09/07/05 - 12:06 PM BST

Sadly, I think you're right. Despite the fact that ID cards would have done nothing to stop Thursday's attack, just as they did nothing in Madrid, still the government will introduce them.

The really annoying thing is that opposition was starting to build up to them. Blair & Co had gone through nearly half a dozen excuses for their cards, from terrorism to benefit fraud, and the public had finally realised that the wretched things were a solution waiting for a problem.

Now, the reactionary side of Fleet Street will say we need them to stop it ever happening again. The opportunism of Blair & Co is easily matched by the opportunism of the Daily Mail and The Sun. They feed off each other all the time, but it'll be a grosser sight than ever now.

09/07/05 - 6:38 PM BST

You're spot on about The Sun and The Daily Mail. As soon as I heard what had happened in London I put the radio on, only to confronted with the Sun's political editor moaning about the French for not sending any troops to Iraq as if that would have prevented anything happening in London. He then went on, sounding very smug about how I-D cards will almost certainly be introduced. Most worrying of all this was only about twenty or thirty minutes after the news broke, I dread to think how their agendas will harden over the coming months.

09/07/05 - 7:35 PM BST

Whenever someone asks the question, 'who's the most powerful man in Britain?', the correct answer is not Tone, but Trevor Kavanagh, the man of which you speak. Big Trev can, if enough pressure is applied, almost single-handedly change the course of public policy, even if only a little.

Sadly, the problem is compounded by the fact that the New Labour leadership seem to believe that The Sun speaks for pretty much every ordinary working person in Britain, and follow their advice, believing it to be electorally sound.

If I remember rightly, his power stretched far enough that he got a copy of the Hutton Report before Downing Street did. That, to me, is deeply scary.

09/07/05 - 9:58 PM BST

For a paper that's so influential I meet surprisingly few people who admit to reading it or take anything it says particularly seriously. Could it be that King Blair and co have mistaken circulation figures for real influence?

10/07/05 - 12:21 AM BST

There's a special way to read The Sun - all you have to do is pretend to have a copy in your hand, and do the actions required as you say the following very quickly:

'Front page page three back page bin.'

You're right, very few people will admit to reading it. The only person I know who does is my best friend, and she reads the 'News Of The World' too. I don't understand it - she's really clever, yet she reads those tossrags. I think she likes the soap columns.

I wouldn't mind if they had a little influence there. It's just when they try to exercise their little grey cells on issues that matter that it all starts to go wrong.