Saturday, February 23, 2008 

A cheap holiday in someone else's misery.

Much risible finger-pointing and political point-scoring over the supposed "gaffe" by David Cameron of calling visits to Auschwitz a "gimmick". In actuality, the Tories, in a ham-fisted and similarly pathetic press release (PDF) attacking 26 supposed political gimmicks since Gordon Brown became prime minister, are criticising the fact that schools and colleges are still having to stump up £100 to fund the trips to Auschwitz, despite the £4.65 million of funding given towards it. Even this isn't clear: it's not apparent whether the schools would have to pay £100 for every sixth-former who wanted to go or even for just the two that the government are definitively providing funding for.

The Tories have hit back saying that they would provide funding in full for those who wanted to go (yeah, right), but the danger of linking "Auschwitz" to the word "gimmick" should have been plain to the most gormless of Conservative party workers doubtless employed to draw the document up. It was supposedly a response to a document released by Labour charting their top 50 "achievements", examined in detail by Lee Griffin here. The Tory document is just as dishonest as parts of that though: for instance, it attacks Brown for announcing a review of 24-hour drinking and for "his aides spinning" to the Mail that the policy would be scrapped, without providing evidence that was what actually occurred. That the review is presumed to find that the legislation is working well and therefore doesn't need to be changed is hardly gimmickry. It's on surer ground attacking Jacqui Smith over powers for confiscating alcohol from teenagers, powers the police already have, then blots its copy book over Jack Straw and titan prisons, which although an idiotic policy, has not been cancelled at all. It's similarly stupid over Caroline Flint's disgraceful plans on kicking social housing tenants out if they didn't find work, which was clearly being floated as an idea and not as actual policy. The charges of gimmickry over migrant charges and knife scanners are similarly unsubstantiated.

In any case, as Chris Paul points out, David Cameron is hardly one to talk about gimmicks when his whole reign has been one after the other. To bring this back to Auschwitz, I'm pretty sure that even the most feeble of teachers can express the horror of the extermination camps without actually needing to take students to see them at first hand. There's something eminently distasteful about places like Auschwitz and Belsen becoming almost tourist attractions; as powerful as I'm sure they are, and preserved as they should be, we really ought to be starting to make an effort to move on from the second world war, which still so dominates our thinking in a whole plethora of different ways. Believe it or not, there is history beyond Hitler, Stalin and the Holocaust. We must never forget, but nor should it constantly be on our minds.

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2/23/2008 09:13:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Say no to 24 hour thinking!

24-hour drinking fuels rise in crime, sighs the Telegraph. Nowhere in the article is the obvious pointed out: that because the change in the law has meant that the pubs/clubs now don't chuck out all at the same time, i.e. 11pm or 2am, it means that the police have been much better able to deal with offences that would have previously overwhelmed them.

As an actual police officer wrote on the Mailwatch blog:

The licensing act (24 hour) has also helped a great deal. Instead of kicking-out time for everywhere at 11pm, we’ve got slow dispersement into the night, so the police haven’t got a great mass of people all at once. Crime has ’shot up’ after the licensing Act because we CAN detect, arrest and deal with more people, rather than be swamped and therefore unable to arrest/detect any crime at all! This ‘crime-spike’ was intended by the Home Office and the police as a result of the above reason, but you won’t read that in the Daily Mail!

Nor in the Telegraph.

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2/23/2008 08:55:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Bizarro tabloid world.

There were calls last night for the abolition of calling for the abolition of the death penalty to be overturned after the latest horrific murder case to shock Britain reached its conclusion. As the killer of Sylvia Miller was sentenced to life imprisonment, her mother Edith Miller spoke out to reporters.

"Actually, I feel that justice has been done. It's unlikely that my daughter's killer will ever be released, and although I can never forgive or forget the immense pain he's caused to our family by taking away our beautiful daughter, I also don't see what putting him to death will achieve. I believe in justice, not vengeance, and I also don't believe that even if we had the death penalty it would have made him think twice before doing what he did."

