fast approaching.  In a department that has just taken its latest victim with John Reid announcing his retirement from front bench politics at the weekend (nothing to do with the fact the Brown would have pushed him anyway), it has been deemed too difficult a department for one man to run.  In the past 6 years, Straw, Blunkett, Clarke and Reid have all failed where many have before them.  So, the solution is to split the department up leaving the Home Office to largely tackle terrorism and merge the National Offender Management part with the Department for Constitutional Affairs.  This is what has become known by the press as the Ministry of Justice.   Brilliant.  Not sure what benefit we will be from this, but the Ministry of Justice sounds very Marvel comic.  I also can not tell you how much it will cost, because the Government won't tell anyone.  However, expect it to be mind boggling large as government estimates (and we all know how short they often come up) suggest.

The Home Office is right up there with the best at wasting our money. Its Secretary of State has even described it as "not fit for purpose". But that was before tough, no nonsense John Reid got his hands on it and sorted the whole shambles out. Wrong. Despite knowing many years ago that we would be in this situation if nothing was done, our prisons are full. So what does Reid do? He is wasting £5 million a month in payments for emergency accommodation in police cells. Since our prisons became jammed packed last October, tough John has blown £23m on renting out prison cells. A note for the government's forecasters who are about as accurate as Mystic Meg, the overall cost is double the estimated figure given to MPs last year.

Who exactly is running this country? Reports today suggest no-one is really sure. The “plan” to split the Home Office in to two – one section to fight terrorism and enforce national security, the other as a Ministry of Justice – has been put on hold. Apparently Gordon Brown does not want any changes until the Labour party coronate him in the summer. According to the Guardian – “the issue has been kicked into the long grass until Gordon Brown takes over.”

So Tony Blair is the PM but can not do anything unless Gordon backs it. If Gordon does back it he does not want Tony to take the credit so nothing will get done until Tony is gone. So nothing is getting done. Effectively we do not currently have a Government that can or is actually doing anything. Can I withhold all funding of the government through my taxes on this basis? On the plus side, maybe the government will be forced to kick a few more issues in to the long grass over the coming months.

Tough on crime. Tough on the causes of crime. Now that is picking a winner. This is what the government should be doing. However, it seems that being tough on crime and its causes has more to do with sitting behind a desk pushing a pen than actually getting out in to towns and cities and actually catching some criminals. According to research, as few as one in three officers are available to respond to 999 calls and tackle crime – particularly at night when the police are most needed to tackle drunken hooligans.

Why do we pay millions of pounds a year in taxes to train up and pay the wages of our police officers when they spend half their shift writing about what they have done that day? It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the police would better tackle crime if they are at the crime scenes or even better out and about stopping crimes taking place in the first place. I do fear, however, that things are unlikely to change and even if they do the government will probably have to set up an “independent” think tank first to tell what we already know – uniformed officers are tough on crime and its causes, not bic biros.

The Prison service has been told to find savings of £80 million for each of three financial years from an annual budget of £2 billion. Yes, the same prison service that has been in the headlines recently for being overcrowded and poorly run. Some might say throw more money at it. To me it begs the question, if one of the worst run areas of government can tighten its belt to the tune of £80m a year why can’t the rest of the government’s departments and agencies?

One of the highest priorities, and also the few areas, the Government should be focusing on is law and order and the police force. Policemen and women should all be paid the salary they deserve and not a penny less. However, it seems whatever area of life that falls in to the public sector, you are guaranteed to see money thrown away – and the police force appears to be no different.

More than 8,000 police officers are being paid full salaries to work limited hours with limited duties. It is estimated that it costs £250 million a year. This is a luxury the public sector seems to be able to afford. They just pay out more and more without anyone keeping an eye on whether it is well spent and how it is spent. No one takes an interest to deal with the problem and it will always be someone else's duty to "fix" it.

Tony Blair said on the BBC's Politics Show yesterday that Britain's prisons are "full to bursting point" but suggested that the public should be relieved that dangerous prisoners are being locked up for longer. The PM also said that the Home Office is facing some big problems.

Indeed, the Home Office and its problems have dominated the headlines for weeks now. And it does seem to be getting worse by the day with new revelations of its undone work and nonfulfillment of its responsibilities appearing daily.

Mark and Lezley Gibson and Marcus Davies were convicted on 15 December of distributing cannabis-laced chocolate bars to multiple sclerosis (MS) sufferers. They await sentencing on 26 January.

Lezley is herself a MS-sufferer, who was told at the age of 21 that she would be incontinent and wheel-chair bound within a few years. Conventional treatment (steroid injections) had such unpleasant side-effects that she could not continue. In her search for alternatives, she came across comments on the benefits of cannabis, which she discovered worked for her. She is now 42 and living a quality of life that the medical profession had considered improbable when she was first diagnosed.