Hero of the week: Lee Ottway

I know what you are thinking: Why him? Or perhaps you are thinking: Who is
Lee Ottway?


To answer the second question first, he's the young blond lad on Love Island, the ITV reality show where semi-famous people with a lot of time on their hands allegedly spend time trying to get together with each other.

Now, I don't watch this programme as a rule. In fact, the only one I have seen was last night. But from what I can gather, scrawny Lee - who I do remember from playing a slightly dim lad in Hollyoaks - has had a bit of a crush on one of the girls.

Now, he apparently got very upset when the girl he liked was told by brickhouse basketball player Dennis Rodman what he'd like to do to her.

So he went up and told Dennis that wasn't a very nice thing to do. Either he was stupid for doing so and didn't realise he could have got a beating, or did realise but still did it anyway. Which makes him either stupid or honourable.

I'm going to plump for the latter. While it may not have been the most chivalrous act around (Quote: Saying it in front of the lads is Ok but...) it shows there is still hope yet.

PS: Hot tip: Now Dennis has left the Love Islands, expect a musical debut soon. After all, with so many piercings, it's only a matter of time before he's marketed as the world's first human flute.

Doctor in the House

RATHER like a company which is forced to make redundancies then faced with the decision whether or not to help fund the staff Christmas Party, the Home Office often finds itself damned if it does, and damned if it doesn't.

If it doesn't listen to a campaign from the media, it's accused of being arrogant. If it agrees to look into the call of the campaign, then it is accused of pandering to tabloid headlines.

When it is constructing plans to merge police forces, it is accused -rightly, I believe - of over-the-top meddling. When it scraps the plan, it is berated for doing a massive u-turn.

But within the obvious chaos which is the Home Office at the moment, there is some good news. And it comes in the form of Dr John Reid.

Ridiculed by some as 'the enforcer' after he hit the ground running in the wake of the Charles Clarke debacle, he appears to be putting the fear-of-god up the Home Office stooges who appear to be concerned at the close scrutinty they are coming under.

To me, here is a man who has realised he is in the 'damned either way' situation and has responded by being very open, very honest and very up front about the problems.

In such a situation, denying there is a problem only ever makes things worse - and Dr Reid knows that.

He's taking the flack, but has bought himself time from the critics by promising to sort it out.

Whether he will or not remains to be seen - but how honestly refreshing for someone within the Labour leadership admitting faults have existed in the past.

Arguably, he had no choice, but how many times in the past have ministers made covering up for each other their primary task to ensure the grip on power remains tight.

That is, of course, until they find themselve cast into the wilderness - Mr Blunkett anyone - and they suddenly become the font of all knowledge for the ills and problems of government.

The word 'crackdown' has lost all meaning since Labour came to power, in the same way that 'prestigious' did when Public Relations companies began starting sticking it before every awards ceremony going.

To me, it appears we've had a succession of Home Secretaries passing through who've been distracted by the latest attention-grabbing stunt dressed up as a crackdown on anti-social behaviour, drug-dealing, immigration or whatever.

The window dressing may have changed over the years, but people aren't fooled by that. Do they feel safer knowing that a troublemaker may get an ASBO? That children causing problems may get a dispersal order and move a few streets on? Do the figures on immigration suggest any previous crackdown on illegals has worked?

I think the answers, in order, are No, No, and No.

When tinkering of the department has taken place, it never appears to have been those in charge who have been tinkered with. Think about police reforms. Merging authorities would do what? Make people feel safer? Give more bobbies on the beat? No and no again - all the talk was about 'strategic strength' against terrorism. At what cost? Staart-up costs were estimated at £100million across the UK.

That £100m could easily have beefed up anti-terrorism defences across the UK.

Of course, to people in the Department of Health, Dr Reid's 'shake, rattle and roll' stance is nothing new. I remember meeting Dr Reid when he was still at the DoH. He was touring a £100m hospital that was being built by a Trust which was £5m in debt. Its chief executive had been off sick for a year. Those covering for him did not have the authority to make the changes to sort out the overspend - at the time, it was quite high.

I get the impression your Blairs, Clarkes and Blunketts would happily have talked about how wonderful the new hospital would be - indeed it is - but brushed other problems under the carpet.

