h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It has been another busy week in the Holme Valley, desperately trying to catch up with a year that is already sprinting away out of our grasp.

Well, I would like to say that the cats and dogs have been frolicking in the spring sunshine this week, but if I did, I would be telling a big fat porky. Like me they have been cuddling up to each other and sharing their body-warmth, their mutual dislike of cold, dank weather overcoming their feeble grasp on any remaining "territories" as Dusty continues to be welded to our duvet and Nigel continues to sleep in Colin's/the ladycats' house. It's such a shame that, come the warmer weather, Kitty and Dusty will leg it to their summer home on top of Mrs Rocky's shed, and all this temperature-enforced integration will be forgotten! Baggis has suddenly started eating his KD Laing food again, just in time, as he's due back at the vet's next week.

Also this week, Freddie has been staying, for reasons which will become clear later, and Tia has also been spending a few hours each day in the "relative" warmth of our kitchen, where I have taught her to a) sit and b) give paw, with the aid of a jar of dog treats and continually saying "high fives" over and over again in a silly "bluebottle" voice. If only we could persuade Tiggy, Freddie, Tia, Dusty, Nigel, Russell and Kitty to all invade the duvet at once, we would never need to buy hot water bottles, and the central heating bill would be zero. Sadly, however, they prefer to do it in shifts, which hardly ever overlap.

Elections have been on my mind this week, both those in Iraq and our own forthcoming ones. I have this vision of Langland's "field full of folk" , viewed from above, on the Malvern Hills, milling about, with the soon-to-be-spring sunshine dappling them, as they go about the ancient English traditions of Witan and Moot, settling disputes in the courts by means of a jury of their peers, as they have done for centuries past.

We have to be wary, of course, when we speak like this, of the "merrying of England" - the sentimentalisation of the past that has given us such horrors as "travellers' fayre" and the fiction that is the "ploughman's lunch". The only "real" ploughman I know, James Hewison, always had ham sandwiches. Never a pickled onion in sight. So be warned.

Last week I wrote about "winning by losing" - about how just at the point where it seems that Spring will never come, when the snowdrops themselves are buried by new drifts, that is the point where "the snows they melt the soonest, when the wind begins to sing." About how the willow is the strongest tree because it can bend.

The opposite to winning by losing is of course, losing by winning, which we have seen a classic example of this week, in the attempt by the government to lock us all up if we disagree with anything they are doing.

They would never get it past Judge John Deed, if he were but real. Deb and I found ourselves watching this tosh on Thursday, and Martin Shaw was hamming it up perfectly, as the scarlet-clad judge, complete with sub-plot love interest. Debbie suddenly turned to me and asked what had happened to his other girlfriend, the one who was a lecturer at Cambridge?

Me: "Same actor, different programme. That was when he was being Adam Dalgliesh in PD James."

Somehow, she had conflated the two without wondering how M. S. became ennobled to the bench one week from being a mere Metropolitan Police commander the week before. Oh well. There are those who think Inspector Morse was set in Cambridge. Deb also suffers from "wrong trolley syndrome" in Sainsburys, and has been known to return from a foray, glance down into the nearest trolley (not ours) and say "What have you bought all that crap for?"

Me: "That's not our crap darling - it is crap which belongs to this gentleman"

But her confusion is as nothing compared to that of those set above us:

Charles Clarke is worried, to the extent of suggesting "house arrest for all" at the whim of the government, that, if he lets the Belmarsh detainees out into the world at large, unmonitored and unsupervised, they might start trying to subvert the very fabric of our society and civilization. But why would they bother? Our own leaders are already doing the job for them, so much more effectively, and with such gusto, that if I were a member of Al-Qaida, I might consider applying for an allotment, or taking up a hobby.

Clearly, from the government's actions in deciding to turn Britain into a society of fear, demonising imaginary threats to bulldoze through profoundly anti-libertarian legislation, abandoning the basic principles of English Law that have stood since Magna Carta, in favour of clandestine denunciation by the security services and evidence that cannot be admitted in court, they have shown their true colours, and not for the first time. Ugly colours, at that, but I suppose to be expected in an election year with opponents already playing the race card.

Clarke argues that these people are terrorists, or at least potential terrorists. Fine, if they are, arrest them, put them on trial, and if they are found guilty, bang them up and throw away the key. It's not me who has the problem with the due process of justice, it's the government!

