fleet street fox

All animals are equal.

2013-07-31T12:07:00.003+01:00

IF we are not equal before the law, there is no law.

If when accused of crime we are not all investigated the same, the police must be partisan and therefore not a police force at all.

If when sent to trial we are not judged the same, if a sensible defence is dismissed or obvious alibis ignored by a system determined to convict no matter what, the justice system is broken, corrupt, and self-pleasuring.

If our questions are not answered, if solutions are not sought, if the obvious is overlooked even though it might benefit the many purely because it might cost a few, then every rule in society is more of a guideline - and if that's the case, we might as well take to the streets with a knife between our teeth.

So if major companies in an industry employing 30,000 people nationwide are accused of and investigated for listening to people's voicemails almost a decade ago after the police failed to investigate first time around, then all the 102 companies in different industries recently accused of hacking emails, listening to live phone calls and finding out bank balances need to be investigated too.

Not have their names withheld by public servants on the grounds it might affect their commercial concerns. No-one withheld the name of the News of the World or was bothered about the loss of 268 jobs and the most successful part of a business making £86million profit a year.

Their employees also need to be investigated by a designated task force of police officers for several years. They also need to be raided at dawn, watch cops search through their teenaged daughters' knicker drawers, seize the wife's iPad and look under the mattresses of people bedbound with cancer.

They do not merit, as journalists did not merit, anyone worrying about their human rights, pointing out they were innocent until proven guilty or inconveniently noting the paucity of clear evidence did not quite merit the jackbooted fishing trip.

Then again, I'm a journalist. Not only am I bound to think this, I'm also used to being a second-class citizen without the rights or protected reputation of, say, a convicted murderer.

But it's not just hacking and hacks where the law does not treat us all the same.

If you have terminal cancer and in its final stages the pain is so bad you need increasing doses of morphine administered by a doctor or nurse, the drug will cease to have the same effect as time passes and they will give you increasing amounts of it until, one day, you peacefully overdose.

Many thousands of cancer patients have that as a secondary cause on their death certificate, it is entirely fine as far as police and the medical community are concerned, and it is assisted dying in all but name. Yet when people who are terminally ill ask a court to pre-approve the idea of assisted dying they're denied the nod and a wink others are given.

If the government says we need to protect and enable whistleblowers in the NHS, it has no right to prosecute and ruin the careers of those it finds in the police service. But it does.

If the forces of law track down within hours the teenager who tweeted abuse to diver Tom Daley during the Olympics, batter down his door at 2.45am and haul him off to the cells, it should not take them four days to ask Twitter to help find the group of men tweeting threats of rape.

It should not be that the system jumps for someone famous, and ignore the abuse of those who aren't.

Of course the world's not purely equal. Of course some people are treated differently to others, because they can afford better service, because humans act better to pretty people, or because perhaps they deserve it.

But where inequality is understandable - when someone is sick, broken or close to death - our system prefers to break them further rather than give them a break.

In less than two months when the bedroom tax discretionary payments run out and disabled people are evicted from their homes because they cannot pay it, we will have achieved something not seen in Britain since the Middle Ages - the intentional hounding of our poorest souls.

So be happy, if you can. Remember the Olympics fondly, coo over a Royal baby and bask in memories of the Jubilee. Let the national cup of happiness overflow, as all the statistics tell us it is.

Be joyful, because our nation abides by the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which arose from the horrors of two world wars and states: "All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law."

And never forget: Some are more equal than others.

It would help if she could see what she was doing.

Margaret Thatcher's funeral...

2013-07-29T15:34:00.001+01:00

...and how much she really cost us is the topic of today's column for the Daily Mirror which you can read here.

Pippa's tips...

2013-07-25T16:52:00.000+01:00

... for the Royal baby and what they might be are the topic of today's column for the Daily Mirror which you can read here.

You might even be in it yourself. Who knows?

War. Huh. What is it good for?

2013-07-24T12:51:00.000+01:00

OH good. A task force.

Task forces are great. They sound very strong and definite, a bit military even, and enable people to say 'we're declaring war on litter/bad drivers/disease' which always sounds good.

They are also pretty much free. Everyone invited to join a task force (you can't invent your own, not allowed) is already paid to do something else, and task forces in general recommend things and recommending is free.

But when the authorities announce a task force, they like to say WAR ON WHATEVER rather than 'part-time, low-cost, recommendations which may or may not work'. Not got quite the same ring, has it?

When it's graffiti or dog mess or dustbin collections perhaps that doesn't matter too much. When it's organised and sustained child sex abuse, however, task forces are not what's needed.

So naturally the government has launched a Sexual Violence against Children and Vulnerable People task force and is holding a summit on how they will spot abuse, help victims and generally 'wage war on paedo sex gangs'.

Well, it probably won't hurt. And it will probably also achieve the square root of naff all for the very simple reason the funding of every single body around the table and already tasked with waging war on paedo sex gangs has been slashed.

Police forces are facing cuts of 20% over five years and some have stopped sending officers into schools to teach children how to be careful online. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) which runs a child trafficking unit, traces perverts on the deep web and catches truly vile people, will lose 10% over four years.

