Alan Johnson seems to fit the title: Jack of all trades, master on none. His time as Home Secretary has hardly been one of unmitigated success. It appears the Home Office is Labour’s equivalent of Northern Ireland. Prime Minister’s send ministers there when they want to end their careers in a very final way. If Alan Johnson does have hopes of being Labour leader, he has now found himself between the devil and the deep blue sea or more pertinently, between a hard place of his own making and Plymouth Rock, buckling under the pressure of a US government deeply embarrassed by the actions of a Brit.
Gary McKinnon (photographed above) has Asperger’s Syndrome. He is a UFO nut. Using his technological knowledge he managed to penetrate the seemingly impenetrable walls of the Pentagon. The Americans don’t like this. They want blood. They have already made clear they are going to jump over every legal hurdle to get their man. The only thing that stands in the way is British justice. We are now supposed to sleep well in our beds. The big bad wolf is not going to win. In fairy tales this is true, but we don’t live in a fairy tale and enter stage right, the Right Honourable Member for Hull West and Hessle. The High Court has refused Mr McKinnon the right to appeal to our Supreme Court. Alan Johnson, the postie done good, is now the star player. Is he going to do the right thing or is he going to blow the house down? Is he going to be the hero of the piece? No. Instead he is going to send Mr McKinnon to the US to face a prison sentence.
If I was a boffin in the Pentagon, I would want to get Mr McKinnon to explain how he did it. I would want to use his knowledge to make the computer systems secure. I would understand this man has a mental illness that makes him withdraw from the world we live in and live in a fantasy world.
Alan Johnson was the last roadblock to this extradition folly. He is the man who could have driven this runaway train into the buffers. He could have stopped this dead in its tracks. Instead he is the man who is so far out of his depth, he doesn’t realise the responsibility of a holder of one of the great offices of state. It is now up to us to remind him. Write to him and tell him how disgusted you are with this decision. Write to the press. Express your outrage. The only court that matters now is the court of public opinion. Even Alan Johnson has to bow to that court if enough of us nudge him into a corner.
ust. Gone. Out of our sight forever. As quickly as it came into our lives, it seems as if it is going to depart as speedily. The ‘Big Screen’ in Hull has been a source of debate since it was installed in 2004. I have always thought it looked like an enormous version of a television set people all over the country were throwing out to upgrade to a newer model. Aesthetically it is a carbuncle on the face of Queen Victoria Square. It could have been placed in a better location and it could have looked better, but alas our former Labour masters thought differently, if indeed they ever thought about it at all. The decision was made in haste in the Guildhall equivalent of smoke filled rooms.
the unveiling of an official portrait of her by the artist, Richard Stone.
s to be some confusion, which I will now clear up.
Most people there were genuinely shocked at the amount of money being spent by Quangos and how much our membership of the European Union costs us each year. I quoted the following from Dr Lee Rotherham’s book, Ten Years On: Britain without the European Union.
Sir Stuart Bell, the MP for Middlesbrough since 1983, has had a long career as an author, journalist, barrister and parliamentarian. I know he is gripped by a love affair with the EU, no doubt brought about during his time practicing law in France. Listening to him in the Queen’s Speech debate though, I began to wonder if like the prime minister he has become divorced from reality, 



