One of the best things about being a minister in any government is that, if you find yourself with a problem, as a general rule you are in a position to fix it, or at least to make the problem go away.
Here in the UK, we have a lovely man named Dr John Reid as our Home Secretary - equivalent to something like the Minister for Internal Affairs. Of course, I mean lovely in the sense of 'person you wouldn't spit on if he were on fire, in fact you would add more petrol'. I'm not sure that he is actually more evil or mendacious than any other politician, but he's more obvious about it. Which is nice, because it saves you expending valuable seconds of your life wondering if he can be trusted (before you remember he's an MP and slap yourself for being stupid). In short, he's one of life's instantly hateable people.
A few weeks ago, it seemed that Dr Reid was at last going to get his comeuppance. His department deals with all sorts of boring roles, like making sure prisoners stay locked up. You wouldn't think that this would be all that difficult. In fact, Dr Reid had to admit that, not only did prisoners regularly escape, but his department had no accurate figures for how many had escaped. Think about this for a moment. Either this means that not only do they not know how many prisoners have escaped, they have no idea how many they were supposed to have in the first place, or it means that Dr Reid is too stupid to subtract the number they actually have from the number they are supposed to have and get the right answer. Either way, we seemed to have put our criminal justice system into the hands of a cretin.
Then it got even better. Not content with operating an open door policy for prisoners ("Yeah, drop in any time you are passing, guys"), Dr Reid then decided that, actually, the prisons were too full anyway. Ignoring the fact that, if he just carried on as normal then the jails would eventually empty themselves anyway, he asked judges to stop sending convicted criminals to jail. For the first time in my life I was glad we hadn't caught Bin Laden, because Dr Reid-iculous would have had him doing community service, probably with disadvantaged Muslims in Leeds.
Predictably, all of this made people wonder if Dr Reid was competent to dress himself, let alone run a major government department. The announcement this week that the Home Office was going to be split in two was therefore an astonishing admission by him that, basically, the complex task of locking people in a cell and making sure they stayed there was beyond him to organise.
To give credit where it is due, John Reid clearly isn't as stupid as you might now think he is (although he undoubtedly more stupid than he thinks he is), because he has hived off all of the things he was being criticised for. Which leaves him free to concentrate on the remaining objectives of the Home Office. This is the point at which I panic, because those things are immigration, terrorism and security. Frankly, Osama might as well check into the Headingley Holiday Inn now.
A few weeks ago, it seemed that Dr Reid was at last going to get his comeuppance. His department deals with all sorts of boring roles, like making sure prisoners stay locked up. You wouldn't think that this would be all that difficult. In fact, Dr Reid had to admit that, not only did prisoners regularly escape, but his department had no accurate figures for how many had escaped. Think about this for a moment. Either this means that not only do they not know how many prisoners have escaped, they have no idea how many they were supposed to have in the first place, or it means that Dr Reid is too stupid to subtract the number they actually have from the number they are supposed to have and get the right answer. Either way, we seemed to have put our criminal justice system into the hands of a cretin.
Then it got even better. Not content with operating an open door policy for prisoners ("Yeah, drop in any time you are passing, guys"), Dr Reid then decided that, actually, the prisons were too full anyway. Ignoring the fact that, if he just carried on as normal then the jails would eventually empty themselves anyway, he asked judges to stop sending convicted criminals to jail. For the first time in my life I was glad we hadn't caught Bin Laden, because Dr Reid-iculous would have had him doing community service, probably with disadvantaged Muslims in Leeds.
Predictably, all of this made people wonder if Dr Reid was competent to dress himself, let alone run a major government department. The announcement this week that the Home Office was going to be split in two was therefore an astonishing admission by him that, basically, the complex task of locking people in a cell and making sure they stayed there was beyond him to organise.
To give credit where it is due, John Reid clearly isn't as stupid as you might now think he is (although he undoubtedly more stupid than he thinks he is), because he has hived off all of the things he was being criticised for. Which leaves him free to concentrate on the remaining objectives of the Home Office. This is the point at which I panic, because those things are immigration, terrorism and security. Frankly, Osama might as well check into the Headingley Holiday Inn now.
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