Every local authority in the country is losing about 10% of its funding with an obvious impact on social services, children's homes and youngsters who are at risk. And charities, which are funded both by local councils and the public, are suffering too.

Even the ministerial department hosting the summit and running the task force, the Home Office, has had a 6% cut. It's also sacking 7,000 Border Agency staff while the Prime Minister talks about cracking down on immigration.

Sitting around talking about waging war on anything above a paper bag in that situation is not only fruitless, it would be laughable if the topic were not so awful.

Doing the same as yesterday on less money might be possible, but doing more is about as likely as Jimmy Savile coming back from the dead to say sorry.

This task force was set up in the wake of a national child sex scandal which is still ongoing. First Jimmy died and we learned there were hundreds of accusations of abuse by him over 40 years, much of it carried out in places where children should have been safe.

Ten NHS hospitals, a mental health institution, children's homes, BBC studios - all places where the state in some respect was not only paying but also in loco parentis. Fumbles, assaults, rape, boys, girls, teenagers, and plenty of evidence of care home workers, nurses, politicians and producers turning a blind eye, telling children to pretend to be asleep, giving him access to his victims.

And what's been done? So far the BBC has spent £5m and put another £20m aside for legal costs. It's produced two reports and sacked no-one.

West Yorkshire Police has investigated itself over its officers having coffee mornings at a paedophile's flat and found there was nothing amiss.

Officials reportedly tried to stop the hospitals involved being named, and there are a thousand unanswered questions about why Margaret Thatcher knighted him despite warnings from her advisers about his "unfortunate" private life.

Meanwhile we've had two long and horrible trials about the organised abuse of dozens of girls in care homes in Rochdale and Oxford which showed that very recently children in the care of the state were systematically drugged and raped while their carers ignored their claims, failed to report them missing and generally looked the other way.

Today police have made another arrest having finally got around to investigating allegations of child sex abuse at care homes in north Wales.

There have been apologies, but no inquiries.

No-one has asked a social worker, on oath, what they knew or what they did. No-one has asked former Health Minister Edwina Currie, on oath, why she allowed a radio DJ to briefly run Broadmoor high security psychiatric hospital. No-one has dug out a nurse who worked on the wards Savile stalked and asked her what she saw.

No-one has stopped to ask why behaviour which was barely reported or prosecuted 40 years ago - and is therefore understandably coming to light only now - is still going unnoticed today.

Unnoticed. Unnoticed when a child goes missing from care for days and crawls back, pregnant, to claim she was drugged and raped, and the authorities decide not to prosecute on the grounds she's not believable enough.

There are 67,000 children in care in the UK at this moment. Increasing numbers of homes are run by private firms with fewer staff and less training. If it has happened in Wales, Rochdale and Oxford it is happening elsewhere and it is probably happening right now.

Jimmy Savile is long gone - but the stones he crawled around under are still there, still home for those who want to avoid the light, and still in serious need of being turned over.

And what have we got? A task force and a Prime Minister who not only thinks the internet will obey his commands but the greatest risk to children is racy pictures on Daddy's iPad he doesn't want them to see.

Most child sex abuse is carried out by a relative. Determined paedophiles use the deep web you cannot access via Google. If someone wants to look at such things, they can and they will, and if you want to ban all representations of rape you'll have to start with the Bible and work your way down to Tess of the D'Urbervilles and half the art in the National Gallery.

The real risk to children about sexual abuse is that we are willfully blind to it. We call it porn when it's child abuse, we call it Lolita fantasies when it's child abuse, we call it child sex when it's child abuse.

We call it historic when it's happening right now.

We don't need a task force, we need a flame thrower. We need CEOP to be properly funded, we need a Prime Minister with a basic grasp of the internet beyond Fruit Ninja, we need police officers to have the time and money to go into schools and tell children - and parents - how to be careful. Scrap HS2 and spend the £40billion on that and there won't be a single objection.

We need a judge-led inquiry into everything from Savile to Rochdale, we need victims to be listened to and wrong-doers punished. We need to look it in the face and stare it down.

Without those things there is not a hope of this going away as we all wish it would. It will just slither back under the stones and come back to bite us later.

And when it does, we'll probably get another task force.

The other non-Royal babies...

2013-07-23T14:27:00.003+01:00

... and what kind of lives they might have is the topic of today's column for the Daily Mirror which you can read here.

Don't get mad, get even.

The truth about the Royal Baby...

2013-07-22T14:10:00.000+01:00

... and the most important things no-one will tell it is the topic of today's Daily Mirror column which you can read here.

I will probably get more Republican as the week wears on.

MPs' pay...

2013-07-11T14:26:00.000+01:00

... and why they should be content with 'a shitload', a free house and a platinum-coated pension is the topic of today's Daily Mirror column which you can read here.

I'm off to find me a Guy Fawkes mask. See you in Westminster.

Now look...

2013-07-10T14:43:00.000+01:00

... things are not as bad as you think. Trust me and click here.

Now CHEER UP.

Is there any principle in these things?

2013-07-09T12:00:00.002+01:00

POLITICS has always been a dirty game, often won by those with the most to spend.

