The prospect of toddlers being marked as potential criminals and treated accordingly is reminiscent of Philip K Dick’s Minority Report where investigators look into the future and arrest anyone who is going to commit a crime, before they get round to doing so. It’s not going to be easy explaining to a toddler why you think they are going to be a drugs kingpin in 30 years time. But it is no coincidence we have also had the announcement of “Kelly Hours” - a scheme, named after Education Secretary Ruth Kelly, that proposes to keep children in school for a full 10 hours from 8am to 6pm They say it’s an aid to working parents. I think it’s a cheap way of keeping the little criminals under surveillance.

On Sunday afternoon, I was walking past Guys Hospital, loaded down with luggage, when I noticed a very wobbly and worried-looking person dangling from the roof. I nearly retrieved my camera from my luggage to take a picture but it seemed too much of a mission. You can imagine how annoyed I was when Monday’s papers revealed that the dangler was Tory leadership wannabe Dr Liam Fox. He was raising money for Arthritis Research. But part of me thinks he’s trying to counter David Davis’ ex-SAS hard-man image. Is this a trend with Tory hopefuls? Will we see Ken Clarke bungee-jumping or the dapper Alan Duncan wearing clothes from Peacocks? Incidentally, Duncan, Britain’s only gay Tory MP and Shadow Transport Secretary, has been given Julian Brazier, possibly Britain’s most homophobic MP, as an assistant at Transport. Who says Michael Howard doesn’t have a sense of humour?

You can’t take interns anywhere. This week, some parliamentary staffers were in the Westminster Arms when one drunken intern decided to tell the bar manager precisely how poor the service was. The manager explained that this was because the youngsters were not regulars. Matters got heated and the manager threatened to report the intern to the Whips. The intern’s response was to give the manager the name and number of the MP he worked for just to illustrate the extent to which he gave a toss about being reported. The manager may think he had the last word with his, “Fuck off, you’re barred!” but the palace is full of wind-up merchants who will now spend summer pissing him off for sport.

I’m not anti-French but the bastards are out to get us. Jacques Chirac wants £3 billion as “a gesture of goodwill” from Tony Blair. Doesn’t Le President know that not even Cherie has access to that kind of cash? While he was in Paris this week, Tony was happy to appeal to French voters by sitting through TV interviews talking fluently in French. I want to see the French leader being quizzed, live, in English, by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight next week on the absurd subsidies French farmers receive from Brussels’ coffers.

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