Alan Johnson's Up and Running

When I came up with the idea of Fantasy Government I thought Alan Johnson was bound to figure as a contender for being one of the top scorers.

Well he's been disappointingly quiet so far, but he's got off the mark now, with the news that the National Treatment Agency (NTA) is giving drugs as rewards to heroin and cocaine addicts who produce clean urine samples. This scheme costs £500m of our money every year, and even the NTA now admits that the practice is wrong.

To be fair even the government understand that there's no point in trying to spin their way out of this one. Johnson's sidekick Dawn Primarolo said on the radio this morning "It should not happen that prescription drugs and doses are used, or suggested that they should be used, as either incentives or withheld as sanctions as part of a treatment programme." To that Prescot-esque gibberish she added that what was happening was "unacceptable" and "unethical". Just a standard ministry cock-up, then.

Find out more about how to play Fantasy Government here, pick your own Cabinet team from the list here, and see of Cock Ups worthy of awards here.