And the NRA's antidote to guns is...more guns!

We may share a common tongue and a fondness for fried potato products, but watching the press conference from Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice-President of the National Rifle Association, the United States of America has never seemed more foreign, and less united.

Ominously silent since the Sandy Hook massacre, this was a first response to the events that crow-barred Newtown, Conneticut, into our collective consciousness, and whipped up the wave of anti-second amendment rhetoric now breaking daily on the doorstep of the NRA.

Mr LaPierre initially welcomed assembled members of the press to what he termed ‘the beginning of our discussion of the topic’, before announcing that no questions would be taken. From that point it became apparent the ‘discussion’ would be a tad one-sided and although an opportunity for questions was promised on another occasion, this was distinctly more polemic than press conference.

After confirming the NRA shared in the collective revulsion, Mr LaPierre asked why, in the aftermath of the abhorrent actions of Adam Lanza, was nobody tackling what he sees as the central issue; how to keep children safe, right now, in “a way that we know will work.” Mr LaPierre pointed out that Americans are perfectly happy to see presidents, airports, offices, court houses and even sports stadiums protected by armed guards, and yet when it comes to children, he said, they are left “utterly defenceless”. It was by now abundantly clear what was coming.

The solution, as the NRA sees it, is a National School Shield Emergency Response Program, that’s gun-totting guards in schools to you and me. After all, as Mr LaPierre put it; “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.” Well, the National Rifle Association must have a lot of guns, and, surprise surprise, LaPierre announced that the NRA is “willing and uniquely qualified to help.” But, not only help, they’ll bankroll it with both barrels, to the tune of “whatever scope the task requires.” Now, in a time of tight budgets and fiscal shortfalls, it’s deeply gratifying to think of an army of heavily-armed altruists riding to the rescue. Or is it?

Mr LaPierre had pilloried those he professed were trying to exploit the tragedy “for political gain”, and rightly so. Yet, it is hard to envisage from this “multi-faceted program”, incorporating armed security, building design, IT, access control, and featuring the “most knowledgeable and credentialed experts”, that somebody wouldn’t quietly come out of it with a big stash of cash.

Setting aside such cynical assertions, LaPierre did make some salient points. Movie studios and video games manufacturers were duly called to account for portraying life “as a joke” and murder “as a way of life”. After stating that society was “populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters”, he also chastised the media for giving said monsters their much craved global platform.

Although from this side of the pond, LaPierre’s proposal may smack of opportunist economics, or a cynical justification of the NRA’s own existence, saying; ‘oops, we were wrong, could everyone give their guns back?’ is unlikely to have the desired effect either.

However morally bankrupt it might seem to suggest sending armed security into American schools, perhaps the time for a more educational approach elapsed when Pandora’s gunpowder pouch was opened, and its access enshrined in US law. Sandy Hook evokes a collective pain, pointing to a collective problem, and a society consistently producing such cancerous killings, needs to take a long hard look inside itself for the cure.

 

Green light for gay weddings?

‘C of E gay marriage to be illegal’ is perhaps not the headline David Cameron had hoped his consultation might herald. Of course, from the Culture Secretary’s comments on non-straight nuptials in the Commons, the BBC News website could just as easily have concocted; ‘nothing changes in Church of England’. Although arguably true of any time this side of the Reformation, I concede it's a little less eye-catching.

 

Maria Miller’s announcement that under proposed legislation it would be illegal for the Churches of England and Wales to marry same-sex couples, was in direct response to strong opposition from both organisations. This caveat forms part of the “quadruple lock”, roughly translated as four ideas, intended to safeguard religious freedom. Also included is the guarantee that religious groups won’t be strong armed into holding gay weddings. Such ceremonies will also be unlawful unless the governing body of a religious movement has officially ‘opted in’. Crucially, the proposal includes an amendment to the 2010 Equality Act protecting ministers from discrimination claims if they refuse to perform a same-sex ceremony, a key concern for clergy, given the ominous shadow of European law.

 

Bearing in mind the plethora of passionately held opinions on the proposal, any conclusions would have always had compromise crayoned all over them, which explains some of the resultant mumbling, both measured and more manifest. However, despite the disappointment of many, and the predictable backlash from the jam and Jerusalem brigade on the Tory backbenches, this is a diplomatic decision against a backdrop of contrasting concerns.

 

Gay couples keen to marry, or graduate from civil partnerships, could do so in registry offices, and selected churches outside the C of E umbrella. Clergy opposed to same-sex services will not be obliged to conduct them, contrary to their convictions, and the state will not be seen to be reaching beyond its remit, by prescribing church policy.

 

Few democratic solutions are without winners and losers. Those on the sharp end of this legislation remain same-sex Christian couples unable to celebrate their wedding amid church communities in which they worship every week. They would, at least, be able to walk down the aisle, if not always the nearest available.  

 

I wonder if it may even be more frustrating for some ministers to have to deny same-sex Christian couples their vows before God, than marrying the manifestly agnostic who just want a photo in a charming churchyard. If the Coalition are still consulting, why not consider allowing any Christian couple a cheap church wedding, charge a four figure fee for the religiously indifferent, irrespective of sexual orientation, and make churches splash the cash on underfloor heating? After all, God loves everyone, no matter their choice of bedfellow, and it’s hard to commune with your maker if you can’t feel your feet. Just a thought.

Should Britain be a 'Friend of Israel'?

Surely one of the more loaded terms amongst international idioms is the self-certification of being “a friend of Israel”. It is clearly more than just exchanging Christmas cards and the odd Facebook update, and you can’t get your boots under the best desk in the White House without at least claiming to be one, even if you have your fingers crossed.

The phrase can denote an often unspecific standing, found somewhere on the sliding scale from casual Semitic sympathiser to fully-paid up Zionist. Barack Obama has claimed to be a ‘friend of Israel’, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad most definitely hasn’t, and I dare say William Hague would like to avoid the question. Especially now the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has announced plans to build 3000 new settlement homes in the 'E1' area, to the northeast of Jerusalem. Indeed, some of Israel’s friends may sense the mild misgivings akin to taking a mate to a family wedding, who then, despite bearing all the outward vestiges of sophistication, gets smashed on the free bubbly, makes a pass at the bride’s mother and throws up on the cake.

The timing of Israel’s announcement suggests a knee-jerk reaction to the United Nations General Assembly recognising Palestine as a ‘non-member observer state’ this week. One might think that after all this time a refusal to recognise anybody would have been considered rude, yet still the US opposed the motion and the UK took a traditionally assertive stance, and abstained.

Palestinian commentators note that the ‘state’ now recognised is itself fairly unrecognisable compared to that agreed by the United Nations in 1967. However, if the newly proposed settlements were to proceed, then the West Bank would be effectively cut off from East Jerusalem, and the territory would become so divided as to render the ‘two state solution’ virtually unviable. It is perhaps this, rather than the settlements themselves, that induced an unusually robust response from notable European powers. The British, French and Swedish Foreign Ministries summoned respective Israeli ambassadors to express concern over further building deemed illegal under international law, with similar statements issued by both Germany and Russia.

The UK government, whilst rowing back from the early rumours of recalling the ambassador to Israel, is keeping all diplomatic options on the table. Such measures could potentially stretch to suspending trade deals in protest, however, David Cameron confirmed the Coalition are "not proposing to do anything further at this stage".

Whilst it would be inappropriate to attempt to solve or even summarise such a complex geo-political conundrum in one trite paragraph, if a neighbour keeps planting trees on your lawn you’ll eventually need a chainsaw. The preferred outcome of course, would involve a direct but diplomatic neighbourhood watch, which is where the rest of us come in.     

Banning bargain booze.

