I was very upset when Myra Hindley died. I had longed for the day when a Labour Home Secretary, ideally Jack Straw, had to let her out of prison due to the Human Rights Act (incidentally, the very fact that she thought she had paid sufficient penalty for her crimes and should be released showed in itself that she hadn't and shouldn't). That, at least, would really bring home to the public the utter stupidity (and profoundly undemocratic, for all that our self selecting MPs care) of handing over the ability to make law to judges.

I was rather reminded of this by the case of Learco Chindamo, who we're told we are not allowed to send back to Italy, where he came from, despite the fact that he stabbed a headteacher to death because it would be a breach of his 'human rights' (a longish drop while attached to a shortish rope might have solved the problem). Again, surely the very fact that he appealed against being deported shows that he too has no respect for the feelings of the family of the man he killed. So what are we to do? Well, when Straw introduced the legislation, he heralded it as a 'step change in the creation of a culture of rights and responsibilities in our society'. So there's our answer - we have the right not to deport killers from the UK, which is therefore Jack Straw's responsibility, so he can just bloody well put Chindamo up at his nice little cottage in Minster Lovell. And if Chindamo isn't quite so reformed as the immigration bureau thinks, well he'll have a handy target for some knife practice.