So I see "Pob" Clarke is whining that John Reid is being unfair by saying that the Home Office is a mess, and that he hadn't actually known about the foreign prisoner situation after all.

That's funny -wasn't half the fuss about people actually showing that they had, in fact, informed him of the situation and one of the reasons he'd had his resignantion accepted so readily was the fact he'd done his best to hide that fact from Parliament?

Oh well, a few discontented noises from the peanut gallery is hardly going to trouble Blair, who can mark his wonderful new reforms (remind me, what's he reforming this week? Health? Education? Crime? The Beatles? One loses track so quickly) with a 69 year-old council tax protestor being jailed.

Josephine Rooney - although furious she has been spared from jail as someone paid her outstanding bill - faced 3 months in prison after refusing to pay council tax increases until some actual service improvement happened. She's from a part of Derby nicknamed "smack alley" after 1,000 hypodermic needles were cleaned up in a day.

Still, there's some hope - two "terror suspects" were arrested the other day, and not only were they not shot by police, it appears they're not elderly or making some orderly protest about council tax hikes or Iraq - which is the usual class of "criminal" netted by Tony's new legislation.

So, in an era where the government want us all to carry ID cards and have our personal data on file . . . because it's easier to treat your citizens like potential crims rather than worry about that tricky rights and freedom and due process bollocks, you'd think they would welcome any new measures for data transparency, ues?

Not on your nelly. It seems that the greatest amount of blocking for requests under the freedom on information act are coming from government departments.

Which reminds me - stay tuned for a special series - "Peter and I: Vorty's attempt to find out from his MP where public money is actually going" coming soon.