If “work is the curse of the drinking classes,” as Oscar Wilde would have us believe, then we may soon have to work a bit harder for our drinks. The government is embarking on a ten week consultation on the introduction of a minimum price for alcohol of 45p per unit, alongside a ban on multi-buy discount offers and the buy-one-get-one-free promotion, in an attempt to avert Britain’s binge drinking culture.

Research at the University of Sheffield, and apparently not just students getting hammered and nicking traffic cones, revealed that a minimum price of 50p per unit would reduce alcohol consumption by 6.7%, saving about 20,000 hospital admissions a year. Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, chairman of the Alcohol Alliance UK, who had been pushing for the 50p minimum, said that; "evidence shows us that heavy drinkers and young drinkers are more affected by higher alcohol prices than moderate drinkers.”

Evidence may well show that, but so does common sense. When something is made more expensive, it becomes more difficult to afford for those who buy more of it, or have less cash to splash to start with. I hope a lot of money was not spent on that research, because we are going to need plenty to offset the £200 million in lost duty revenue, according to a Home Office impact assessment, if these mooted measures are eventually introduced.

On the other shaky hand of course, we do have a problem. Alcohol abuse accounted for 1,168,300 hospital admissions in the UK in 2010/11, double the numbers from 2002/3. According to government figures, some 167,764 prescriptions were issued for the treatment of alcohol dependency in 2011, costing the NHS £2.49 million. If you also care to calibrate the accumulated cost of heart disease, liver cirrhosis, and the other assorted ailments attributed to extended exposure to alcohol, and add that to Britain’s burgeoning bar bill, it is clear that we actually have a problem of Oliver Reed proportions.

However, is increasing the cost of booze really going to curb excessive consumption? Politicians and medical practitioners seem keen to give it a try, and why wouldn’t they be? MPs earn £65,738 and the average GP pockets £104,100, easily enough to insulate oneself against any pesky state-enforced sobriety through prescriptive price hikes. I find it frighteningly naïve to believe the more socially disadvantaged drinker will eschew his evening tipple in favour of a hot mug of herbal tea just because its price tag doubles. I fear instead that he will end up just as drunk, but his family twice as poor.   

The Church's Stained Glass Ceiling.

 

That the Church of England announced arguably the most progressive Archbishop appointment to date, and failed to give their blessing to women bishops in almost the same breath, perfectly illustrates the challenges that the institution, and its incoming caretaker Justin Welby, must face.

The current Archbishop of Canterbury told the General Synod that the church had lost “a measure of credibility” with the vote against women bishops, and may appear “wilfully blind” to the priorities of the society it serves. Visibly deflated, and all too aware of how the result would be perceived in a secular society in which the absence of equal opportunity is duly regarded as discrimination, Rowan Williams concluded the Church of England now has “a lot of explaining to do.”

The disenchantment, bordering disbelief, on the faces of the “yes” campaign perhaps requires a little less explanation however than the feelings and philosophy underpinning the apparent aversion to women becoming bishops.

Pete Myers, from the campaign group Together 4ward, penned an article on the Channel 4 News website, in which he outlined his support for the decision. Whilst regretful of “the pain” the outcome had caused, and conceding that women bishops were essentially inevitable, he believes the bible advises otherwise. Like many of a similar opinion, Mr Myers points the finger at the apostle Paul, who wrote in 1 Timothy 2:12; “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man.”

That section of scripture certainly does seem to support Mr Myer’s position, however he does not quote the complete sentence. After asserting that a woman should not have authority over a male counterpart in church, Paul goes further, concluding; “she must be quiet.” Now, why, I wonder, did Mr Myer not include that bit? If you want to ignore 2000 years of historical and socio-political context, then why stop at just an ecclesiastical glass ceiling? Paul actually advises that ladies should not only leave the altar duties to the gents, but also keep mum till they’re back in the car park.

In addition, if we are going to play things strictly by the book, then Leviticus 21:5 says; “Priests must not shave their heads or shave off the edges of their beards or cut their bodies.” That rules out tattoos and skinheads, and any vicar without the full Father Christmas chin warmer! If you can’t have women bishops, then the same goes for clean-shaven clergy, unless of course, you just plucked the scripture to justify a bit of good old fashioned sexism.

Certainly, the vote has been an embarrassment to many in the church, since it was passed by the priesthood, only falling foul of the laity. This army of able assistants occupies an array of non-professional positions in the Church of England, is predominantly female, and yet a fairly modest number of its membership were able to avert the advancement of women up to bishop status, thanks to an alarmingly laughable electoral system.

Personally, I find the entire debacle simply the latest example of the Church of England’s commitment to self-destructive marketing. The Christian faith should be something you could not give away fast enough, but when your PR campaign features celebrity endorsement from Bush and Blair, and the occasional mailshot with unwelcoming messages around abortion and homosexuality, you are making yourselves a pretty hard sell.  

The apostle Paul has indeed been a useful blueprint for many Christian believers, but like all the pioneers of the early church he is refreshing and accessible exactly because he was not perfect. When a religion is more head than heart, people tend to get hurt, and to really get to the heart of any movement, you don’t focus on the followers, but the one they are following. From what I have read, you would be hard pushed to find Jesus advocating church division through segregation of opportunity. Given a room full of people he would make a beeline for the disenfranchised, was moved by compassion not customs and tradition, and considered each case on merit. If there is a PR HQ for the C of E, the way forward might be getting back to basics, more Jesus focused, less jam making and judgemental. He He nnnnnn

Elected Police Commissioners, Expensive Political Codswallop?

As Oscar Wilde deemed democracy as simply “the bludgeoning of the people, for the people, by the people,” I would love to learn his take on the elections for Police and Crime Commissioners. When the people have been passed the baton to decide which other people will hold to account the people who carry the batons, isn’t that just getting too many people involved?

Around 40 million adults in England and Wales are eligible to vote for commissioners in 41 police forces, although, as widely anticipated, at least 70% seem caught up in a wave of national apathy and have not actually bothered to do so. The lowest recorded electoral turnout to date was for the European Elections of 1999, so for those answering former Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair’s rallying cry to veto the vote and stay at home, the number to beat is just 23%. Those of us living in London have a reduced power to protest through non-participation however, as we have no vote to veto, the role being part of Boris Johnson’s in-box as Mayor already.

The stated aim of a Police and Crime Commissioner is not to actually commission crimes, as the title would suggest, but to engage with the public, including victims of crime, and ensure the budget is spent “where it most matters”. Now, the question of what matters most suggests an agenda, and this is where the process becomes regretfully yet predictably political. Only 54 out of the 192 candidates are not actually badge wearing brokers of a particular political persuasion, and these independent hopefuls are even less likely than their rivals to have been heard of beyond their own breakfast tables. So, in most cases, those doing the hiring and firing of the country’s top coppers will have a “where it matters most” position aligned at least in part with their respective party principles, which can hardly help what Sir Hugh Orde, Head of the association of Chief Police Officers, referred to as “inevitable tension” around “the allocation of resources”.  

Whatever eventual reality emerges from the £100 million election, it is unlikely to echo the Prime Minster’s original prescription. Falklands veteran and author Simon Weston, amongst others, pulled out of the process because it was “too political”, and Mr Cameron’s campaign for a “big job for a big local figure” seems destined to be consigned to the Big Society cul-de-sac of good intentions.

My dad entitles any trip to the polling booth as a chance to “exercise his democratic right”, and in some sense every election can be seen a symbolic affirmation of our hard-fought for freedoms. However, by Thursday, a good many of us will have voted on X-Factor, Strictly, and that carry-on up the jungle, not to mention venting pithy opinions via Facebook, text and Twitter, before using up our monthly mobile minutes on a chin-wag with a chum. We are hardly starved of having our say, so leaving hearth and HD TV for a cause few care for, is a box barely any will be ticking.