He says that he has a responsibility to the British people to safeguard life and limb, and this is true: but it has been done effectively with the existing powers (themselves draconian in nature) since September 11, without the need to turn Britain into an armed camp, a sort of floating version of the "Green Zone". You might as well put barbed wire all round the coast and machine gun towers and CCTV cameras every thirty yards and have done with it. Only then will the freedom for which our fathers fought in 1940 be safe.

Just for once, I would like to see a politician with the courage to stand up, if the worst happened, and a terrorist outrage caused loss of life in this country, and say "Look, we regret what happened, we tried everything we could to stop these people within the law. The only way we could have done more would have been to abandon the rule of law and turn the whole country into a dictatorship. We are very sorry for the loss of life but these people died upholding the principles of law and justice, without which we are just as bad as the terrorists."

The arguments usually advanced in favour of this type of legislation are similar to those propounded by advocates of identity cards. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. It's only the radical Muslims who will be targeted like this, at least until they get round to those who are friends of radical Muslims, then those who just know the friends of radical Muslims, of and while we're at it, animal rights protestors, and what about train spotters, Christians, and anyone who looks at Tony Blair a bit funny ...

This rather rose-tinted view of how governments and totalitarian regimes operate, encroaching little by little on the liberties of their citizens based on a set of values defined purely by the will of autocrats to stay in power, was probably also being aired in Germany in the early 1930s, when people stood by and let Hitler ride to power on a broad highway of paranoia and hatred. This week especially, we should remember where that particular road ended, in the railway sidings at Auschwitz.

I feel pretty strongly about this, because this week, my little nephew Adam was born, and for the second time in seven months, I am an uncle. There is nothing more calculated to make you feel old. Little Adam has spent most of his first week of existence sleeping and trying to gain strength, having been born a bit weedy and premature (when I rang Deb up on her mobile for more news she said "I dunno, it weighed five ounces or something - look, is this important? I am just paying for something in Homebase!")

It was actually 5lb 14 oz, but even so, he's a pathetic little scrap at the moment. As with Katie Elizabeth before him, I can't help but wonder what sort of world he will grow to see. If it's a world where we all have to live in a self imposed prison camp just to be "free" then perhaps we have got it inside out, and we need to think again. And quickly, before it's too late.

On the morning that Adam was born, for some reason, I changed the radio station in the car to Radio 2, because I was feeling beaten in by the constant concentration on heavy world issues on Radio 4, my preferred early morning listening on the drive across to the warehouse. I dropped into the middle of Gilbert O Sullivan (remember him?) singing "Nothing Rhymed"

" When I'm drinking my Bonaparte Shandy

Eating more than enough apple pies

Will I glance at my screen and see real human beings

Starve to death - right in front of my eyes "

As I said for Katie, so I will say for Adam, I really hope that we create a world for these kids where they will never have to see that. This week at Davos, the Swiss ski resort rather scarily named after the leader of the Daleks, the people who can prevent it have all or actually make it happen, been gathered together in one room. We know who they are, and we should "fight and fight and fight again", to quote Hugh Gaitskill, to make sure our voice is heard, and poverty is driven from the earth.

"Woe unto you Pharisees, for you tithe mint and rue and every herb". I guess Jesus may just have been in favour of cancelling their debt and lifting the trade barriers.

Of course the Nazi's solution to this type of problem is well known. Had I been unfortunate enough to live at the wrong time, in the wrong place, I might have ended up wearing the yellow star, just for having a bad leg. For Adam, and for all the kids born this week, I can really do no better than re-iterate the words of Si Kahn

"It's not just what you're born with

It's what you choose to bear

It's not how big your share is

It's how much you can share

And it's not the fights you dreamed of

But those you really fought

It's not just what you're given,

It's what you do with what you've got."

What's the use of two strong legs, Adam, if you only run away. You have to ask yourself, what would Jesus do? He'd be leading the anti-internment marches, tending to the asylum-seekers, and turning the money-lenders out of the temple. That's my view, anyway. I look forward to teaching you more about this Adam, as well as the fielding positions at cricket, and how to bowl a googly.

A wise man once said - these are the days of miracles and wonders, Adam, this is a long distance call. The way the camera follows us in slow mo, the way we look to us all. The way we look to a distant constellation, that's dying in the corner of the sky: these are the days of miracles and wonders and don't cry, Adam, don't cry …