Not Dr Reid. He said publcily it had to be sorted out. Within days, a rather shellshocked Trust had acted. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.

Either way, it showed to me that by sticking his nose in, refusing to be played for a mug, and being honest with the public, Dr Reid gets results.

I hope he doesn't stop at the Home Office. I also hope Gordon Brown is looking over his shoulder.

Push off, Prezza

There was a time when John Prescott was quite endearing - words and phrases like 'numpty', 'heart in the right place' and 'bit of a buffoon' sprung to mind.

This was based largely on the fact that he seemed to have survived the tornado that was, and perhaps still is, New Labour. A bastion of the old left menacing through the Whitehall corridors as D:Ream's 'Things Can Only Get Better' echoed following electoral success in 1997.

My Dad saw the TV news when he punched someone in the run up to the 2001 general elections, and said 'good on him.'

My Mum would be sympathetic when people ripped into another bumbling display at the dispatch box, claiming 'Well, at least he's stuck to what he believed in.'

Of course, the last few months have shown that Prescott has done nothing of the sort - and the fact he is still clinging on not only infuriates me, but offends me too.

First of all there was his fling with a certain Miss Temple. Fair enough, he put his hands up to it straight away - or at least once he realised it was going to come out, whether he liked it or not.

Then we started to see the real Prescott, in my opinion. Not the class warrior people often described him as, but the desperate clinger-on to the trappings of power which he loved so much.

The nickname 'Two Jags' is used in jest, but it shows what Prescott really is. He's no more a bastion of the Left than I am a signed-up member of the Cristiano Ronaldo fan club.

When his departmental responsibilities went by the wayside, he somehow kept the perks of the job, such as Dorneywood. For what exactly? Playing croquet on an away day! An away-day to discuss what? What does he do now?

Then came the ultimate proof that Prescott was no more a class warrior than Ken Livingstone a lover of 4x4 vehicles. The whole debacle with Philip Anschutz, the US tycoon who wants Britain's first super casino, proves that.

Spending time holidaying with a man who is banking on laws being changed to deliver his plans? Playing cowboy and receiving expensive presents? And then Prescott has the nerve to say he has no influence over what will happen because it's not his department!

He's the deputy prime minister! If he doesn't wield some sort of influence in Government, then what is he there for? And did Mr Anschutz realise Prescott had no such power on this one? Are we really supposed to believe that he just did it so they could discuss the old slave trade?

Prescott seems to assume that people at large are thick. Either that or he no longer thinks they matter. He's the one in office, he's the one who will decide if he has done anything wrong.

He is behaving in a manner which suggests he may well have once been a socialist fighting the class war, but has been dazzled by power, and like a kid in a sweetshop, keeps seeing things, grabbing them, and shouting 'mine, all mine.'

Be it secretaries, freebies, or official perks.

So why is he still there? Charles Clarke did make some mistakes at the Home Office, but a lot of it was largely because he didn't know everything that was going on in a department facing the largest number of new pressures seen anywhere.

What happened to him? He got the boot. Why didn't John Prescott get the boot when his regional assemblies plan for the North collapsed in such emphatic fashion? Surely that was a failing too?

But no, Prescott, in the eyes of the great, good and greedy in the Labour Party has a vital role to play in keeping New Labour in power, as it is seen he acts as a conductor for the old left in the party.

Can you imagine a CEO of a major corporation employing a trade unionist as his right-hand man to keep the workers on board?

Perhaps it worked at first, but with Prescott it only works for as long as the image he projects of himself remains in place.

Recent weeks have shown the mask has slipped. He's an embarrassment to the country. Stick his name in Google News and watch the news sites around the world delivering their opinions on him.

Are we really supposed to believe that the old Labourites who've 'tolerated' New Labour while still clinging to their left-wing views still believe they have a friend at the top in Prescott?

Was it ever true in the first place? Would Everton fans allow a merger with Liverpool so they could become the new Manchester United - but only as long as they a bluenose as assistant manager?

Of course not. And if the Westminister rumour mill is accurate, most knew what Prescott was about long before the last rockers. Shame on them.

If he had a purpose to serve in the first place, he'd have served it by now. But he didn't, doesn't and won't again.

Time to go John, time to go.