Baby P and a mother who's the new Myra

Whatever the reason for unmasking the killers of Baby Peter, at least one thing is now absolutely clear. Tracey Connelly must not be allowed to become a mother ever again.

Steven Barker and Jason Owen, the brothers who tortured Connelly's small son and took pleasure in his agony, will remain in jail for as long as there are people still left in this country who remember the details of Peter's brief life. No Home Secretary will dare let them out.

Jason Owen, Tracey Connelly, Stephen Barker

Caged: Jason Owen, Tracey Connelly and Steven Barker

The Barkers were so pointlessly cruel they make the Krays look like Bill and Ben. The public vitriol that the judge referred to at their trial is the best guarantee that these psychos will never be at large again to rape children or beat up grandmothers (as, unbelievably, they did to their own).

Tracey Connelly is different. In theory, Peter's mother, who has had four other children taken away, could be free in just three years' time. Any decent person must recoil at the injustice of that idea.

In the pantheon of female monsters, Connelly deserves to take a place at Myra Hindley's knee.

Like the Moors murderess, Connelly aided and abetted a brute she was sexually in thrall to. She put her own pleasure before her baby's pain.

And with what cunning did she smear chocolate onto the sores and bruises on Peter's face so that a dozy social worker would not guess the child was being battered by his mother's lover.

While Barker was 'entertaining himself' by putting Peter on a stool and spinning it round until he flew off and hurt himself, where was the woman that bewildered little boy looked to for protection?

She was watching pornography. Or boasting in an internet chat room that she was 'madly in love with the most amazing guy'. That would be the same amazing guy who allowed his rottweiler to bite Peter on the head. The teethmarks were clearly visible on the dead child.

baby p

Tragic: Baby P had a brief and painful life

Horrible, isn't it? It's the kind of detail that burrows into your subconscious and cries out in bad dreams.

Yet, like Myra Hindley, Connelly doesn't seem capable of grasping the horror of her actions. Yes, she has cried since being arrested. But only tears of self-pity.

You know, I thought I had reached the point where Baby Peter's story had left me so paralysed with misery that I simply couldn't feel another thing about it.

Well, I was wrong. Reading Connelly's recent letter from prison to a friend, I was incensed by the jaunty tone as the 28-year-old discussed her future.

'I tell you when I get out I'm in no rush to get in a relationship with a man again,' she confided. 'But I might have fun playing the field and travelling (one long party!).'

One long party? With her beautiful baby in his grave and four others taken away? There is a terrifying moral abyss here, a stony blankness where maternal feeling should be.

In a way, Connelly is worse than Hindley precisely because she is a mother. Into the world she brought a baby whom she described as 'the coolest person I know' and looked on, indifferent, as he was destroyed.

I'm not surprised there is universal disgust that such a person might get a new identity at taxpayers' expense and enjoy a life far more comfortable than millions of parents who, in difficult circumstances, have taken good care of their kids.

The fatal mistake of Haringey social services was to apply what they called a Rule of Optimism to Tracey Connelly. They believed her when she said she was trying to be a good mum, while the baby's 'sad eyes' told another story.

Damaged goods like Connelly should not be allowed to go on inflicting abuse down the generations.

Over half a million children are referred to child protection services every year, and only 30,000 are taken on as cases.

It's distressing to think that Peter himself would probably have grown up to be a brute. Without a mother's love and smiling encouragement, empathy cannot grow and flourish in a child.

A social worker on Radio Four's Today programme said yesterday that such cases were 'complex' and could not be solved by common sense. Well, it would be worth a try, wouldn't it? Haringey Social Workers In Common Sense Shock!

Why not make poor Peter's legacy a shift in policy towards a Rule of Pessimism? To the swift removal of vulnerable children from people like Connelly.

Tracey Connelly has an indeterminate prison sentence. That means she will be considered for parole only if it is felt she is no longer a risk to young children. In her case, I firmly believe that means when she is too old to have more kids of her own.

And when she can shed tears for anyone except herself.

She's a bone idol!

Victoria Beckham aka Posh seen here leaving the American Idol

Bone idol: Victoria Beckham appeared on American Idol this week

Is Victoria Beckham on a one-woman mission to prove you can be too rich and too thin?

