Oh Dear. Oh Dear. Oh Dear

In the words of Richard Littlejohn (spit,spit), "You couldn't make it up!". First we have Charles Clarke, who clearly is now going to struggle to keep his job. Then we have Patricia Hewitt, who seems especially clueless. And then there's Two Shags.

Oddly, of the three, while the media are gunning for Prescott, I think he's the one I sympathise with most of the three. Lots of people have assignations at work and, generaly speaking, it doesn't necessarily affect their ability to do the job. As it is, he's been a bit silly and has hurt his wife a great deal by all accounts, but I don't think it's worth firing for.

Hewitt is a wonder to behold. The Health Service is in uproar, so she decides to tell a fairly moderate union gathering that everything's peachy thanks, but we may not have the money to keep paying you, so may have to get rid of some of you. All of this in the face of mounting concern over how the HNS is finaced, and how some basic service like dentistry are being cut to the bone, with dentists queing up to get out. And then, after being righty told to shut her stupid cakehole, she decides to do the same again two days after. What happens? The conference she's at basically sit there and laugh at her, before telling her how to get lost.

And then of course there's JEP (Jug-Eared Pinhead) Clarke. Not content with little gems like this, he has to go and do something flamboyantly dim and just kind of forget a number of clearly dangerous prisoners. more worringly, this morning comes the news that the details of a number of them simply cannot be found on the wonderful solve-it-all police IT systems (that ID will be nothing like, oh Lord no).

And of course the local elections are but six days away now. Labour must be preparing for a nightmare, because this is now just utterly beyond belief. I don't believe the Tories will make many great gains, though the LibDems might hurt Labour fairly severely in some places. The question is: if these elections are as bad for Bliar as many expect, just how long can he hang on if his party start to see him as the liabilty he is becoming?