The knights who forced King John to sign the Magna Carta managed it because he needed their money. Commoners were elected to the Model Parliament in 1295 only because Edward III needed them to raise taxes. The English revolution died on its arse when it racked up debts of £2million and the army revolted against an inept leader.

And it didn't stay in the dark ages - the last two British general elections were won by the party which spent the most.

Today the Labour leader's going to make a speech about stopping automatic donations from trade union members, following a scandal about who's been picking candidates for by-elections.

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that making a speech changes naff all, it's dim to crack down on £3-a-head donations from traditional supporters who deserve a voice when the problem seems to lie with union barons paid up to £140,000-a-year and who are stuck in 1975.

Trade unions are an amazing thing - a group of people speaking as one, and through force of numbers winning every worker in this country paid holiday, maternity leave, weekends, the right not to be sacked if you get married or fall pregnant or become ill, pensions and safety at work.

There are 7million people in Britain who are members of trade unions, and historically they have formed the backbone of the Labour Party and there's nothing wrong with that, any more than it is wrong for the businessmen of the Conservative Party or the dippy undecideds in the Liberals to have their say as well.

What is wrong is where the money seeps in and the principles leak out. A union boss on six figures is no longer representative of their members simply because on that money, they're a boss. They're don't get sacked like the rest of us.

When a union baron casts block votes for the election of a Labour leader, or to pass a resolution at party conference, it's not because their millions of members have been won over by the argument. It's because one person was persuaded by one other, and maybe that's politics but it certainly ain't right.

And when that one person is controlling millions of pounds and it's money which gets you elected, of course the politicians will butter them up. David Cameron butters up his donors just the same.

At least we know who the unions are and how much they spend, and when it looks like they've influenced a by-election we hear about it. Big donations to other parties have to be registered but it's easy to blur the tracks when the donors aren't public bodies.

Some are personal and others corporate; some are legacies given to avoid inheritance tax and some are benefits-in-kind involving secondments, favours, gifts and fundraising auctions. To link it all together you have to trawl the donation registers, pull company accounts, check marriage registers and have a year or two spare to do it in.

There's more than one billionaire arms dealer or millionaire private health boss whose wife has made donations on his behalf, and unless you spend days tracing the source you'd never know whether it was a scandal.

It took a newspaper sting and a series of panicked denials before the Prime Minister admitted to a string of dinners with 15 big-money donors who'd given a total of £25million. He can eat with whomever he chooses, of course, but it's different to Labour's deal with the unions only in that he didn't complain about it.

They say that where there's muck, there's brass; but in politics it's more the case that where there's money there's the whiff of corruption. Westminster is awash in it - those with the cash buy lobbyists, access, candidates, all-party parliamentary groups and anything else they can get their grubby mitts on. It might be great for them, but it sucks for the other 62million of us.

And the more that money talks, the more the voters walk. We cannot hope to match the influence of a chequebook and so we turn away from even trying to be heard, turnout drops almost every election and party membership in the past 50 years has dropped off a cliff.

It used to be that 5 in every 100 people paid their party subs - now it's less than 1 in 100. Desperate politicians who do so well at telling others to tighten their belts are running around with their trousers around their ankles looking for customers.

The trouble with this system is the same as it is with any other public servant: If they can be bought, they're of no use. If a copper sells info to a journalist his info can't be trusted and he's not going to stand up in court and back the journo when they need them to. If a politician will sell you his soul, he'll argue for you only as long as it pays and there will come a point you've coughed up ten times what his soul was worth.

Nowhere in the definition of politics or laws of our unwritten constitution does it say that money has to be involved. It's just stuck on the side, like a goitre.

Ending automatic subs from union members won't force union bosses to cut their own pay or be more representative of their members. Paying MPs more won't make them more noble, and the existing process of local parties picking election candidates is as open to corruption and vested interest as the rotten and pocket boroughs of the 18th century.

Then activists and revolutionaries campaigned for reform and in 1791 Tom Paine thundered: "Is there any principle in these things?" It's been 222 years, but little has changed except to make the whole nasty business more opaque.

We all get a vote, but few bother to exercise it. Those with money to burn win the ear of the venal leaders who depend upon them, and so the wheel turns.

The solution is simple - cut out the cash. No more donations over, say, £10,000, and no more big-money election campaigns paying for battle buses, spin and airbrushed posters. Let every local candidate have a free broadcast on the local TV and radio stations, and limit spending to the cost of a couple of mailshots.

Websites are cheap. Public meetings are free. Picking candidates through a system of primaries could be funded by tax and reignite mass involvement in the political process. Pay politicians the national average and let them stay in a dormitory when they're needed to stay in town.

What worker gets better perks than that? What servants are looked after so well by their masters? Only those with a good union, I think.

Any donation is bribery, at its heart, and we arrest people for that these days. It's time politics was subject to the same rules as the rest of us.

Because money never cleaned a damned thing.

You need to clean the money.

Andy Muray's Wimbledon win...

2013-07-08T15:54:00.002+01:00

... and why it's not a game for poshos is the topic of today's Daily Mirror column which you can read here.