In another surprise development, the police said that they were actually completely satisfied with the way the DNA database was currently working, and that they saw neither the need to extend it to encompass the entirety of Britain's population or to take samples from children as soon as they're pulled out of the womb. "Doing so would surely be one of the first steps towards a true police state, where you're presumed guilty until proved innocent," said PC Politically Correct, who then went off to inspect his recently delivered politically correct brigade new squad car. "Instead of being equipped with a loud, noisy siren, this new vehicle is instead fitted with an ice cream van's music player, which is intermittently interrupted with the word "police" whispered lightly so as not to disturb anyone," said the officer (cont. page 94)

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2/23/2008 08:30:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, February 22, 2008 

A pointless exercise in clearing everyone and questioning no one.

Reading Sir Christopher Rose's report (PDF) into the bugging of Sadiq Khan MP while he visited Babar Ahmed at Woodhill prison, you have to wonder what exactly the point of the whole exercise was. The findings may as well have been written by the police themselves; so unquestioning is Rose of the officers he interviewed who authorised the bugging, that he writes this in the 9th paragraph of the 18-page report:

I have borne in mind, in relation to all of those from whom I have obtained information, the possibility that serving some interest of their own might inspire a departure from candour and that none of them has been subject to the rigour of cross-examination such as a trial process would provide.

In other words they might have told me a complete cock and bull story, but nonetheless I've taken their comments in the spirit in which they were given. This is hardly the way to run any sort of investigation, let alone one into the bugging of an MP.

A good place for Rose to have started his inquiry might have been to talk to the former detective sergeant Mark Kearney, now facing what appear to be highly trumped up charges for "aiding and abetting gross misconduct in a public office". This is related to how Kearney was a source for local Milton Keynes Citizen journalist Sally Murrer, but the police themselves admit that no money passed between their hands. The Citizen is so dirt poor that its journalists are currently out on strike over pay and conditions; it simply couldn't afford the cheque-book journalism of the nationals. Kearney was just the sort of source those local journalists who get out of their offices on occasion have always had. The charges are supposedly based on stories Kearney told Murrer about a drug dealer and a footballer, but that now seems like the excuse for getting rid of him after he objected to bugging an MP. Kearney has since suffered a nervous breakdown because of the charges, while Murrer, a respected journalist, had her phone bugged, her home raided and was strip-searched after being arrested.

It's therefore rather surprising to read that Rose, who refers to Kearney as "X" in the report, hasn't talked to him. His reasons are as follows:

With regard to the former police officer, identified in the media, awaiting Crown Court trial on serious charges, to whom I shall refer as X, I have taken into account a further factor in addition to those referred to in the last paragraph. He is entitled to a fair trial. It would be highly unfortunate if the conduct of my inquiry were to have, or could be claimed to have, an adverse impact on that right.

Seeing as he's not been charged in relation with the bugging of Khan, how could talking to him possibly have an adverse impact on his right to a fair trial?

I have a statement from the then Deputy Governor of Woodhill (Mr Robert Davis) to whose office X had regular access and with whom Prison Intelligence Officers from Thames Valley Police (TVP) including X, had daily contact. I am also aware that, representing TVP, between mid-2004 and January 2007, X attended a total of about 17 regular meetings, every two or three months, of the ACPO Prison Intelligence Working Group chaired by Commander Sawyer of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). Those meetings were attended by, among others of varying ranks from Detective Constable upwards, Detective Superintendent McKinney, Head of the Counter-Terrorism Prisons Intelligence Unit and Detective Superintendent Report of Investigation Deal, Head of the Prison Advisers Section. Furthermore, Detective Superintendent McKinney, in the course of reviewing technical capability at Woodhill Prison, met X and other officers from TVP Prison Intelligence Unit on 3 September 2006, which was only a few weeks after Mr Khan’s last visit to Babar Ahmad in late June. At none of the many meetings which I have identified did X express to anyone concerns of any kind as to how counter-terrorism surveillance in prison was being carried out by him or anyone else. Nor did X take the less formal opportunities of access to Mr Davis to express any such concerns. Nor did he express such concerns to either of his two colleagues in TVP Prison Intelligence Unit based at Woodhill. In the light of these matters, I concluded that it was neither necessary nor appropriate for me either to seek information from X at this time or to delay this report until the criminal proceedings against him have been completed.