Encore Obama or Millionaire Mitt?

 

If the bible states it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, then Mitt Romney’s $200 million may not get him past the pearly gates, but his odds look better on the White House.

 

If he were to wake up on Wednesday as the next incumbent of the Oval Office, Governor Romney would become the second richest American President of all time, after George Washington. The first US President’s plentiful prosperity came courtesy of the family business, a wholesome blend of tobacco and slavery, and what he didn’t have by birth, he married into. Whilst slavery seems thankfully absent from the Romney portfolio, tobacco is certainly not. He was CEO of Bain & Co, the consultancy that turned around Marlboro’s flagging fortunes, forcing the price war which repaired the balance sheet of parent company Philip Morris. Who knows, maybe he can do for the world’s biggest economy what he did for one of the world’s biggest killers?

 

Much political capital has naturally been made of the campaign promises on which Obama has yet to deliver. US troops left Iraq, but have yet to fully discharge their duties in Afghanistan. Despite signing an executive order to effect its closure, Guantanamo Bay is still very much open for business. The Democrat dream of health coverage for the uninsured was duly delivered, Osama Bin Laden was caught and killed, but global warming legislation predictably ran into a Republican road-block in the Senate. However, to negate Obama’s achievements is to forget both the depth of the depression he inherited, and the apparent absence of bipartisan potential in Washington. Indeed, warm praise for the President’s efforts in the aftermath of storm Sandy from Republican Governor Chris Christie raised eyebrows on both sides of the Senate.

 

If the Sunday papers were anything to go by, Barack Obama would be a shoe-in for a second term if the ballot was based on this side of the pond. Even right wing newspapers in the UK have not been able to bring themselves to endorse Mitt Romney, preferring to view another four years of Obama as the safest dish on a dodgy menu. Across the Atlantic most states seem to stick to historical allegiances, with the outcome of only the half dozen “swing states” considered genuinely up for grabs. The beleaguered residents of these battlegrounds have therefore been campaigned at to within an inch of their lives by both presidential candidates and their armies of ardent affiliates, and now 24 hours should tell the tale.

 

Barack Obama was elected on the promise of change and a wave of hope that has now admittedly broken. Mitt Romney famously said of fires in aeroplanes that “you can’t find oxygen from outside the aircraft...because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that.” One might say that America would be in better shape if Obama’s actions could have matched his message, but imagine the mess if Romney was given the power to put his reasoning into practice.  

Leveson's recipe for a happy medium?

 

With Lord Leveson’s recommendations increasingly imminent, the Prime Minister kicked off the routine rally of political pre-emptive striking with a warning against pre-judging the findings of his inquiry into the culture, practises and ethics of the press. Undaunted however, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles leapt like a salmon into the fray, swimming upstream against the Downing Street directive, and lending his weight to the anti-legislation lobby by quoting Thomas Jefferson. “For a free society to operate,” he said, “the river of a free press had to flow without restriction,” and as principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson knew a bit about freedom.

However, if Mr Pickles had looked instead to another American heavyweight, Mark Twain, he would have found the former journalist saying of his own profession; “there are laws to protect the freedom of the press’s speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.” No doubt a sentiment with which Hugh Grant, and others on the serrated end of the hacking scandal, would concur.

On the other side of the fence from Eric Pickles, and characteristically not sitting on it, Harriet Harman said the current system of self-regulation had “failed” and advocated the establishment of a “truly independent” body to look into press complaints. After the phone hacking furore, reported payments to police officers and public figures, and the closure of the News of the World amid wider questions over editorial ethics, it is increasingly more difficult to disagree. However, hands up who is “truly independent”?  

Speaking to Andrew Marr earlier this month, David Cameron politely declined an invite to guarantee implementing the Leveson findings in full, prior to their publication, reiterating his desire to maintain a “free press”. The Prime Minister’s warning against “heavy handed state intervention” engendered echoes of the “light touch” regulation rumoured to be in the running. ‘The Australian’ newspaper reported that Lord Justice Leveson was leaning towards the system used in the Irish Republic, with legislation extending solely to the establishment of a new press council, with an ombudsman to address complaints.

Exponents of a “free press” label legislation as a last resort, but surely it’s a large and unlikely leap from press regulation to state media censorship. Self-regulation is almost an oxymoron anyway, some will behave because they feel they should do, but many just because they must. The threat of sanction is a necessary motivation for standards. A civilised society needs a free press, but not at any cost.

What differentiates us from China, apart from population, cuisine, and global economic dominance of course, is the courage of democracy to permit criticism from within. At its best, the media provides an unfettered forum that serves the population in holding its leaders and institutions to account, at its worst, a parasitic entity that regurgitates the baser actions of its consumers to feed their own voyeurism. Finding a framework to further the former whilst limiting the latter is the challenge from which the current crop of Westminster tenants must not shrink.  

Yours, grovelling Gove of Surrey.

Michael Gove’s apology to his former French teacher is relatively refreshing. Most politicians, presumably to make space for the letters ‘M’ and ‘P’ after their name, choose to abandon any apparent sense of humility.

 In an open letter, published in this week’s Radio Times, the Education Secretary describes the scene in Mr Montgomery’s classroom at Robert Gordon’s College in Aberdeen as a maleficent melee of “pathetic showing off” and “clever-dick questions”. Perhaps not a prime study scenario, but perfect preparation for Prime Minister’s Questions.

 Acknowledging that his apology is tardy to the tune of 30 years, the Conservative MP for Surrey Heath referred to himself and his classmates as “a cocksure crew of precociously assertive boys”. An appraisal as accurate as it is eloquent perhaps, and apt of a man earmarked in his early years as a “future leader of the Conservative Party”, by a teaching colleague of Mr Montgomery.

Mr Gove delivers an enthusiastic eulogy to the educative efforts of his former schoolmaster, although referring to him as ‘Danny’ could be deemed an unnecessary effort to adjust their erstwhile status gap. He concedes; “you were trying, patiently, doggedly, good-humouredly, to broaden our horizons. You were, without any pretension or pomposity, attempting to coax a group of hormonal lads to look beyond familiar horizons and venture further.”

 Depending on who you speak to, young master Gove may indeed have learnt the lesson of ‘looking beyond familiar horizons’, although apparently backwards, and he may have been absent for the without ‘pomposity’ part. Politically, his Education White Paper produced a predictably mixed reaction, and when questioning members of the profession itself, as politicians all too rarely do, the responses range from suspicious to snarling. 

Having said that, breaking what John Bangs, the former Head of Education at the National Union of Teachers, referred to as high-stakes commercialism in the GCSE exam board system must be a plus. When it came to light that some examiners were selling seminars, offering insider info on teaching to the tests, Mr Bangs said the boards were in “the last chance saloon.” Calling time on that cash cow may be widely welcomed.

In addition, Steve Sinnott, the NUT General Secretary welcomed the commitment to more personalised learning, which the union itself had previously advocated. But, his overall response to the reforms was rather less than rapturous. “The pity is,” he said, “that hidden amongst outlandish ideas, the White Paper has some genuinely good proposals.” His deputy at the NUT, Kevin Courtney, felt that Mr Gove was too quick to level unjustified criticism at the achievements of both teachers and pupils. This, he said; “serves the Education Secretary well in securing headlines,” but “alienates and demoralises the profession which strives day in and day out, often in difficult circumstances, to achieve the best for all their pupils.”

 So, riding that self-made wave of tepid togetherness and absent enthusiasm Mr Gove rallied the troops in February with a warning that the reforms risked fewer kids passing exams and more headteachers being sacked. Now that’s how to motivate the education profession.

 Whilst his epistle of apology to Mr Montgomery is admirable, if Michael Gove seeks to say sorry to every teacher he has left disgruntled and disrespected, he’s going to need a bigger pen.