New balls please, Prime Minister.

Thank you NHS...

2013-07-05T14:00:00.000+01:00

... because without you I'd never have been born at all.

Today's Daily Mirror column on how people are killing the old girl off can be read here, if you fancy a good weep.

It could never happen here.

2013-07-04T12:30:00.003+01:00

RULERS who have seized power.

A government which spies on its citizens 'for their own safety'. Leaders who lie. A crackdown on journalists and a hopelessly splintered opposition.

Tinkering with the constitution without asking anyone first, lining their own pockets, secret decisions, erosion of the democratic and judicial process and trampling on the sick and the poor.

All with just 23 per cent of the possible votes.

It's the kind of situation which, were it to happen in a resource-rich, developing country in a politically important area, our own dear leaders might pass comment. David Cameron would say 'less of this sort of thing', Nick Clegg would do the sad eyes, and William Hague would fix a summit with someone to discuss it.

Except they're not going to do that when the nation in question is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Bit dramatic, perhaps? Bit of a lefty bash-the-blues thing to say? Give me five minutes and see if you change your mind.

No-one voted this lot in. No-one asked for a Coalition with the yellows (very sensibly). The 2010 General Election had a 65 per cent turnout and David Cameron won 36.1 per cent of the votes - a majority of the 30million who bothered, but 16million people could not be.

That's not a popular mandate for any government - although blues and reds alike have governed and gone to war on similar levels of support - but it's certainly not enough of a green light for the most popular party to pick the third most popular party and create a government nobody asked for.

Of course if they hadn't there'd have been a hung Parliament and we'd have needed another election. These people thought another early vote was a bad idea - for us or for them, you decide - and so in order to avoid the further expression of democracy and because the alternative was an unpopular red they seized power.

The Queen rubber-stamped it, because she was told to.

In the years since they have expanded the practice of spying on us for our own good. I don't object in the least to them spying on foreign leaders who visit, people sheltering rape suspects or those who might build an underground lair or launch nuclear weapons from the moon.

I do sort of object to them reading my status updates and internet browsing history though. If they want to know what I'm up to they need to make a friend request or get a warrant, and if the spods at GCHQ can't work out the difference between a terrorist and the rest of us we're on a very sticky wicket.

Convicting and jailing people for their tweets and Facebook posts is becoming more common.

Our leaders don't tell us the truth. The government bends statistics, its statements promise things that never happen (the married tax break is on its fifth incarnation), blames its civil servants for its own failings, and gives out information about how atrocious the economy, NHS and immigrants are in order to gain support for its own highly-questionable plans.

£500,000 on a house for a mum with 11 children. Health tourism. Benefit cheats. All good headlines and bad stuff, but a drop in the ocean of a welfare state mainly devoted to paying pensions, debt and private landlords.

(Pensions which include 29 per cent public funding for the retirement funds of MPs and staff, compared to 14 per cent funding for other public sector workers.)

They've cracked down on the most powerful media empire in the country, but also cowed and constrained 30,000 print journalists on 1,100 newspapers with threats of new laws and budget-sucking legal cases.

They're now about to decide on the future of freedom of speech - something sadly never written down despite our leaders' promise to do so - for 62million people using a Privy Council committee consisting of present and retired politicians deciding on something not voted for by one single person.

They also control the regulation for TV journalists and spend a large amount of time trying to take down the publicly-funded broadcaster which, for all its problems, shames our politicians by being generally principled and only occasionally incompetent.

The Prime Minister, having promised to hold press conferences once a month, hasn't called one for a year and the only person in power who answers questions is the one least able to wield it.

Meanwhile the Official Opposition is so weak and uninspiring that extremists get more attention and followers. Ed Miliband could tapdance naked down Whitehall and still not raise anyone's interest.

The Justice Secretary and Home Secretary want to tear up the Magna Carta by scrapping human rights, putting the judicial process up for sale, and deporting people who haven't been convicted of anything, the Pensions Secretary thinks the poor need to snap out of it, the Health Secretary thinks there's nothing amiss with an NHS provider saying that saving lives is 'financially unsustainable' and the Foreign Secretary thinks giving guns away can end well.

And three-quarters of us did not vote for them. Yet they are there, decrying the overturning of a democratic vote in Egypt while cynically saying the leaders were unpopular, authoritarian, and needed to go.

But the Egyptian leader had 29 per cent of the vote. He had more of a mandate than our Prime Minister and the support of many more millions, and hasn't had time to make nearly as much of a mess of his nascent democracy as our privilege-reared career politicians who've been at it ever since they left school.

There's one reason the Egyptians took to the streets and we sit at home moaning about the weather and the cuts: their democracy is fresh, and ours is jaded.

The Arab Spring brought Egypt its first-ever democratic vote in 5,000 years of autocratic civilisation and their last despot was deposed following 18 days of public demonstrations which proved consistent protest brings results.

The few times that millions of us bother to march we are ignored, so we don't persist. When a few crazies camp outside Westminster they're moved on by the courts. And a third of us who can do not bother to vote when the ballot boxes are brought out.