Rose doesn't mention if there were minutes taken of any of these meetings, which would show whether Kearney actually had raised his concerns. Instead it seems that he's simply taken the words of the officers at face value that he didn't ask questions about the righteousness of bugging an MP. The latest Private Eye (No. 1204) suggests that a Special Branch detective superintendent specifically thanked Kearney at one of these meetings for bugging Khan. This would presumably be McKinney. Rose has therefore dismissed any need to talk to Kearney, either because it might prejudice his trial but also because his superiors would be in trouble if they admitted that they had knowingly bugged an MP, and they told him that Kearney hadn't said anything to them about it. Brilliant!

Khan, in his statement to the inquiry, has quite reasonably expressed his exasperation and anger that the those authorising the bugging of Ahmed didn't know who he was, stating "[I]t beggars belief that [the police and prison authorities] did not know who I was". This isn't just someone with an ego throwing their weight around when they're not recognised; as Khan states, he visited Ahmed in 2004 on a legal visit before he dropped his work as a solicitor and became the Labour parliamentary candidate for Tooting. Khan was well known to the Met especially: for one, he was the National Black Police Association's solicitor, while he performed the same role for detective superintendent Ali Dizaei, who "Sir" Ian Blair was found guilty of overseeing the bugging of. Since the bugging, the police have quite openly said they knew of Khan, even allegedly describing him as a "subversive", presumably because he worked for Liberty. That they hadn't followed his move from lawyer to member of parliament is hardly likely.

The man who ultimately authorised the bugging of Khan was none other than our old friend the head of the Metropolitan police's counter-terrorism unit, Andy Hayman. He presided over the Forest Gate debacle, while he was also the officer severely reprimanded by the second IPCC report into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes. He resigned last December after other allegations were made that he had ran up expenses of £15,000 on police credit cards, and taken a female officer on foreign trips with him. He denies both. Rose writes this of what the bugging of Khan actually contained:

I called for the product of the monitoring on 21 May 2005 and 24 June 2006. It is obvious from the product that the conversation monitored on 21 May contained material plainly showing that Mr Khan was an MP. The record of monitoring on 24 June contains an express reference to him being an MP. It follows that those officers who monitored the visits and reviewed the detail of the product later had knowledge of that fact. There is nothing to suggest that any of these officers believed at the time that this fact was of any significance in relation to the surveillance.

This is important, as Rose goes on to record

That authorisation, subject to monthly review and three monthly renewal, effectively remained in force until December 2006. It was reviewed on 7 June by Mr Fuller and on 14 June 2005 by Mr Hayman. The record of that review indicates that information had been gained that a recently elected Member of Parliament had offered Babar Ahmad help to fight extradition but there is no indication that the Member of Parliament in question was Mr Khan. In relation to 24 June 2006, the authorisation was reviewed on 7 June 2006 by another Detective Constable, recommended to ACPO rank by Detective Superintendent McKinney, agreed to by Deputy Governor Davis and continued by Mr Hayman on 9 June 2006.

Hayman and all the other officers involved in authorising the surveillance would have presumably had the transcript of the first visit from the year previous where it was made obvious that Khan was an MP. Did they actually read it? If they had, they would surely have realised that Khan was the recently elected MP who had offered help to Ahmed to fight his extradition. There are a couple of other possibilities: that they were dealing with so many of these requests to bug terrorist suspects and those convicted alike that they were effectively just rubber-stamping them; or that they knew full well that Khan was an MP, were complicit in the bugging, and lied to Rose that they didn't know who he was.