 

 

Defending, the Beast of Bosnia.

 

The war crimes trial of Radovan Karadzic at The Hague was never likely to be the definition of swift justice, and judging by the opening statement of the former Bosnian Serb leader as he begins his defence, it may run for as long as he did. In a meandering monologue, the man previously dubbed the ‘Beast of Bosnia’ referred to himself as “a tolerant man with great capacity to understand others.” He now has 300 hours to prove that.

Arrested in 2008 in Belgrade, while working in alternative medicine under the alias Dragan Dabic, the former Bosnian Serb war-time president had been on the run for nearly 13 years. Karadzic stands accused of war crimes reportedly committed in the aftermath of the break-up of Yugoslavia, which include arranging the murder of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, the siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995 that left 12,000 dead from starvation and sniper fire, and taking 284 United Nations peacekeepers and military observers hostage, to be used as human shields.

Responding to multiple allegations, including the persecution and extermination of Bosnian Croats which gave rise to the term “ethnic cleansing” Mr Karadzic said; “instead of being accused, I should have been rewarded for all the good things I have done.” Such claims were greeted with cries of “he’s lying!” from the public gallery, yet Radovan Karadzic certainly appears to believe every word he says. Convincing the judges however, may prove a tougher task.

The Karadzic trial began three years ago, and that of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ended up lasting longer than he did. These length litigations may force a postponement of any potential sense of collective closure for those affected, and yet the need for justice endures.

Many families of the 96 victims of the Hillsborough disaster refused to collect the death certificates pertaining to their lost loved ones, unable as they were to reconcile themselves to the authenticity of the inquest they emerged from. With the announcement this week from Dominic Grieve QC that he will apply to quash the original verdicts of accidental death, those actions now feel vindicated.

John F. Kennedy said that every time a person “strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope,” and when you add the ripples together, we can “build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” 

Amen mate.

A parent's worst nightmare.

The Indian physician and author Deepak Chopra wrote; ‘There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.’ Although you can’t fully insulate the innocent, and maybe you shouldn’t, recent events can barely fail to thrust into an ever sharper focus, the delicate balance parents face in policing those doorways.

It was a wearyingly familiar sight, hope palpably draining from the faces of the tireless ranks of volunteers and rescue professionals as the search for April Jones made its sad, semantic shift to a murder inquiry. The only suspect, Mark Bridger has now been remanded in custody, to appear on January 11^th, charged with April’s abduction, murder, and attempting to pervert the course of justice through the assumed concealment of her body. The painstaking process of evidence gathering will continue, as the world watches on, helpless but for empathy, pondering how to permit our kids the adventure of independence, whilst protecting their passage through childhood.

For me, those grainy CCTV images of little James Bulger being lead away by the hand linger long in my conflicted consciousness, making objectivity unlikely when my daughter bemoans her perceived absence of personal freedoms. I trust her, it’s everyone else that bothers me. Statistics surrounding child abduction are not absolute, however in May of this year the Sun claimed one goes missing every three minutes. These figures naturally feature runaways, and those that return home, often unreported, yet it is believed that around 150 children are taken by strangers every year in the UK. Perhaps the lasting legacy of the unimaginable limbo in which Kate and Gerry McCann now exist, is an increased awareness of abduction when navigating the daily dilemmas of family logistics. One wrong decision might be all it takes.

Although no surprise to some, the snowballing revelations surrounding the late Sir Jimmy Savile have sent further shivers down the spine of a society at pains to protect its most vulnerable. If even half what is alleged proves accurate, we face another collective failure to have missed the signals, and maybe worse.

Widespread suspicion of Savile’s sexual preferences seems evident, but as a leading establishment entity, not to mention a well-connected and commercially significant figure, this was an inconvenient truth. Many in the media would not readily bite the hand that feeds, whatever the dirt under its finger nails. Even some of Savile’s prolific charity work can now be deemed uncomfortably cynical, given that many of the victims of his alleged abuse were reportedly recruited from children’s homes.

That his own family have consigned his headstone to landfill is as close to a conviction as it comes. This posthumous punishment seems the only suitable sanction, since the called-for stripping of his knighthood is apparently not applicable. Such honours are deemed to exist solely for the duration of a person’s live, naturally expiring on death. That said, the question remains as to how the honours system conferred the knighthood, potentially dignifying the actions of an abuser, against what now appears to have been a background of serious and widespread allegations.

 If children embody hope, walking symbols of the latent potential of an unwritten future, then taking the life, or indeed the innocence of a child, is the bitter final refuge of one whose hope has gone. The final betrayal of the victims would be our collective failure to confront not only those directly responsible, but also those who turned a blind eye.

A bit of Mitchell and Terry.

Andrew Mitchell has probably never felt much like John Terry before, but he may be starting to. “I did not use the words attributed to me,” the Chief Whip has claimed, after casually disembarking from a Volkswagen Polo, shunning the usual ministerial motor in a clearly choreographed attempt at not being the sort of chap who says “plebs” to policemen.

In contrast, the former England captain has embraced the possibility that he’s burnt his bridges, and jumped. The Chelsea skipper has retired from international football on the eve of his FA hearing for alleged racist abuse, claiming the Football Association had made his position “untenable”. Having already been cleared in the law-courts, he perhaps feels there's no founding for further interference. The FA clearly do. If found guilty however, the club will likely cleave to their captain, as Liverpool over Suarez, and the spectre of racism will still follow football until purged from the peer group that supports it.

The robust ranting of Andrew Mitchell, sounding more like a character from Eastenders than a former UN peacekeeper, was reportedly in response to a police rebuke on his cycling habits. The officer was allegedly on the angry end of an aggressive appraisal of his social standing, liberally loaded with the industrial invective we might more expect in the Chelsea changing room. The police log quotes the use of “plebs”, “morons” and enough fornicatory phraseology to embarrass a rapper. The Prime Minister’s spokesman says there is no need for an investigation, or an exact explanation of what Anglo-Saxon was uttered, because Mr Mitchell has already apologised. And indeed he has, twice. Whilst denying the verbose vocabulary, he has publicly regretted his rudeness, and the stage-managed ‘sorry’ still seems odds-on to save his skin, but betting is not yet suspended.

Where I come from they taught us; “don’t sh*t on your doorstep.” For the future benefit of Mr Mitchell, that useful maxim should possibly stretch to any doorsteps with policemen standing on them.

Any 'Closer' will cost you.

As French privacy laws apparently prevent “any wilful violation of the private life”, the Prophet Mohammed might also wish they extended to those no longer living. Just as the jungle of journalists camped outside the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Nanterre were packing up their tents, in another part of Paris, the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was preparing to publish images depicting the prophet in “particularly explicit poses.” 

Relief was palpable on the faces of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge yesterday, as they enjoyed a convivial cavort with smiling locals on the island of Tuvalu, on the last leg of their tour to the Far East and South Pacific. The injunction granted to prevent further publication of topless shots of the Duchess by French Closer cannot erase the images from public consciousness, or computers, but can confirm that a line has been drawn over which the long of lens may only peer at their peril. Few in France frankly see the sense in penalising the publication of pictures already made public. However, a refusal to lunge at every legal avenue available would be teetering on a tacit acceptance of such an intrusion as an unavoidable side-effect of celebrity. With the spectre of the shameful shenanigans with which the paparazzi pestered Princess Diana no doubt present in their peripheral vision, the royal couple have drawn a necessary distinction. Whilst a pact persists between dodgy D-listers and less scrupulous snappers, in which dignity is a collateral casualty in their mutual pursuit of front page pictures, William and Kate are cut from classier cloth. They are a professional pairing, as ably displayed by the ease with which they worked the crowds on the Solomon Islands, barely betraying their understandable anguish as they grinned in grass skirts and sipped coconut cocktails. 

