10 minutes ago I sat down here genuinely believing that I was about to discover the one man in this New Labour government with moral courage and integrity.
Kim Howells had done the very decent thing and admitted that it was he who made the decision to permit a man whose name appears on the Sex Offenders List to work in schools.
So far so good, but then it falls apart.
He said: "As duty minister for the Department for Education and Skills in the first days of May 2005, it was my job to reach a decision on any cases put to me under long-standing arrangements followed by government ministers of both parties.
What exactly is the relevence of the wording in bold? Why attempt to dilute the blame and spread the responsibility?
It is virtually a decade since the last time a Conservative Minister had the opportunity to take a decision of this nature. Since then we have had an eye watering number of child abuse and paedophile stories played out in the media.
Officers working on Operation Ore have had in their possession for some years several thousand names of men (and women) taken from the subscription list of a child porn website. It is said that they know who most of them are and that many are in positions of trust and directly connected to working with children. It is also said that they have found the time and resources to prosecute only a mere 10%. while our Government sits idle. I wonder who is on that list.
Then there is Soham, the single most comprehensive failure of our police and education authorities to protect children. How dare our civil servants continue to place such mis-guided advice before our Ministers and how dare our ministers accept it without question. Sack the servant and leave the Minister to swing in the wind.
The most important message to emerge from all this is that eight years since a Tory last sat in office and with several thousands more lives ruined by this evil scourge, our cowardly, ineffective, incompetent government admits that it is still operating under a regime created in and for a different world. That is not Government by any standards I recognise.
And so briefly onto Mr Prescott.
The man whose runs our Council tax system fails to adhere to its rules and then claims that he made a mistake and was confused: "On reviewing the situation, I am now aware that an inadvertent error has occurred, based on a genuine misunderstanding."
Its pathetic really. How many more wheels are there to fall off?
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