Khan had submitted his request to visit Ahmed under the Approved Visitors Scheme for Category A prisoners prior to becoming an MP. This entailed him being visited by a detective constable from Special Branch, where he made clear that he had given up being a solicitor and was the Labour parliamentary candidate for Tooting. The DC recorded that Khan was "very affable and forthcoming". The report seems to consider that he was at fault for not thereafter informing the prison service that he was now an MP, where he didn't need to use the scheme at all. It seems if anything that the police and prison service took advantage of Khan's mistake, rather than it being his fault for not announcing himself properly.

Rose is quite right in concluding that the officers actually doing the bugging shouldn't have been expected to either know that Khan was an MP or of the Wilson doctrine, but those who authorised it certainly should have done. What they're relying on, apart from their denials that they knew that Khan was an MP, is that bugging as such isn't covered by the Wilson doctrine, which only deals with intercepts. Therefore, seeing as it was all done legitimately, this has been blown out of all proportion and MPs have been getting out of their prams for no good reason. At least, that seems to be the impression that the government wants to convey and that also the police want to remain. Rose also, despite the notable report in the Telegraph just over a week ago, says that there have been no requests to monitor legal visits to prisoners since 2005. As Spy Blog asks, what about prior to 2005?

Seeing as Jacqui Smith has since said that the law and guidelines covering bugging will be reviewed and that all visits by MPs to constituents must be confidential, is that the end of the matter? Well, no. The report is simply inadequate. As David Davis said, Rose concluded that there was "no useful purpose" in explaining the series of police authorisations, which on the contrary would have opened up why junior officials knew that Khan was an MP yet those authorising it claimed not to. Not to interview Kearney is frankly astonishing. It was also completely beyond the inquiry's remit to ask exactly why it was necessary to bug Ahmed in the first place. He's never faced any charges in this country, but is continuing to bring a civil case against the Met, alleging he was assaulted during his original arrest; something attested to by photos showing his injuries, but the officers were cleared by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Was that the real reason why he was bugged, or was it at the request of the US? The report shows that almost 20 people, mostly with names of Middle Eastern origin were on his visitor list, but that hardly on its own justifies the continuing bugging of everyone who visits him on the grounds of "ascertaining the extent of Babar Ahmad’s terrorist activities and contacts within the United Kingdom." It also does nothing about the situation that Kearney himself and Murrer are still in; if every police officer were being charged purely for being a local newspaper journalist's source, there'd be even less on the streets than there currently are. If this isn't a whitewash, it's hardly got anywhere near to the bottom of just a small section of our fast expanding surveillance society.

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2/22/2008 08:53:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, February 21, 2008 

Rendition: the truth begins to seep out.

Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States, and also let me say, we believe that Secretary Rice is lying, there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition full stop, because we have not been, and so what on earth a judicial inquiry would start to do I have no idea. I do not think it would be justified.
Oral evidence given by Jack Straw to the Foreign Affairs committee on 13th of December 2005.

To those who lived there, it was a paradise. Living purely off the land, the islanders, despite having no modern amenities, had an incredibly tranquil existence. That was until their island was considered as the prime location to be leased to the US military for a naval base, as another island was considered unsuitable because it was home to the rare Aldabra tortoise. The deal was signed, and the Americans requested that the island be "depopulated" for security reasons. The 2,000 inhabitants of Diego Garcia had their island invaded, their dogs shot and then they themselves were finally rounded up and taken to Mauritius, where they were subsequently dumped. The compensation they were given, which amounted to £400 each, was paid directly to the Mauritius government for them to be re-settled. They instead pocketed the money and denied that they had any right to do so. Most still live in hovels and the most severe poverty as a result.