While the royal couple have been pressing the flesh in the Far East, and preventing its further exposure from the courtrooms of Paris, outrage at “Innocence of the Muslims” continues. The American made short film has ignited indignant protests across the Muslim world. Reuters report riot police deployed to control crowds marching on the US consulate in Karachi, with similar scenes duplicated in Jakarta, Kabul, and Beirut. After the US Ambassador to Libya was among four Americans killed amid violent protests in Benghazi, President Obama typically tip-toed the tightrope of Anglo-Arab diplomacy. Whilst condemning any attempt “to denigrate the religious beliefs of others”, he took pains to maintain that there could be “no justification for this type of senseless violence.”

The whole furore is more about freedom than film. The picture itself has all the accumulated poise and potency of a clumsy GCSE drama project. From a purely personal perspective, I’d be challenged to summon up any murderous zeal from such a laughable and pointless pantomime. Unless of course, I was very angry anyway.  

Bigot-Gate II

228,000 people have responded to the government consultation on same-sex marriage, and 50,000 to that regarding HS2, so from a population of 62,641,000, the overwhelming majority did not respond at all. It’s not that folk don’t care about spending £32.7 billion knocking 40 minutes off a trip to Birmingham, or if civil partnerships need a nudge in the nuptial direction, it’s just that most of us are rather busy.

Some however, may not be busy enough. Such was the clamour when Nick Clegg’s office released details of last night’s speech, in which opponents of the ‘equalities agenda’ were allegedly about to be branded as ‘bigots’, that the wording was withdrawn within an hour and a half. The Deputy PM said it was a mistake, just a rogue draft that slipped out, possibly under a door, and that bigot is “not the kind of word that I would use.” Ok, why not?

Bigotry is intolerance to others opinions, and referring to bigots is an opinion in itself. If we have reached the stage where it is not tolerated to discuss intolerance, then free speech is really only free for those who agree.

Clinking glasses to the coalition’s consultation on gay marriage, Mr Clegg was apparently due to declare that “continued trouble in the economy gives the bigots a stick to beat us with…” Hardly incendiary, even in a dry summer, and yet his aides duly dashed out a denial, such was the size of the stick they in turn were hit with. No-one was to be directly accused of bigotry, and neither has the Lib Dem leader been, he is merely guilty just of almost uttering the word. None-the-less, Conservative MP Peter Bone said he should really resign, to a chorus of others tut-tutting on Twitter. Whether you agree with same sex marriage or not, surely the reaction is ridiculous.  

Of course, the speed with which this semantic scandal was sanctioned owes much to the memory of Gordon Brown’s brush with one Mrs Duffy of Rochdale. The former PM famously failed to field her questions on the economy, or politely pick her up on her reference to “flocking Eastern Europeans” for that matter, before mumbling “bigoted woman” into the smouldering ashes of his election chances. 

It was Brown’s predecessor, Tony Blair, who championed the Civil Partnerships Act, affording same sex couples equal rights under law. In seeking to secure his own liberal legacy with same-sex marriages, David Cameron has no harder sell than to the barracking benches behind him. There may be ‘bigots’ abiding on both sides of the debate, but surely the strength of our democracy is in the tolerance of others opinions. In an ideal world, our collective task is to ensure that even attitudes from extreme ends of the spectrum have the right to a voice, but within that, taking individual responsibility, so that no voice disrupts the harmony of another. We don’t live in an ideal world of course, but that is not an excuse to stop trying to.

Cameron's refurbished cabinet.

If you took a spirit level to the Prime Minister’s shiny new cabinet, you might find it leaning to the right. Emerging refreshed from its first ministerial make-over, the foundations are familiar, but the new paintwork may look a darker hue of blue.

Incoming Environment Secretary Owen Paterson is an acknowledged eurosceptic, so expect enough battling with Brussels to satisfy even the most brazen backbencher. Chris Grayling is the robust replacement for Ken Clarke as Justice Minister, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer is perhaps a tad too combustible to leave wandering the chambers unchallenged, so becomes a ‘minister without portfolio’.  Sounding much like a poet without a pen, this roving brief may yet serve to support the current incumbent of No.11, depending on the length of his leash.

After recent healthcare reforms, one might struggle to find a less popular minister than the outgoing Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, except perhaps his replacement, Jeremy Hunt. A serial survivor, he has deftly emerged from accusations of ministerial code violations, and inappropriate proximity to press impresarios, briefly basked in the reflected glory of the London Olympics and promptly landed a promotion. Deserved reward or poisoned chalice? Maybe both.

The most controversial casualty of the cabinet cull could be Justine Greening. After just ten months as Transport Secretary, she’s clearing her desk, her thinly veiled frustration shared in typically magnified manner by Boris Johnson. As MP for Putney-on-flight-path, Ms Greening was obliged to oppose a third Heathrow runway, considered closer to the Boris Island brigade, advocates of an airport in the Thames estuary. The Mayor will naturally miss a well-placed proponent, and suggested the reshuffle showed a Downing Street thawing towards Heathrow expansion.

If that were the case, then Justine Greening was a curious choice to begin with, given the location of her constituency. A cynic might assert that at the time of her appointment then, the headlock from the airport lobby was notably looser. And so, against the backdrop of mumbled confirmations of manifesto commitments, an independent review into airport capacity has been birthed, and the new Transport Secretary will be Patrick McLoughlin, whose attitude to the Heathrow expansion appears agnostic. Conspiracy theorists may yet have cause to self-congratulate.

Mitt's runnning mate

As Mitt Romney’s shaky one-man road-show reeled in some reinforcement from Paul Ryan, Rupert Murdoch described the Republican presidential candidate’s choice of running mate as “almost perfect”, and the Democrats may gleefully agree.

Mr Ryan was presented in faintly farcical manner, billed as the “next President” by his bumbling boss, who then interrupted his speech to correct the cock-up, inadvertently painting it as a possibly more palatable option. When unhindered however, Ryan revealed the easy, affable intelligence apparently absent from his campaign colleague. Whether or not you can digest the doctrine, it is hard to knock Ryan’s delivery.

Regarded as the furthest to the right of Romney’s options, Paul Ryan, at 42, has already represented his home state of Wisconsin in Congress for seven terms. As chairman of the committee overseeing the federal budget, he has also authored an alternative to Barack Obama’s budget. His “Path to Prosperity” reads like chapters chopped from the conservative bible. The plan proposes slashing the soaring US debt more dramatically than the present administration would dare, radically reducing government spending, whilst cutting tax for top earners. A familiar story to that told on this side of the pond of course, but one yet to produce a happy ending.

The Republican guard will no doubt relish Paul Ryan’s robust plans, his insightful intellect and his considerable contrast to the gaffe-prone Governor Romney, and yet his selection of side-kick is not without its risks. Democrats will dine out on the perception that the “Path to Prosperity” may not perhaps be wide enough for everyone. Ryan’s mooted reform of Medicare, for example, has caused concern for the over 65s. Acting as a guarantee of medical services for ageing Americans, it’s the nearest they get to an NHS, and meddling with that may not sit well with the elderly of the electorate. In addition, despite being a fully paid-up member of the stimulus-sceptic society, Ryan has been forced to admit that he went cap in hand for the very funding he refused to support, having twice denied he did.

But these are just the early skirmishes, and with the cast now complete, the circus starts in earnest. President Obama, as incumbent in uncertain times, has a hard sell on his hands, and with Ryan in his corner, Romney now packs a more powerful punch in the policy department. Donations to the Republican campaign have reportedly rocketed in response to Ryan’s recruitment, so with both sides rolling up their sleeves, the fight is unlikely to be clean, and it certainly won’t be cheap.  