The Poor Demented Twiglet turned up as a guest judge on American Idol looking like such a bag of bones you half expected the BBC's tragedy correspondent, Orla Guerin, to pop up and deliver one of her glum pieces to camera.

'This poor woman has not eaten a square meal for at least nine years. See how her collarbones poke pitifully through her skin. She even lacks the energy to swat away flies or Simon Cowell.'

Unsurprisingly, her debut wasn't a success.

Posh was too 'nice' for the show's panel - she claimed she didn't 'want to shatter dreams'.

Cynics might suggest another motive. Posh is in no position to judge anyone's singing. Trust me.

I once heard Victoria in rehearsal with just a piano accompaniment. She made Geri Halliwell sound like Maria Callas.

Bikini ready? After my hols, I'm burqa ready

According to a Tesco survey, more than one in ten women have felt so nervous about wearing a bikini that they have avoided taking a holiday.

But why do we bother getting Bikini Ready at all? All those weeks of self-denial, gnawing on a cracker the texture of doormat, just so people don't run away screaming when you take off your kaftan. Then, the minute the holiday starts, you mysteriously find yourself eating four meals a day, all with three courses. Or is that just me?

A few Raisin Bran flakes, skimmed milk and a coffee normally do for breakfast at home.

Suddenly, the sun's out, and I'm at the hotel buffet bar confronted by groaning tiers of foodstuffs that were marked with a skull and crossbones on the Bikini Ready Diet. And somehow nine of those items end up on my plate. Even the cheese.

Grilled halloumi for breakfast? So help me God, what's that about?

Then, just as you've got comfy by the pool, it's time for lunch. And what is the topic of conversation over the delicious frittata? 'Where shall we go for dinner?' I always feel bad because I've eaten too much on holiday.

Perhaps it's because no one we know is there to shame us into restraint. Perhaps it's the scientifically unproven theory that the daily calorific intake of a Turkish weightlifter won't have time to convert into fatty saddlebags on your thighs before you get home.

Thank heavens that, on the return journey from Portugal, those nice people on Easyjet only weighed the suitcases. If they'd weighed me, the extra baggage charge would have been the cost of a flight for an eight-year-old child.

After ten days of vacation, I am not so much Bikini Ready as Burqa Ready. Now where did I put those rice cakes?

  • Roll up, all ladies aged 30 for your fertility MoT. Just a quick tinker under the bonnet to check your ovarian reserves and make sure that none of the key pipes is gummed up.

That is what Bill Ledger, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Sheffield University, is proposing. He wants young women to wake up to the importance of age when it comes to deciding the right time to have a baby.

I reckon women of 30 are well aware there's more chance of getting engaged to George Clooney than of reproducing over the age of 36.

And the conundrum of how to afford to keep a roof over a baby's head when taking time off work to give birth during this recession is increasingly likely to get you sacked.

Perhaps the fertility MoT could incorporate a training session where 30-year-old men are taught how to fill her up on demand and not postpone fatherhood until they are old enough to be their own grandad. Just a thought, Professor.

Fifty and fibbing

Amanda Redman

New Tricks: Amanda Redman used the oldest trick in the book

Many happy returns of today to Amanda Redman. Although she came top of Saga's poll for Most Desirable Older Woman, Amanda has given several interviews mentioning her fear of turning 50.

'I certainly haven't booked an appointment for a facelift for my 50th, but perhaps in five years' time I might consider a tweak or two,' the New Tricks star 'confessed'.

Amanda's birth certificate shows she has no need to start worrying about entering her sixth decade. She is 52 today. Oops! How humiliating to be caught out in so public a lie. I fear a red-faced Ms Redman may be spending her birthday behind drawn blinds in her London home.

Amanda, love, come out this minute. Take that black binbag off your peachy face and crack open the champagne.

It's not Amanda who should be embarrassed. It's a TV and film industry which refuses to give the very few parts for 40-year-old women to women in their 40s because they don't look young enough.

It's a BBC which sidelines Arlene Phillips while keeping ancient chaps who can't remember their own punchlines. It's Hollywood, where women who are biologically too old to have children are still scared to play a mother on screen, in case they don't look hot.

While such discrimination persists, women are perfectly entitled to fib about their age.