Democracy dies when people stop thinking it works. It does, and it can, but only if you grab it and never let go.

Egypt is a place where women can be assaulted freely, where a military coup is welcomed and they look after the dead better than they do the living.

But they're doing better than us, principally because they believe in something.

All we believe is that it could never happen here.

You're probably right.

The NHS is 65 this week...

2013-07-03T14:25:00.001+01:00

... and she's dying. Thought you'd like to know. You can read about it here.

Steady as you go.

Married tax breaks...

2013-07-01T13:14:00.002+01:00

... and why they're not exactly helpful if you're a widow, divorcee, young person, service spouse or a married Tory politician is the topic of today's Daily Mirror column which you can read here.

Enjoy your state subsidies, if you get them.

Jane Austen on the banknotes...

2013-06-26T14:57:00.000+01:00

... and why that's a terrible idea is the topic of today's Daily Mirror column which you can read here.

Now excuse me, I'm off to burn something.

Protest (n.): A declaration of dissent.

2013-06-24T17:04:00.001+01:00

BETWEEN six and ten million people worldwide protested against the Iraq War in 2003.

They were ignored.

In 1381 thousands of serfs from Essex and Kent marched on London in fury after years of slavery, taxation, and abuse. Armed mainly with farm tools they sacked and destroyed the Savoy Palace, one of the grandest buildings in Europe, and forced the king to meet their demands.

They were brutally punished.

The suffragettes, the Peterloo Massacre, the Jarrow March, Fathers 4 Justice scaling Big Ben dressed as Batman and the Battle of Cable Street - they were all protesting a wrong, and they were all regarded in their time as criminals, hooligans, vagrants, troublemakers.

Swampy digging tunnels to stop a bypass, bereaved mothers campaigning for Sara's Law, Clare's Law, and Ayden's Law, veterans of Britain's nuclear tests fighting through the courts. They're all protesters, nothing more nor less.

Each of them, from Wat Tyler to Tiananmen Square and the Million Man March were declaring their dissent; saying, in the only way they could about the thing they were powerless to stop: No thank you. Not in our name. Let's do things differently.

And in every case from the dark ages to now those in power reply: Who? What? Don't be daft. Lock 'em up if they persist. Hunt them down and make them regret it.

Not every protester is Gandhi, of course. Some of them are like Nelson Mandela or Emmeline Pankhurst, who decided that non-violence was getting them nowhere and it was time to start a bombing campaign.

But in the end all are usually judged to have had a point, and these days Mandela and Pankhurst are as saintly as Gandhi. None of them, in their prime, were very nice to live with.

Despite all that, despite the fact the US has a right to free assembly in its constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights gives us the same (so long as it's not illegal), protest and dissent are still not allowed.

That's why Edward Snowden has been labelled a traitor for doing little more than pointing out America is spying on internet users worldwide. He is now stateless, hunted through the few countries in the world which will grant him asylum.

And it's why when Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death by a racist gang in south east London in 1993 the police's first reaction now seems to have been to gather as much dirt as possible on his family after they began a campaign demanding justice.

Not tracking down the killers, only two of whom are currently in jail and then only after a long legal battle, several police investigations and a public inquiry which labelled the Met institutionally racist.

No, it was more important to see if the victim's relatives were political, criminal or generally interested in stoking dissent. As though that would, in some way, make it all right for Stephen to be killed.

The Lawrence family are just the latest-known targets of the Special Demonstration Squad, an undercover police unit set up in 1968 to infiltrate groups protesting against the Vietnam War.

Since then it has infiltrated pretty much other protest group we had, from hippies who hate bypasses to animal rights protesters, fascists, anti-fascists and thugs who smash windows at the Ritz. Its officers have been criticised for using the identities of dead babies and sleeping with the protesters they were informing against, and not once in any of those operations known about so far has it achieved much.

They found advance warning of some protests, but otherwise found only that hippies smoke dope, some people defraud the benefits system, and there was nothing unusual about the Lawrence family beyond the fact their boy had the bad luck to be spotted by a gang of stab-happy racists.

There may be cases we don't know about but as of now it seems the SDS hasn't done much to protect the British way of life, to crack down on true terrorists or tackle things which would still be considered crimes with a change of government or the passage of time.

While the unit has been shut down, its been absorbed into something called the National Domestic Extremism Unit so it's probably carrying on much as before. And they're just doing their job - there's someone higher up who has to decide the protesters are criminals to start with.

But there are two things those who run it, and pay for it, and sign off on all it does have forgotten about.

The first is that if dissent is capable of being a threat, what it's threatening isn't good enough to start with. If it's not a threat they can dissent as much as they like, and if it is a threat then why not fix the problem?

And the second is that when people lose faith in democracy then there is no democracy left. They stop voting and start fighting, and the one follows the other as sure as the dodgy bloke follows a drunk girl home from the pub.

People presume they have a right to protest, to free assembly and to speak their minds. In British law they simply don't - you're allowed to do it only so long as the law lets you. That's why you get kettled when you protest and allowed to carry on if you come out waving brooms the day after a riot.

It all depends on the whim of the police officer you're stood in front of at the time, and that's not the way things are supposed to be.