Parking a rover on a Martian mountain.

To great fanfare, a Nasa probe about the size of a small hatchback, has landed on the planet Mars, and will be shuffling about for the next couple of years looking for signs of life. I have had a similar experience in Holyhead.

Billions of years ago, so science insists, there was water present on the red planet, so this mission is to ascertain if there was anything around to drink it. Our heroic hatchback will therefore be on sightseeing and soil sampling detail, and like any self respecting tourist on a daytrip to Margate, the Curiosity Rover will send back copious holiday snaps, and spend a large part of its time digging.  

The journey to Mars is a bottom-numbing 570 million kilometres, but at least with unmanned space-flight you can cut out the toilet breaks. The final daring descent to the planet’s surface is the most critical phase, affectionately dubbed “seven minutes of terror”. As the radio signals take around 14 minutes to travel back to Earth, the good folk at Nasa had to wait, like agonised expectant parents, to see if Curiosity could touchdown in tact, or become a rather pricey jigsaw puzzle.

As it was, the number cruncher’s calculations were correct. The probe pierced the planet’s atmosphere at 13,000 mph before decelerating rapidly using a canny combination of parachute and retrorockets, which proved effective, but more expensive that my wife thumping an imaginary brake pedal with her size fives and screaming. The landing manoeuvre was then completed by the “Sky Crane” lowering the rover safely to the surface on nylon ropes.

The good news was greeted on the ground with gleeful delirium. For many, the mission was nearly ten years in the making, and the relief was palpable in an outpouring of emotion seldom seen in those with more letters after their names than in them, even American ones.  

But this is a modern mission by any means. Curiosity, like any gal about the galaxy, has her own Twitter feed, and when settled into her new surroundings, she tweeted: “I’m safely on the surface of Mars. GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!”

Sadly, Gale has so far declined to comment.

Honouring Shafilea Ahmed.

“Feelings of sympathy and revulsion” should be set aside, the jury have been told, as they retire to consider their verdicts in the trial of Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed. The couple, of Pakistani origin, stand accused of murdering their 17 year old daughter, Shafilea, at the family home in Warrington in September 2003, in a row over her desire for a western lifestyle.

During the three month trial, the court heard details of how the teenager drank bleach on a family holiday to Pakistan, fearing she would be forced into an arranged marriage and denied a return to the UK. Having also listened to the testimony of  the couple’s younger daughter Alesha, who claims to have witnessed her parents forcing a plastic bag into Shafilea’s mouth to suffocate her, setting aside sympathy and revulsion may yet be the hardest task the jury have faced.

Honour killings are hidden crimes by nature, statistics are therefore challenging to collate and likely to depict a picture that falls short of the true scale. However, in March of this year the issue was the subject of a Panorama investigation by the BBC, revealing that a national helpline for “honour” related domestic violence receives 500 calls per month. In addition, the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, in a survey of UK police forces, found the number of honour crimes to be 2,823 per year, which is almost eight a day.

Before being taken to Pakistan on a one way ticket, Shafilea Ahmed approached Warrington Borough Council for emergency housing. Her application suggests her father Iftikhar was all too adept at setting “feelings of sympathy” aside, going beyond a simple cry for help into a catalogue of alleged abuse. She mentioned her not-unfounded fears of an arranged marriage, “regular incidents of violence” from the age of 15, and having been prevented from attending college and her part time job. Depicting a build up of violent treatment at the hands of her parents, the 17 year old had clearly felt that the involvement of the police and social services would be enough to secure her safety. Instead, she disappeared in September 2003, her body discovered on the banks of the River Kent in Cumbria in February of 2004.   

Did authorities with the power to intervene suffer inertia to avoid a charge of racial intolerance? Did they lack the legal teeth to react as robustly as the situation demanded? When lives are taken within our borders through a sense of honour that does not belong, our collective honour rests on these questions being asked and answered. In order for the judicial system to be beyond reproach, society’s representatives in the jury must indeed endeavour to transcend sympathy and revulsion, as Mr Justice Roderick Evans indicates. If however, as a wider community, we ever cease to be so stirred then we will have failed Shafilea Ahmed for a second time.

Britain's well-being unbuttoned.

Anne Frank wrote that “we all live with the objective of being happy,” and to gauge how we are getting on, this week the Office for National Statistics revealed the results of our first national wellbeing survey. Launched towards the end of 2010, this was David Cameron’s happiness index, a drive to discern our success more from the size of our smiles than our surplus shekels. To recap, then, as now, we had none.

The Prime Minister said; “It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money and it's time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB – general wellbeing.” The ONS budget for harnessing the happy stats is £2 million a year, and it aspires towards a better appreciation of what actually makes us happy, in order to make that illusive reality easier to reach for. “Improving our society's sense of wellbeing is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times,” Mr Cameron concluded.

Greeted by Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Michael Dughner as “a statement of the bleeding-obvious”, the survey found our most satisfied souls to be teenagers and the elderly, residents of Orkney and Shetland and married home-owners in steady employment. Greater minds than mine will no doubt deal with the more delicate deductions, but it appears that avoiding the rat race is as much a worthy way to wellbeing as winning it. By and large, those questioned were happier in work than unemployed, and yet the more satisfied sections of society were revealed as those least likely to have a full-time job. Home-owners were generally more content than their counterparts in rented accommodation, and yet teenagers were amongst the happiest overall, but the least likely to have a mortgage. Interestingly, black people taking part in the survey considered themselves less content than those questioned from Indian origin.

Although looking beyond the pursuit of profit is no doubt a noble cause, how exactly these findings filter into government policy may be as difficult to discern as the key to contentment itself. HHkkkHowever, Mr Cameron can take comfort from the fact that he is not alone in striving to broaden the basis for defining success. Nicolas Sarkozy commissioned a similar report, in 2009, seeking to crack “the cult of the market”, and feature national wellbeing in GDP figures. And we all know what happened to him.

In all, the Office for National Statistics present a predictably mixed picture, pointing to conclusions many might be forgiven for thinking self-evident. Perhaps it’s your attitude to your lot, not whether you have a lot, or not, that sets the scale of your smile.

Oops, need troops!

From the country that brought you the Millennium Dome, please welcome, London 2012. A fortnight away from an event planned over seven years, we find a security personnel shortfall of about 3000 staff. The MoD, already providing 13,500 helping hands, now need up to 17,000, many of whom will be servicemen and women returning home from Afghanistan to find their holiday plans postponed.

G4S, the company with the lucrative security contract for the Games, have others too. The world’s largest private security firm also manage immigration detention centres, conduct deportations, empty cash machines, read meters, and have been bidding to take over large tranches of police operations.

Although the current kerfuffle is on Coalition time, the company won the contract on Labour’s watch. In response, Shadow Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said that G4S should really have been monitored “day by day”, to be certain they were as good as their word. Why, is the office staffed entirely by four-year-olds? I monitor my son’s hot chocolate making activities, but if he was a veteran of several foreign conflicts I would hope that only minimal supervision would be necessary.

In fairness to G4S, the initial government estimate of 10,000 security staff needed for the Games, was revised up last year to around 23,500. However, every time the goal posts moved, the match fee increased. The Telegraph report leaked Home Office documents revealing the fee for G4S staff management went from £7.3 million to £60 million. With all that cash in the till, why not sub-contract? Industry insiders say the staffing shortfall could have been easily met by London agencies alone. Instead, it seems that students, some of questionable suitability, were being shipped in on £8.50 per hour as a supplement, and without sufficient success. As incompetency is more contagious than the common cold, it should also be no surprise to learn that no penalty clause was included for failure to deliver on the £284 million contract.

