Good news - ran the sudo command, entered the password but I could still not make the directory, but I could within Finder - this time without a password. Tried the IDLE application again and it now works. 

Thank you once again for your help in resolving this. 

Regards,

Ben

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Ben Read <ben@denmarkfarmbarn.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [issue17864] IDLE won't run
> Date: 29 April 2013 22:12:03 BST
> To: Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
> 
> Thank you for getting me this far - it's funny that Python has been the program to make this problem apparent, but looking closer, there are other issues such as not being able to create a new folder in the user folder without entering username and password.
> 
> I appreciate your help in diagnosing the problem.
> 
> Ben
> 
> 
> On 29 Apr 2013, at 10:37, Ned Deily <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Ned Deily added the comment:
>> 
>> The "ls" shows that, for some reason, your home directory is owned by user "temp", not by user "ben". That's not good.  Try doing this:
>> 
>> sudo chown ben /Users/ben/
>> 
>> But we're way past an IDLE or Python problem here.  This is a basic Unix system administration issue.
>> 
>> ----------
>> 
>> _______________________________________
>> Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
>> <http://bugs.python.org/issue17864>
>> _______________________________________
>