It was right today that Levi Bellfield was sentenced to spend the rest of his days in prison, with no prospect of parole.  He is an evil killer who, far from showing remorse, has shown a degree of cold blooded callousness that must be punished.

What was wrong, however, was that he was able to chose not to attend court to hear his sentence handed down to him in person.  Having forced the families of his two victims to sit through weeks of evidence and I understand, showing them nothing but contempt throughout the trial, he should have been forced to attend the court.  To allow him to stay away was yet another slap in the face for the families who needed to see him sentenced today.

We must not lose sight of the bigger picture - an evil killer has been put behind bars - but I am not sure that we should be giving convicted criminals the right to elect to stay away from their own sentencing.

Sir Ralph Howell, one of my Conservative predecessors in North Norfolk will have his funeral tomorrow, having recently passed away. Sir Ralph was a towering figure in Norfolk politics, having won North Norfolk from Labour and then holding it for twenty-seven years until his retirement in 1997.

I did not know Sir Ralph as long as many of my colleagues, but I had met him several times since becoming the parliamentary spokesman and he was always willing to share his experience and advice with me. I was equally willing to receive it.

Regrettably I cannot attend the funeral tomorrow, but the former Association Chairman, Alan Duncan, will be representing me.

Sir Ralph was a great man who will be remembered by many but, for tonight, my thoughts and prayers are with his friends and family.

The breaking news over at Sky is that Alistair Darling has announced that he will nationalise Northern Rock rather than allow it to be sold to either of the two bidders.

The consequences of this development in the Government created fiasco that the future of the Northern Rock has become since last summer are difficult to calculate. For a start there is the damage to the reputation of the UK banking industry that this whole debacle has caused. Many people struggle to feel sympathy for our banks when we see record profits and bonuses, but we must not forget that the banking sector makes up a large chunk of all of our pension funds and is also one of our biggest exports.

The most significant consequence is, however, the cost to the UK taxpayer (and economy). £50bn at already at risk and that is before the bank is nationalised. Anyone who is reassured by the Chancellor's comments about the profitability and liquidity of the bank should think back to the 1970s when Labour last embarked on the nationalisation of British industry. None of the nationalised industries at that time were renowned for the receipts that they generated for the Treasury and it was only once they were de-nationalised (as privatisation was know at that time) that they became the hugely successful businesses that the likes of BT and BA are today.

The simple fact is that the Treasury backed world in which a nationalised company operates takes away the incentive to make a profit. At the same time, the Government will struggle to resist the temptation to meddle in the bank's affairs - how many repossessions will Gordon Brown allow an arm of his own Government to be responsible for before he steps in to stop the political damage, for example?

The fiasco has a long way to run yet and we will all suffer in the end.

I do wonder whether Mr Darling has the same view of city bonuses today as he did yesterday - given that he has just become the newest fat cat with his own bank - albeit one that is worth £5bn less than when he started to meddle with it? If Gordon Brown has any sense of decency, Mr Darling will not be in his job for long enough to get a bonus anyway.

So, Mr Darling thinks the public is concerned about the level of city executives bonuses. Apparently he also thinks they need to think about whether they deserve the level of bonuses that they are paying themselves. Well maybe people are concerned, but at the end of the day those bonuses are paid out of the funds of companies and so there is no direct impact on us (unless you are a shareholder, although in that case you will also have benefited from the profits the company has made).

I do, however, resent the fact that the Chancellor is taking a salary of about £150,000 a year from taxpayers in order to manage the British economy. He has been in the job since last summer and in that time we have seen a collapse in the housing market, a major credit crunch and the collapse of the Northern Rock. Now some may argue that he inherited these problems from his successor in which case please re-read the first two sentences of this paragraph and replace the word Chancellor with Prime Minister.

At least those city executives that the Chancellor is complaining about are running profitable companies. He has destroyed a previously profitable company and has cost the Treasury more than the disasters of Black Wednesday and Gordon Brown's decision to sell half our gold reserves at precisely the wrong time.

Darling may be getting away with it now, but if the Northern Rock is ultimately nationalised he may find himself looking for some city bonuses to supplement his income as a backbench Member of Parliament.  

It is absolutely clear that the Chinese role in the humanitarian disasters of Darfur is a disgrace and I have some sympathy for those who are calling for the Olympics being staged in Beijing this summer should be boycotted. The fact is, however, that it is simply hypocrisy to expect our sportsmen and women to give up the opportunity to participate in the Olympics when we continue to import more and more from China.

 I was dissapointed when China was given the games but they were and if we now want to boycott we should boycott all aspects of the Chinese regime.

Fans of the West Wing will need no explanation of what I mean by the heading - momentum is the key buzz word of any US Presidential Primary race and Obama certainly seems to have that having now beaten Clinton in every single one of the seven democratic primaries since Super Tuesday. But there is still a long way to go. To guarantee victory he needs 2,025 delegates and so far he only has 1,103. Whilst Clinton is falling behind with just 968 there is still plenty for her to play for. Obama has the big mo (and he also has the cash) but it was only a week or so ago that Clinton came out on top in Super Tuesday and the mo, if not the big mo was with her.

At the same time, the big mo is very definitely with John McCain on the Republican side. Surely it is now only a matter of time before Huckabee throws in the towel and hands the nomination to McCain?