One might expect future G4S bids to be subject to increased scrutiny on the back of this understaffing oversight, but such is not always the way in Westminster. If the Olympics prove an unparalleled paragon of sporting success, and a commercial combustion engine to aid our ailing economy, then the G4S fiasco will be a forgotten footnote. But that is an “if” as big as the fee they will no doubt fail to forfeit.  

Welcome to Britain, bring brollies.

There was a hill rising up above the Cornish town I was born in. The locals said if you couldn’t see the top of it, that meant it was raining, and if you could, it soon would be. I dare say its whereabouts have been well and truly shrouded for weeks now, as the West Country is awash with, in some places, a month’s rainfall in 24 hours, little respite after the wettest June since 1860.

At the time of writing, 149 flood alerts have been put in place, 13 flood warnings, three of them severe, and the Olympic torch relay has been halted. Presumably they feared it might go out, and it’s harder to light than a wet fag in a thunderstorm.

One wonders if the torch now regrets selecting the UK as its destination of choice for a little summer saunter. It started out being lit by the sun, in Athens, surrounded by dozens of statuesque looking types in togas. It will complete its sodden sojourn in Stratford, surrounded by pale people in anoraks.

As if the imminent risk of drowning was not enough to trouble the travelling Olympians on their way to London 2012, it now seems our roads system requires a little TLC; truck loads of cash. Londoners have only just reacquainted themselves with the myriad joys of the Hammersmith flyover, after its £10 million MOT, and now the M4 has had to be closed, because it’s cracked. The offending fissure was found in the Boston Manor viaduct, meaning the main route into London from Heathrow is out of action between Junctions 1 and 2. The British Olympic Committee have had one successful bid already, maybe the next should be for spare bridges on ebay. Curing the cracks will apparently take five days, less if they just cover them with woodchip wallpaper.

After a semi-sodden Silverstone, a demi-drenched Diamond Jubilee and the usual wash outs at Wimbledon, it is perplexing that we even plan any non-precipitation proof parties at all. I would favour the erection of a giant awning, from Hastings to Holyhead, under which we retreat, as one, from the first shower of spring to the final soaking in September. As the government are found of telling us, Britain is open for business, but best bring a brolly, and maybe a bridge.

Diamond cut: Bob-a-Job no more.

It turns out that diamonds are not forever. In the wake of the rate-rigging revelations Barclays Chairman Marcus Agius fell nobly upon his sword. Two days later, Chief Executive Bob Diamond has toppled too, but needed no small nudging. Already due to be lightly grilled by the Treasury Committee on Wednesday, the heat on Mr Diamond was increasing daily, to an extent that he felt it was “damaging the franchise”.

Chancellor George Osborne said it was the right decision, hinting at a sea-change to a “culture of responsibility in British banking”. Central to that should be the impending parliamentary review into banking practices, announced yesterday by the Prime Minister.

With labour leaning more towards a full public inquiry however, Ed Miliband feels that Britain won’t buy “politicians investigating bankers”. After assorted scandals and self-service on both sides, some may indeed struggle to assess which have cost us more and helped us less. By contrast, David Cameron concludes that a parliamentary inquiry is “the right approach”, as it should be swifter to establish. The theory goes that resulting recommendations, if accepted, could seamlessly slip into the Financial Services Bill. Wonder who’ll end up paying that one.

 Political posturing aside, the focus should be product not process. Surely the success of this inquiry swings on not needing another one next time. I concur in part with the TUC’s Brendan Barber, that it’s not “the number of heads that roll, but whether it leads to the root and branch reforms…”

 For manipulating the inter-bank lending rate, Barclays were fined £290 million and the boss lost his bonus. It’s a sizeable slap to the Rolex adorned wrist, but is it a sufficient deterrent for the Masters of the Universe? Mr Diamond, a former boss of Barclays’ investment arm, said; “I am sorry that some people acted in a manner not consistent with our culture and values.” Some may suspect the exact opposite is true, that it’s the casino culture created in some sectors that encourages actions consistent with a complete lack of values.

Diamond has been cut, but whether he was just grazed, or polished up and knighted is more symbolic than seismic. If you divorce retail banking from its riskier relation, cross-contamination could conceivably be controlled. Otherwise, without robust regulation, the great and the good of Westminster and the City will have their backs mutually scratched and patted, but rarely put up, to protect from rocking the boat. It’s time to set a new course.  

Green light for fuel U-turn

The cheering from the Conservative back benches when the Chancellor announced his change of heart on the proposed fuel tax increase this week was pure theatre. Only in Westminster would a panto-baddie be clapped for deciding not to take sweets from the kids after all. To his credit though, George Osborne went firmly onto the front foot, a deft move when simultaneously back-tracking. Without the intended 3p increase, he said; “fuel duty will be 10p a litre lower than planned by the last Labour government.”  Grasping the moral high-ground, or simply clutching at straws, it’s still a welcome break to anyone with a set of car keys. However, stating that the move would “fuel our recovery” may be a claim too far from the Chancellor. Not actively making something less likely could only be deemed encouragement through highly creative interpretation.

In contrast to an ensemble performance in the Commons, where the Chancellor relished the well-meant mumbling from a supporting cast of backbench Conservatives, when it came to defending the U-turn at the hands of Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight, Economic Secretary to the Treasury Chloe Smith was sent in alone. Only the day before, the Transport Minister Justine Greening had been pressing the case for the impending fuel tax increase, and now the Economic Secretary looked like she’d learnt of the U-turn in the taxi to the studio. Although some Paxman post-mortems can be surgical, this had all the finesse of a carpet beater, and Ms Smith had been hung out to dry.

A surprise to some it seems, yet after pasties, charities and caravans, the change of plan is not unprecedented, and follows intense cross-party pressure on No.11. The shadow chancellor Ed Balls had called for the rethink in an article in the Sun the same morning, saying “the government should be giving our economy a boost…not clobbering families, businesses and pensioners.” After the announcement, whilst welcoming the about-face on fuel duty, he added; “will he now also do a U-turn on the millionaire’s tax and rescind the granny-tax rise?” Don’t hold your breath, the lost fuel duty revenue alone amounts to around £550 million. Although it’s claimed the spare cash will come from underspends in other government departments, we are unlikely to learn which lucky budgets will be burgled before the Autumn, presumably  as the Treasury checks for loose change down the back of the Chesterfields.

Childcare: Cameron to check out Swedish models?

A government commission on childcare is being set up to investigate possible ways to ease prices and increase places, as many working parents, yours truly included, have found themselves spending more on nannies or nurseries than they do on their mortgage.  When both partners share the bread-winning duties, associated childcare costs can typically top £5,000 per annum, even for part-time provision, and you can treble that in the capital, says the Childcare Trust in a recent report.

Lead by Children’s Minister Sarah Teather, the commission will look at the potential for making the school day longer, focusing on the issue of expanding “wrap-around care”. Ms Teather explains this to be both breakfast and after-school clubs, provided by schools on their own initiative, or “working with private sector providers or voluntary sector groups”. Additional aims of the commission include a general  examination of the effectiveness of government support, and any scope for cutting red tape that increases cost but not quality.

Alongside such cost-cutting measures considered, may come a loosening of related legislation. Currently, childcare providers working with the under -fives, need to maintain a ratio of one adult to three children. Conservative back-bencher Liz Truss has been arguing for an increase in that ratio to one for every five. Now, mercifully, my childcare commitments have so far been solely of an amateur nature. However, I find it alarming enough to return from an unscheduled nappy refurbishment to find the older sibling casually juggling cutlery, or dining on play-dough, let alone what toxic tasks another three of them might have undertaken. But I’m all for balancing the budget.  