We had the Magna Carta in 1215 and only two clauses are still in force. We had the Bill of Rights in 1689 and half of it's long-forgotten. And we have a voter turnout at election time that is getting lower and lower.

People have forgotten what democracy is, what it can do and more importantly what we'd do without it. Despite all the struggles at home and abroad for 1,000 years or more, it is slipping through our fingers through a combination of apathy and idiot authority stamping on our hands.

It was people power that convinced FW de Klerk apartheid was unsustainable and he should release Mandela. It was public outcry that won Gandhi's arguments, universal suffrage, and finally convinced Starbucks to cough up some tax money.

It is not a surprise that those in power seek to keep it by any means necessary, and quash dissent wherever they find it even in the free world.

But it is horrifying that they can do it without a whisper of complaint until long after it is done with.

Give us a new Bill of British Rights - guaranteeing freedom of expression, speech, assembly and thought. It might ruin a lot of what the Coalition is doing, from Leveson to public order law and legal aid reforms, but if that's the case the lessons of history say it's a fair trade. Democracy is more important than any government.

If it's broke, fix it.

Can you protest against a lack of protest? I'm not sure, but let's try.

Jeremy Forrest...

2013-06-21T14:49:00.000+01:00

... and a betrayal of the phrase 'in loco parentis' is the topic of today's column for the Daily Mirror which you can read here.

Romeo and Juliet it ain't. Have a nice weekend x

What a bunch of Bjerks.

2013-06-19T12:48:00.000+01:00

BEING a banker is a lot like being James Bond.

Aside from the champagne lifestyle, regular golf and sense of godlike power you get total immunity from prosecution.

Did you steal an elderly widow's pension? Never mind! Did you mis-sell some payment protection insurance? Blame it on a henchman. Perhaps you caused the world economic system to totter? Invent a new martini and cock a wry eyebrow, why don't you.

On top of all that bankers get their own holidays and the more dodginess they display the more likely they are to be showered with honours, get a massive pension, and be asked to join various charity foundations set up by members of the Royal Family.

Poor old Bond couldn't expect much more than a gold watch and a lonely death with a gin bottle.

Despite the past five years of shame, disgrace and quite overwhelming evidence of blatant criminality nary a banker has been banged up for causing a worldwide financial crisis which necessitated multi-billion pound taxpayer bailouts and a decade of cuts in public services.

Let's say that again - 10 years of cuts to nursing, police, streetlights, defence, roads, rubbish collection and schools for 62million people in this country alone because some very rich men thought they were untouchable.

There have been a few cases - charges for traders accused of fiddling the interbank lending rate, and a sentence for a lone trader who lost £1.4billion for UBS. But not one senior banker has been hauled to court for being the person in charge of an institution which went to the wall.

But then, our financial sector makes £125billion a year - almost 10 per cent of the total economy. It pays £21billion in tax, creates four per cent of all our jobs, and it also provides more than 50 per cent of the political donations to the Conservative Party.

I imagine it's difficult to summon up the enthusiasm for a clear-out, if you're David Cameron.

Which is why instead we've got a report from MPs suggesting a number of changes to bonuses, responsibilities and regulations and a new offence of reckless management of a bank.

Not only are all these suggestions unlikely to be accepted, not only are they unlikely to be properly enforced, not only would they not have stopped the scandal we're all suffering from right now, but they are all entirely unnecessary because everything that went wrong is already a crime.

Pretending you've got money you haven't got in order to trick someone into giving you more is called fraud.

Insisting everything is fine with your bank when it's got a black hole in its finances the size of Jupiter is called misleading your shareholders.

Losing money you've been asked to look after is called embezzlement. Being financially rewarded for bad behaviour is called corruption. Manipulating trades is called market abuse.

Over-pricing, predatory lending, misadvising on risk - they're all against the rules, all punishable in some way, and what's more all utterly were ignored by bankers determined to be bad.

New, weaker, sillier rules aren't going to help anybody but the politicians who will look tough for suggesting them but who nevertheless continue to overlook crime and wrongdoing in an industry which it suits them to be friendly with.

Every penny spent on today's report was a waste because not only would it not change a damn thing it overlooks the principle problem was that the rules we already have were broken without punishment or remorse.

There's only one way out of that sort of pickle, and it's to use those rules to haul people before the courts and hammer home the message that law-breaking is not all right and will be punished.

We have not done that, we gave banks yet more money, and our economy continues to suffer. Iceland did jail its bankers, gave a bailout instead to its citizens, and its economy is booming.

It's a different place with different economic factors, but if they're working and we're on our arse it strikes me we ought to stop asking our politicians and bankers to sort it out amongst themselves and instead make like Bjork.

Anything's better than a bunch of greedy berks infested with corruption and criminality. Right Dave?

It's rhyming slang, you know. Berkshire Hunt...

Dear you...

2013-06-18T11:53:00.000+01:00

I’M not going to tell you what to do.

There will be enough people doing that: why did you put up with it, what had you done, why did you stay.

Men and women alike will ask what’s wrong with you, and not stop to wonder what’s wrong with the other person. I imagine, right now, you feel deeply ashamed that it happened at all.

