They said it wasn't our fault? Must be some mistake!

The Michael Stone report is finally with us. Startlingly, it fails to say that mental health services, having met him, should have cured him of being a bastard with a wave of their magic therapy wand and taken away all his responsibility for not killing people! This seems rather wondrous, given the way this case has been reported over the years. We have bright shiny new personality disorder services in purpose built buildings at Rampton Hospital, thanks to Michael Stone. I wonder how this report - which essentially says that his mental health care was appropriate - will impact on all the service changes that were instituted to make up for his supposed lack of care?

What's not stressed in the BBC report linked to above, but was stated on the radio, is that the report suggests that the criminal justice system needs to be taking more responsibility for managing people like Stone. This is a huge statement; the trend of the last ten years, from this observer's perspective, seems to have been putting more and more pressure on mental health services to bear responsibility for all the behaviour of those who come into contact with them. To say that the criminal justice system is the appropriate agency is the same, surely, as to say that psychopaths must bear the responsibility for their own behaviour.

Speaking of which, I hear that Cherie Blair has been "accidentally" - and deniably - overheard calling Gordon Brown a liar. Whatever happens over the next year, we can be sure that Tony and cohorts will be blaming Gordon and his posse for spoiling it all. This is a crying shame, because it is another reason why Blair will never face up to the horrific disaster that his foreign policy has been.