No fun is it, Mr Prescott?

This is the same Prescott (pictured) who insists that travellers should be left alone when they set up camp illegally, paying not a penny in council tax, having their mess cleared up courtesy of the taxpayers, and causing the value of homes in the vicinity to plummet.

Will the owners of those homes have to suffer the additional indignity of higher council tax because from their window, above the roofs of the travellers' caravans, Transit vans and 4WDs, they can see a patch of woodland or open fields?

It's the same Prescott , too, whose department over-rules countless local-authority planning decisions and allows sprawling estates to be built over existing homeowners' precious views.

And, of course, the same Prescott whose home was targeted by Greenpeace activists who climbed onthe roof to protest at the amount of energy used by all the properties that Two Jags wants to have built on Britain 's green acres.

Mr Toad was away but his wife Pauline told the court she thought the raiders were terrorists and had feared for her life. It was, she said, "terribly intimidating, dreadful . . . It has left me extremely nervous in my own property and it is no way to live, quite frankly."

That's the way that the people who travellers set up home alongside feel. It's the way that countless beleaguered residents on Britain 's troubled estates feel. It's the way pensioners feel as they await the next increase in council tax and wonder whether they'll be able to afford it or should sell up. It's the way respectable people living in crimeriddled inner-city zones feel as they await the next break-in or car-torching and just know that they can't expect any protection from the police.

There are a lot of people in this country who feel extremely nervous in their own property and, yes, it is no way to live. But it's the government of which Prescott is a part which has presided over this slide into a state of anxiety.

Mrs Prescott was plucked, ever so briefly, from her sheltered and privileged world into the real one and found it quite a shock. Maybe she can now convey to her blustering husband the sense of insecurity that so many ordinary people feel as they wonder what's going to happen next to make their neighbourhood a less pleasant place and their lives less comfortable than they should be.

But then again, maybe not.

More PC nonsense gnawing at our lives

Good for Shipley MP Philip Davies, calling on Tony Blair to appoint a minister who would be responsible for eradicating the political correctness which is gnawing away at the entrails of British society. It won't happen, of course, but it's worth making the point.

If you thought tough action wasn't needed, consider the latest bit of PC foolishness to hit the headlines:

the proposal by Waveney District Council in Lowestoft to stop giving grants for Christmas lights in the district's towns and villages for fear of offending people of non-Christian faiths (of which that area, incidentally, has hardly any). A week earlier Lambeth Council decided to refer to Christmas lights as "winter lights" for a similar reason.

I thought we'd got over all this nonsense long ago, after realising that in a country in which Muslims openly celebrate Eid and Hindus celebrate Diwali, and no-one takes any offence, those who want to mark the mixture of Christian and pagan festival that is Christmas should be able to do so without feeling guilty about it.

Unfortunately the woolly-liberal, largely-white minds who make up the PC thought police fail to understand that sort of thing.

A gift of blood is a gift of life

Earlier this week I gave blood, my 26th such donation over the years. The campaign run by the National Blood Service some time ago suggested that giving blood was a re mark able thing to do. It isn't. It's routine.

You go along, answer a few questions and then have a finger pricked and the drop of blood that oozes out is dripped into a test tube. Whether it sinks or floats tells them whether or not the quality is OK. If it passes the test, you go and lie down. Your blood pressure is checked and then a slender tube is inserted into a vein (it might prick a bit, but that's all).

You lie there for a while chatting to the nurse sitting beside you as the blood flows out, and when the bag is full the nurse withdraws the tube and presses a lint pad over the tiny puncture hole in your arm.

You then lie down and relax for a while longer, keeping your finger pressed on the cotton wool.

Eventually the nurse puts a plaster on the wound, you sit up and have a cup of tea or drink of juice and a biscuit, and then you go on your way.

It's as simple as that. Half an hour and you're done. That tiny amount of your time might help to save someone else's life, or at least give their quality of life a huge boost.

When I give blood nowadays I do it in memory of my younger sister Liz, who two years ago died of cancer at the age of 54. The time arrived when every available type of chemotherapy had been tried. The cancer refused to be boxed into a corner any more.

During her last weeks Liz was largely exhausted - except for the days immediately after a blood transfusion. One day I called to see her and she was ashen and weary and scheduled to receive some blood the next morning.

The following afternoon we all went out to a pub for tea. Liz had been transformed. With three units of new blood inside her, she was cheerful and lively, lipstick and mascara on, full again of the vitality which won her so many friends throughout her life. When I think of her, as I often do, it's mostly as she was on that day.

It didn't last. A few days later the effect had worn off. But during that brief period she enjoyed a renewed quality of life that would have been denied to her if people weren't prepared to spend half an hour of their time doing something which the Blood Service would have us think is re mark able but which really should be something for all of us to simply take in our stride.