But that’s the main problem with domestic abuse – you think of every problem apart from the main one, which is that it was wrong.

When it begins you do not notice the way you are pressured into complying, made to bend. Compromise is healthy, right? But not if only one person does it.

The more you compromise, the more you move away from who you are. Upsetting things seep in slowly, like water under a door. You begin to do things that avoid a row. You overlook things you object to, and put on a show for others when you are sad.

The happy times get shorter, and the bad ones more frequent. You bend a little more, shoulder the load.

The first time is easy to remember - shoved across a room with such force your feet left the floor. You curled up in a ball and heard the person you loved scream that they hate you.

Later, you apologised. Anything to end it and go back to being happy.

The next time was a wall. Then shaking like a doll. Then a broken door.

After that it was dragging, from room to room, by one ankle. That happened a few times, late at night. You hoped the neighbours didn't hear.

Fighting back made it worse, so you went limp until it was over. You said no, please, stop, don’t. Tears afterwards, trying not to be heard.

You bent double, thinking you could bear it. We could be happy again if only this would pass, if only you didn’t provoke it. If only.

You never told a soul, and you made a million excuses.

Have a look through your diary and it sounds like a stranger. The words are full of worry – not for yourself, but for this person you love. They are the centre of your world and you want them to be happy.

Domestic abuse is when they punch you, right? That never happened, there were barely any bruises, so it’s just a silly row.

But domestic abuse is nothing to do with punches, really. It’s psychological and it’s about control, and as with all bullying it’s done by someone who feels powerless in some way themselves.

In the depths of your fear you know that, and it makes it harder to leave. When you know it's because they're weak, when you understand the problem that makes them explode, you think you can fix it.

But the next time is always worse. You hold on to the one thing you’re sure of, which is that you love them and they love you.

The whole world thinks only weak people put up with it, but that’s wrong.

It takes a strong person to stay. It takes a brilliant mind to brainwash itself. It takes a spine of pure steel to bend double and not break, and principles of cast iron to stick it out because you think you should.

Experiencing domestic abuse is like going into a tunnel – a deep, dark hole in the ground. You feel your way blindly and hope for the best.

Getting out is much harder. It’s rare the decision happens by itself, and is usually triggered by a sudden change in your partner or escalation in violence.

Either way you get your sight back and you hate what you see, this hole which was your heart and you now have to climb out of.

The police help sometimes, but more often they can’t because there’s rarely witnesses. Besides, you still worry you're to blame. Friends usually don’t realise and bystanders don’t want to get involved.

There are only two things anyone can tell you that are of any use. The first is that it is never your fault. You are not to blame for choosing them, provoking them, or not helping them.

It is their fault, and theirs alone.

The second is that you are not ‘in love’ anymore. 'In love' is when two people are in the same place, and nothing comes between them.

Anyone who can do those things to you does not love you.

You feel afraid more often than you feel love. That’s why you cry, it’s why you say sorry afterwards. Fear and love combine to make you stay, and every day you hope it gets better.

It doesn’t.

Now it is up to you to decide what to do. Perhaps it will happen again and perhaps it won't. How long are you prepared to wait and see?

Whatever you do, please know that you are not alone. One in every four women, and 1 in every 6 men know exactly how you feel.

You can be lucky, and you can climb out.

Wherever you are, I hope you see the light.

How men run the world...

2013-06-07T15:14:00.001+01:00

... and what it would be unlike if things were the other way around is the topic of today's column for the Daily Mirror which you can read here.

Men might want to finish the housework first, especially if they're blond.

Victoria Beckham...

2013-06-05T14:58:00.001+01:00

... being named Woman of the Decade is the topic of today's column for the Daily Mirror which you can read here.

Who would you give the award to?

Emily Wilding Davison...

2013-06-04T14:00:00.004+01:00

... and why her death didn't achieve much is the topic of today's column for the Daily Mirror which you can read here.

RIP Emily.

Recall (vb.): To summon back to awareness.

2013-06-03T12:18:00.002+01:00

THEY think you're stupid.

They don't much care if you know it, because you're so stupid it doesn't matter. So what if you can see they're wiggling their fingers in their ears and sticking their tongue out while they say 'NA NA NA NAAA NAH'? You're too dumb to matter.

What matters is that the people who think they're clever get to be in charge. They want to own the whole playground, charge entry, be the winners of every game of British Bulldog, take your dinner money and intimidate their victims into staying the hell out of their way.

That, presumably, is the sort of attitude you need to be a successful Member of Parliament or life Peer.

A conscience or vocation in the Houses of Parliament only holds you back, sees you consigned to the backbenches, mocked like Dennis Skinner and left to watch as your backsliding, avaricious, amoral contemporaries play the property market and get elevated to the House of Lords for faithful service to the boss.

Politics is a corrupt business; it always has been, and successive attempts to clean it up have merely forced corruption to evolve.

The Great Reform Act got rid of rotten boroughs, but these days only a handful of constituencies are likely to make a difference in a general election. Universal suffrage gave women, the poor, and the young a right to vote and be represented, yet few such have a seat in the House of Commons. Constituency boundary changes are little more than shuffling a stacked deck so it is still stacked.

