Vernon Coaker - what a travesty!

Vernon Coaker is a typical New Labour apparatchik. Straight out of George Orwell's 1984. Why is it that this regime has so many creepy characters in it? This morning Coaker was on the Today Programme sparring with John Humphrys. Coaker thinks that people aquitted of a crime need to have their DNA on a database so that they can be monitored. Basically he was implying that once nicked, a person is deemed to be a serial offender by virtue of natural inclination. Says a lot, doesn't it?

In Vernon Coaker's warped world, a person arrested for a crime is to be seen as evermore a "criminal". The criminal justice system may say you're innocent, but Coaker says your guilty. Of thought crimes. The possibility of thinking of doing a crime. Come on, Coaker, get real. You just want a controlled state run by control freaks. Admit it!

On Sky News this morning the chirpy James Whale was parroting the "I've got nothing to hide" routine. OK, if that's so, give your DNA to the police. Just in case, you never know. The whole thing is pathetic. This is not about fighting crime, but about maintaining a civilised society where people are deemed innocent until proved guilty. It's all well and good saying that you've nothing to hide, but just think. Here's an example. James Whale goes to a dinner party. Great merriment is had by one and all. Next day one of the guests says she's been raped by another fellow guest. James gets a knock on his door from the police. Of course, he's entirely innocent, but it's a bit close for comfort. He's asked to give his DNA as a matter of course. No problems, he's got nothing to hide. The case eventually comes to court and the accused is found not guilty. The acquiitted man's DNA still floats around the system, as does James Whale's. A year later, Whale gets a knock on the door from the police. His DNA has been found at a house where somebody got assaulted. He thinks "what?" but can't think how that could be. It all proves to be a timewasting problem. What happened was that a beer glass Whale drank from at an office party was taken back to the house of the accused for washing but it never happened. My point for James Whale is that glib remarks like "I've got nothing to hide" are not so easy to say when caught up in a DNA-driven investigation.

Thankfully, after a European court ruling, DNA profiles of up to 850,000 innocent people held on an official database will be removed. These are all people presumably with "nothing to hide".

Seeing as this government is hiding pretty much everything they can, from the truth about the Iraq invasion to the number of illegal immgrants, it is a grievous pity that DNA cannot be used on them to check the truthfulness of their words!

27 years banged up for nowt!

DNA is a very fine thing. It can more or less prove with certainty that bodily fluids found somewhere can be matched with the person who left them there. It can also prove that there is no match. So for those people in jail for something they didn't do it must be a godsend. However, for Sean Hodgson, who is 57, it has come a bit late. He's been 27 years in jail because he confessed to a murder. His solicitor says he was a pathological liar at the time. Not a good thing to be in a police station.

Hodgson's case has now been sent to appeal over claims tests on semen found at the scene prove it was not his DNA. That's probably all it will prove for the moment. Of course, DNA has it's timebomb technique. The real killer will be hoping, assuming he's still alive, that his DNA won't show up. All a matter of time. Which is exactly what Mr.Hodgson has been spending.

He is only a year or so younger than me. What was I doing 27 years ago? Wow! The Falklands War was just about to start. Channel 4 too. He will need some adjusting to live in the credit crunching world. Julian Young, his lawyer, says, "He is anxious because he is going to be facing the outside world for the first time in a large number of years. He will have to make a life and reorganise his life for the future". I'd say he's anxious.

I hope the various agencies are preparing to help him. After all, that length of time will not have helped him to come to terms with the prospects of living in a society which is dealing with an imploding economy. Getting a job will be hard. Just surviving will be a challenge. He will need his wits about him. It's sod's law when it comes to proving your innocence and he's had the misfortune to be let out when all this is going on.

Now there will be one place going free in the prison system. There's a whole gaggle of corporate miscreants who should be offered the place, but I doubt that will happen. It must be the worst nightmare to be in jail for something you didn't do. These miscarriages of justice carry on. I only hope that the criminal justice system is learning from it all.