By all means allow our child-minders another two charges, just first explain why that encourages them to cut costs down for the rest of us. Our bailed-out banks fail to pass on the bargain base-rates, and OPEC omits to increase oil production despite the punitive price of petrol. If there is a model for sharing the benefits of government intervention and easing market conditions, then it’s certainly not set in stone, or even plasticine.

Foremost in the great and mighty minds involved in the study, we are told, will be learning from some excellent examples of childcare amongst our European cousins. Now, the Swedes must have developed vertigo from the pedestal they’ve been put on, when it comes to state-sponsored pre-school provision, so I predict glowing overtures towards the Swedish system, which is to be rightly applauded. However, any attempt to duplicate the Scandinavian blueprint would be to run a Formula One team on a Sunday league budget. The Swedes pay higher taxes, they didn’t invade Iraq, they have 500 troops in Afghanistan to our 9500, and they don’t have nuclear weapons, let alone a plan to replace Trident. For some inane reason they have placed nurturing the next generation over foreign interventionism and cold-war paranoia, which leaves a lot more cash for crayons. The more fool them!

Diplomacy in the Dug-Outs of Euro 2012

With Euro 2012 beginning, the off-pitch political posturing now sees UK government ministers boycotting England’s group games in protest at “selective justice” and “the rule of law” in Ukraine, the increasingly controversial co-host of the tournament. The comments relate principally to the case of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, jailed for seven years for supposed abuse of office, a conviction the EU have condemned. Tymoshenko spent 20 days on hunger strike, and was tortured and beaten, according to her family. The 51 year old, who lost the disputed 2010 election, is one of several opposition politicians to have been arrested in a move that is widely considered to be politically motivated.

 Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is certain to have much more leg-room in his VIP box for the football than first thought. German Chancellor Angel Merkel made her intentions clear last month, stating that unless human rights improved in the country, she and her cabinet would stay away. The French followed suit, as did the President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso. In fact, the British boycott is significantly less bold than that of many neighbours, and late in coming. The official statement also cites the “minister’s busy schedules” as a reason for non-attendance, hardly the rhetoric of political hard-ball. In addition, only the group games are mentioned. This may be in rueful recognition of previous doleful displays in major competitions however. The possible lack of an English presence after the pool matches may be more about performance than politics.

 A Foreign Office spokesman has been quoted as saying that potential ministerial attendance at the quarter final stage and beyond is being kept “under review”. No doubt. If Roy Hodgson’s men manage the unimaginable, and force their way into the final, it would present the Prime Minster with an awkward diplomatic dilemma. No politician would wish to pass up the potential of surfing some sport-induced patriotism, with all the photo opportunities that provides. Yet abandoning the principals which prevented your previous attendance means moral masochism, and an open goal for the opposition.

 Added to this political hot potato are the not-unfounded fears from travelling fans and footballers alike about racist abuse at the Euros, coupled with concerns over potential strong-arm tactics from the patrols of riot police being prepped for the occasion. Former Labour Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe feels the British government boycott could further fuel anti-English feeling amongst supporters at the tournament, whilst fans fear a backlash from Ukrainian and Polish police.

 All in all, the Prime Minister might be forgiven for privately hoping the three Lions limp home with wounded pride and empty paws. Against the backdrop of a back-firing budget, the post-match post-mortems might provide a welcome distraction. Even the Coalition can’t be called to account for a lack of midfield imagination and failure to capitalise on set-piece situations.  

You Are Who You stand behind.

Loyalty is a rare and precious commodity, like a flat stomach after forty, and just as hard to regain when it’s gone. Retailers have long since sussed the need for enticing our continuous commitment to them, with loyalty cards, Nectar points, and air miles. It’s a tricky task to even grab a cappuccino without being “incentivised” into patronising the same place when your caffeine level next crashes.

 But is this simply a one-sided relationship? Is repeat custom conditional on a complimentary coffee? One size does not necessarily fit all. Savings and service are certainly a selling point, but branding is about more than just not losing livestock. In amongst the desperate pre-Christmas discounts, during last year’s December gift gathering, I clocked one shop distinctly devoid of red-sticker reductions and seasonal under-selling.“Superdry” is apparently a fashion favourite of David Beckham, amongst others, and their distressed-look designs don’t seem to suffer the ignominy of discounts, because they don’t need to. Punters were parting with hard won wages willingly, buying into the brand without a bargain bin in the building.

 The lure of the label is intrinsically linked to identity. We are what we eat, but also what we sport and support. Car stickers constantly catalogue our allegiances to clubs and causes. Be it the National Trust, Nottingham Forest, or Say No to GMOs, some of us are so keen to state our support, we sing it out to those we’ve not even met yet, whether this may mitigate the chance of such a meeting or not.

 This week the Prime Minister reaffirmed his support for his Culture Secretary, despite Jeremy Hunt’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry indicating that his office had close and continued contact with News Corps during the bartering over the BskyB bid. Vince Cable was removed from his quasi-judicial role in the process, when unguarded comments revealed his personal bias, only to be replaced by Mr Hunt, whose pro-Murdoch position is a matter of public record. Yet Mr Cameron is satisfied the Culture Secretary “acted properly”. Why? Because he said he did. Oh, that’s okay then. I presume Mr Hunt submitted a note from his mum as evidence and was closely monitored to check he wasn’t crossing his fingers.

 Labour insists the Culture Secretary broke the ministerial code and misled parliament. By only sending him to Lord Leveson however, the Prime Minister perhaps felt that would not be discovered. No harm in standing behind someone if you’ve made certain they can’t fall over.

 However, the Telegraph reports the chairman of the Commons Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) warning that the initiation of an investigation into breaches of the ministerial code do not need a nod from the PM. Mr Cameron has used more robust rhetoric in defence of Mr Hunt, than he did for the now arrested Andy Coulson. But before you nail your colours to the mast, better check which way the wind is blowing, because the forecast still looks decidedly changeable.

Who Gains From The Games?

If you need a light, the Olympic torch is currently careering round the West Country, if you’d prefer one as a permanent fixture, you can pick up your own on Ebay. The torches are valued at £495, but carriers have the option to purchase for £295, and are free to flog on after use. But best be warned, the bidding is barmy. I could find little available for under four figures, rising to around £145,000 for the bronzed brazier whose current owner is donating 75% of the cash to the charity Whizz Kidz. My advice would be the replica torch as a cupcake decoration for £1.09 plus postage.

All the pomp, and edible.

 That torch bearers have chosen to sell-on their illustrious cargo has angered some, which seems a trifle harsh. They will, after all, be some of the very few to make any money at all from the upcoming Games, so good luck to them.  

 Ok, it would be churlish to assume that an international festival of sport will not attract commercial opportunities and resulting income. However, the outlay is principally from the public purse, which is not where the profits will end up.  Indeed, opportunities have already been missed to generate some home grown earnings. 84% of all the souvenirs sold on the London 2012 website were not manufactured in the UK. Even the eleven million tickets for the Olympics and Paralympics, will not have been printed here. The multi-million pound contract went to an American firm based in Arkansas, and the tickets are being shipped 4,500 miles instead.

 To be fair, the contracts have been awarded to the most competitive bidders, but as the Games is essentially not a commercial entity, why does the bottom line have to be top of the agenda? Money sent abroad will be spent abroad, whereas, home grown contracts, even at a slightly higher price, would mean British wages feeding back into the system. It’s the kind of thing politicians would say, but finance finds famous friends. I did not “back the bid”, but surely if the country is footing the bill, it should benefit economically where possible.

 It’s hard to find exact figures for how much London 2012 is actually costing, but £11 billion seems a pretty reliable working estimate. For figure fans, that’s £11,000,000,000. Now, don’t get me wrong, that would only be an extravagant and senseless waste of resources if, for example, we were labouring under, let’s say, the deepest economic downturn in living memory. Oh, wait a minute…