Politicians' efforts to clean their own gutters have historically been so lame and pointless that when they're called to account they've ceased to do little more than pretend to wave around a metaphorical feather duster.

So with the revelation that one MP and three peers were caught on camera seemingly selling Parliamentary influence for up to £12,000 a month it is hardly a surprise that the Government's main response is merely an offer to write it all down.

A register of lobbying interests is nothing more than an expensive, bureaucratic way of obfuscating the point - one which, as Francis Maude admitted yesterday, would merely make it more difficult for journalists to carry out such a sting rather than convince politicians to behave themselves.

The problem is not that there are lobbying firms employed by pressure groups to press home their argument, which is allowed; the problem is that it's already against the rules for politics to be paid by outside interests and all four were caught on camera with their hand out.

It doesn't matter they thought they were taking money from an undemocratic military regime thrown out of the Commonwealth. It wouldn't matter if it was elderly nuns offering them cash to speak up for abandoned kittens. The rules say you don't take money, and that's that.

The fact several of the politicians smelled a rat and later reported the bogus lobby company, that money did not in the end change hands and they managed to stay within the rules, is neither here nor there. They asked for money, they intended to circumvent the rules, and if it had been a genuine offer they'd not have reported it to a soul.

They're already made to declare some interests, and as the sting revealed they set up tag-team deals with other corrupt politicians to ask questions and host functions for one another so they can get around it.

But wait! There's a second moral feather duster being held aloft by the worthy Nicholas Clegg, and it is the power for the public to recall disgraced MPs.

He first mentioned this in 2008, as the expenses scandal began to boil. He wanted voters to force a by-election once their MP had been suspended by the house.

It was mentioned again in the 2010 Coalition agreement, only now voters were to have the right of recall merely in the event of 'serious wrongdoing', which had it become law would have led to half of Parliament being out on its arse.

In 2011 Clegg raised it again, but no doubt worried how many MPs could be accused of misbehaviour watered it down to being only in the event of a criminal conviction.

A month later he told a committee it would merely be a 'backstop' and would not for example be used by voters whose MP didn't bother to do any work. Which is odd, because that's the sort of thing every other public sector employee gets sacked for.

In 2012 that same committee of turkeys announced they would not be voting for Christmas, as voters already had the chance to remove MPs at election time and no further sanction was necessary.

And today, faced with a corruption scandal, Cleggy has been wheeled out once more like Mrs Mop to promise "it is happening" and the power of recall will be introduced before the next election.

I look forward to it. I can't wait until Nick Clegg can recall what a lying shyster we all think he is and wind his neck in.

Until then Clegg, Cameron et al will carry on telling themselves we're too dumb to remember they've promised all this before, that they don't keep their promises, they write their own rules and hold each other to the merest forms of account.

Even if the recall proposals were introduced, they wouldn't have stopped this scandal - you can't force a by-election for peers who aren't elected in the first place.

There is no right to sue an MP; no annual personnel review; no system of formal warnings and the sack as there is in every other job on Earth. The external scrutiny comes courtesy of journalists alone, and while we can heap up disgrace they do not have to lose their job if they or their leader don't fancy it and, just for good measure, they can legislate against us too.

The simple truth is there is no need for registers of interests, financial, lobbying or otherwise. There is no need for rules about how many shares you can own or how many hours a week a politician ought to work.

MPs and Lords are paid for by the public. If they want to be paid by someone else, they should get different job.

MPs are paid a basic starting salary of £65,738. That's more than £5,000 a month before tax, which for most of us would be quite enough to pay into a pension, pay the family mortgage and rent a one-bedroomed flat in London.

That salary puts them in the top three per cent of earners in the UK - there's no need for pay rises, second home expenses, subsidised booze or supplementary earnings, whatever they bleat about being paid peanuts.

Peers get £300 a day just for turning up and signing on, with no requirement to vote, speak or do anything they don't want to. It's a bit like being on the dole, if the dole didn't involve jumping through hoops in for £70 a week.

Politicians should work the same hours everyone else has to, they should get the same holiday everyone else does, and they should face exactly the same prospects of losing their job as anyone else who messes up or breaks the rules.

It's not difficult. It doesn't take five years of Nick Clegg changing his mind. It probably needs someone who's not actually a politician to get elected with enough clout to enforce it, but it's really terribly simple because we've been cutting benefits for three years and the pigs with their snouts in the Westminster trough are about due a dose of reality if you ask me.

All you need is two rules:

1. Politicians are servants, not masters.
2. Obey all the rules.

If we don't insist on it at every election, every radio phone-in, every husting and every public meeting, then we've only ourselves to blame.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Footballers...

2013-05-30T12:45:00.000+01:00

... and why they can be safely ignored is the topic of today's column for the Daily Mirror which you can read here.

Funny old game, etc etc.

The dastardly NHS...

2013-05-29T15:07:00.002+01:00

... and why everyone in it probably doesn't want you to die is the topic of today's column for the Daily Mirror which you can read here.

Mind how you go, now.