WE have a problem Harwell.' It may not have the same grave ring about it as Houston, but that could be a scenario if the latest off-the-wall idea to emerge from our government is anything to go by.

Harwell is an unassuming little village about 30 miles from High Wycombe as the Red Kite flies. It has 2,400 residents and two pubs, the White Hart and The Crispin.

However, this Oxfordshire hamlet has been picked out as the proposed international space facility for the UK. Of course there is the little matter of Harwell Airfield which eventually became the home of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment and is currently home to a number of scientific organisations.

Now it has been identified by the Government as a centre for our very own manned space exploration programme. This has all been revealed in a document entitled UK Civil space Strategy: 2008-2012 and Beyond' which smacks of Buzz Lightyear speak.

Of course Britain has always been involved in the outer space stuff with satellites, telecoms developments and space technology, but now somebody somewhere wants us to go further.

The thrust of the report is that we should join the manned space race and the Government's front man, science minister Ian Pearson, says that it wants to make sure the UK does not get left behind.' I'm not quite sure what he's alluding to. Maybe the PM is worried we Brits will miss out on a mass evacuation to Venus or wherever when global warming on our planet gets too hot to handle.

Britain rightly gave up on the idea of manned space missions in 1986 when the then PM, Margaret Thatcher, pulled out of the European Space Agency strategy. This latest report is effectively proposing a U-turn on that stand.

It is calling for us to abandon our opposition to manned space exploration and launch our first person into space by 2012.

No doubt there will be plenty of suggestions as to who that should be, but on a more serious note how as a nation can we really justify pouring millions - possibly even billions - of pounds into this black hole when we're still struggling to find enough money to finance our rocking health, education and policing systems?