Appearances, aspergers and adoption

Today, our disgraced ex-Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, gave her first media interview since unceremoniously losing her seat in the election. After revealing that like a lot of other people in this country, she's looking for a job, and 'holding her hands up' on the issue of the claim she 'mistakenly' made for her husband's porno movies, she segued seamlessly into talking about Theresa May, our shiny new Home Secretary. Jacqui publicly sympathised with Theresa about the 'style police' who seem obsessed more with clothes, shoes and hairstyle than they are interested in substance and Home Secretarial capabilities. Ms Smith thinks they should all get over themselves and concentrate on what's really important. Mmm, we'd all like a friend like Jacqui wouldn't we? Well, who's she to decide what's important in a job or not? For me, appearance is everything, crucial in fact. Far from putting a stop to it, it must continue unabated and be equally applied to the men. Is it my imagination or is Nick Clegg's goldy-yellow tie getting a bit grubby? Perhaps he models himself on Erik Satie, the French composer and pianist who owned ten identical suits, shirts and ties? And why are they all completely plain? Has our Nick been taking lessons from Obama's stylist or is he fixated on out-plaining Dave in the tie stakes? As for Vince Cable, isn't it about time he shaved those stickie-out hairs on the top of his head and whilst he's at it, his eyebrows and nostril hair could do with a trim and brush up. Ken Clark's going to have to shed the Hush Puppies this time around whilst George Osborne could badly do with a San Tropez spray tan - I've never seen anyone that white and still alive. As for Eric Pickles and Lord Strathclyde, we know they ate all the cookies in the cookie jar. Get those boys a good dietician - and fast.

I'm glad that this government is re-considering the Gary McKinnon case. He was the guy who hacked into the Pentagon systems and stands accused of committing the biggest military computer hack of all time. The Americans want him and, if tried and found guilty there, he faces up to sixty years in the slammer. This is patently absurd. Forget that he suffers from Aspergers, pay no heed that fear of ending up in the American penal system poses the very real risk that he'd kill himself - if the guy is clever and resourceful enough to repeatedly hack into the Pentagon's system, he shouldn't be facing prison, someone should give him a job. All he needs is a bit of direction along the lines of 'Gary, forget about looking for UFO's luv, we all know they don't exist. How about trying to track down some terrorists? That'd be so much more useful.' Just think, with his computer capabilities, what couldn't he do for to MI5, the CIA or Mossad? The authorities really are missing a trick here.

Finally, my sister published an article on the US website, www.salon.com, today. Salon (according to their own website) is 'the award-winning online news and entertainment Web site, combining original investigative stories, breaking news, provocative personal essays and highly respected criticism along with popular staff-written blogs about politics, technology and culture', it's worth a look. My sister's article was a review of Rodrigo Garcia's new film, Mother and Child (yet to open on these shores), a film exploring 'grief' using adoption as it's wrapper. Actually, my sister wrote her piece from her own perspective of the adoption process, something with which she is familiar having adopted her daughter three years ago. I know I'm biased but her article was excellent. Some of the huge on-site response the article generated has been breathtakingly hostile with people out there willing to pillory my sister from a position of total ignorance. It really is quite shocking what these contributors are prepared to say and write under a cloak of anonymity. One of the worst suggested that people who adopt children do it because they're either too vain or too lazy to have children themselves. Pur-leese! To make a comment on the site, you have to sign up and other readers then have access to all of your past comments on other articles. Suffice it to say, some of the commentators have three, four or five hundred previous postings. What can I say? They really should get out more.