ON the cycle ride home after interviewing Geoff Hoon, it occurred to me why governments make so many mistakes.

And my realisation also explained why this particular Government is, to borrow Cherie's image, dropping balls all over the place, from hospital wards to wars, from public sector pay to prisons.

The problem can be reduced to a simple formula: the greater your power over ordinary people's lives, the less ordinary your own life becomes.

Thus the impotent backbench MP who devotes his time to the interests of his constituents usually retains some grasp of reality; and your Cabinet minister is crowned king of Cloud Cuckoo Land, London SW1.

As I pedalled through suburbia, Mr Hoon was probably being whisked to his next Very Important Meeting, attended by a scale of fuss that would make Michael Jackson blush (if that's physiologically possible).

What a cavalcade. Police cars, marked and unmarked; dozens of Special Branch types in X-Files overcoats; sniffer dogs and their handlers.

Walmgate was swarming with bobbies: all the drug-users must have thought they were on a really bad trip.

We can only assume all this was made necessary by a specific threat to the Defence Secretary. He has been to the region before without such ostentatious security. Needless to say, Mr Hoon bore the burden of his own private army as if he were born to it.

The real eye-opener was the number of people he brought with him to the interview. It was standing room only. Alongside Mr Hoon and Hugh Bayley, there were 13 others in the party.

Goodness knows who they all were. We can hazard a guess at media adviser, political adviser and bodyguard (poised to interject himself if I lunged at the minister with my retractable pencil). But what about the rest? Colour coordinator? Feng shui specialist? Personal chef?

All we can know for sure is that they will live in or around London and earn considerably more than, say, a firefighter or Gulf-bound soldier.

This sort of film star treatment insulates Cabinet ministers from the outside world. You travel via chauffeur-driven car or first class plane cabin. Your team is always on hand to do your bidding, laugh at your jokes and nod vigorously when you speak.

But that leaves Cabinet ministers without an idea of what it might mean to wait for an unreliable bus in the rain. Or to make ends meet on a care assistant's salary. Or to wait for months for hospital treatment. Or to live in fear of burglars.

Instead they rely on their entourage of highly-paid advisers to tell them what real life is like. That's how they know firefighters are shirkers, people don't want burglars to go to jail, rappers are responsible for all gun crime and a pint of milk costs 11p.

So mistake follows blunder follows cock-up and transport, schools and hospitals get no better. This Government is particularly adept at making a hash of things for two reasons.

It has massively increased the number of its advisers, ensuring ministers are ever more isolated from normality. And that has led to government by initiative: a new one weekly for schools, courts, hospitals and councils, making it impossible for those with a real job to do it properly.

The ministerial bubble is particularly opaque when it comes to national security. Briefed daily by the military, who have a vested interest in maximising any terror threat, Mr Hoon and Tony Blair have become the merchants of fear.

There are people ready to do us harm, as the ricin discovery reaffirms. There always have been. It's time our leaders stopped scaremongering and regained a sense of perspective.

Perhaps if ministers went on a bike ride it might make them gain a little perspective. It worked for me.

Updated: 12:15 Wednesday, January 08, 2003