The Sketch: Good news for conspiracy theorists! Big Brother is a shambling defective

For a moment in Question Time there were questions being asked. We all enjoyed that, but then we've a childish pleasure in novelty. Michael Howard became barristerial and asked his ostentatiously forensic questions about whether or not the Home Secretary had seen the letter that the police had sent "Hopeless" Joan Ryan. It was a proper question which Nick Clegg and David Davis picked up. Are all criminal records now entered in the national computer? Do Britons who commit crimes abroad have their records sent back here? Had the police asked for more resources, in fact?

This is about the 27,500 criminal records that have been sitting around for the best part of a year. Despite police nudging, no one put them into the shiny new computer system.

It's quite encouraging for us political paranoids. The Big Brother society will never work because the brother in question is so defective. They just won't be able to process all the data they capture. Even the legitimate stuff is beyond them. Mind you, it won't have to work to be a very depressing civic experience. Watching it not work will only be enjoyable for us Told-You-So types.

So, there were questions, but the sort of answers we now expect. A Tory asked about the anti-terror strategy generated in the 18 months since 7/7. He recalled the words of the Government's own self-analysis (no leadership, no one in charge, no one connected to the real world, just concerned with meetings and reports, a shambles, in short). Dr John replied that the situation was "dynamic". He said our response had to be "seamless" and "integrated" and "politically overseen" (by the shambling defective we call "Brother"). He's written a report which he summarised for us as: "We have to improve continually. That's what I told the Prime Minister." Is that the work of 18 months, you ask?

It's a battle for hearts and minds, he said, just to depress us further. A battle of values. Anyone who defends our values is an ally in this struggle. Oh really? What values are those again? Vast, interlocking, national databases filled with bank, tax, sex and health details? What about those of us Britons who don't share Labour values? Dr John constructs his position to suggest that you can't be anti-terror without being pro-Labour. He hasn't grasped the idea that his argument excludes quite a substantial proportion - maybe even a majority - of Muslims.

But Dr John can get more confused than a PhD in history should. This struggle, we were told in one breath, would last a generation. John Redwood asked why? Why not less? Why not longer? Dr John doubled his estimate on the spot. It's going to last as long as the Cold War. Two generations. What a defeatist! Perhaps he just means longer than he'll be at the Home Office.

sketch@simoncarr.co.uk

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