All of this occurred under a Labour government, and it is undoubtedly one of the most despicable and shameful scandals in British history. Even now, despite numerous court rulings, the government refuses to allow them to return to their home, which has been taken over by a monolithic American base from which planes bombed Iraq. They seem to be hoping that those originally displaced that didn't commit suicide in the first place will die, and then be able to claim their children have no right whatsoever to return.

It almost seems fitting that a second scandal, also involving a Labour government, has now also come along concerning Diego Garcia. In a pathetic statement to the House of Commons, David Miliband today admitted that despite all their furious denials, despite the abundant evidence that flights linked to the US rendition program had landed here to at the least refuel, despite MI6 being involved in the rendition of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna to Guantanamo Bay, that evidence has now emerged that rendition flights had indeed landed on UK territory without the US asking for prior permission. Two flights in 2002 refuelled on Diego Garcia, carrying two unfortunates who according to the CIA, who have not told the truth once about the rendition program without being forced to, were not part of the "CIA's high-value terrorist interrogation program" but who nonetheless were taken to Guantanamo Bay and to Morocco respectively. Presumably the one lucky enough to be taken to Morocco was flown there so he could sample the local culture and high quality hashish, and not so he could be tortured like Binyam Mohammed was in the luxury of Moroccan custody. (Newsnight alleges that the plane used to transfer the detainee to Morocco was N397P, a CIA jet that has landed at UK airports on numerous occasions.)

The CIA has denied that Diego Garcia has served as one of the "black sites" where those in the rendition program were taken to be tortured so that the CIA didn't personally get its hands dirty. This is despite Barry McCaffrey, a former four-star US general on a number of occasions stating that prisoners are being held on Diego Garcia, as well as in other five-star US hotels such as Bagram airbase and numerous sites in Iraq, not to mention Gitmo itself.

The Guardian reported last October that the foreign affairs committee was to investigate claims that Garcia had a black site prison, but the revelation today seems to have come about because of the dogged attempts by the all party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, led by the tenacious Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, who had used the freedom of information act to request the minutes of political military talks between the US and UK in September last, a claim denied by the government who said that to release such information "would prejudice the defence" of territory by "exposing plans to counter possible terrorist attacks". Instead, they and the US seem to have decided to try and buy the committee off by admitting that rendition flights did use Diego Garcia, but that the island itself is not being used to hold any detainees themselves.

All those involved then are either "sorry" or "regret" this "unfortunate" happening. Never mind that from the very beginning this government has either directly lied, misled or tried to move the debate on when questioned about rendition flights. Jack Straw tried to tell us it was all a conspiracy theory, and from then on they've feigned ignorance at every turn. Andrew Tyrie has described it as "obfuscation and cover-up", and that seems bang on. They've done the very bare minimum from the very beginning in trying to placate critics, refusing to hold anything approaching a proper inquiry, failing to engage with EU-led efforts to investigate the rendition program and not asking of the US even the slightest of searching questions about what the planes linked to the rendition program were doing stopping over at our airports. Miliband now states that he'll compile a list of all said flights concerns have been expressed over and ask the US whether they too have been conveniently forgotten about. It screams of a government being desperate to wait until the initial disquiet and questioning was over before releasing the unsavoury reality. The real question is why they didn't do that as soon as the allegations were raised, with there being no evidence whatsoever that the government even asked the US whether the flights were anything other than kosher. They simply accepted that the US would have asked first before doing so, something now proved to be of the greatest gullibility and naivete. It of course helps that today most of the media are going to be more interested in the conviction of Steve Wright, and then there's also the other whitewash of the day, the inquiry into the bugging of Sadiq Khan.

This is of course from a government that has repeatedly condemned Guantanamo in various terms, most memorably as "an affront to justice". This same government has been complicit in that affront to justice, complicit in the torture of the various individuals caught up in the rendition program, many of whom have never been found guilty of any offence, let alone the "terrorism" which they are accused of being involved in. Indeed, one of those who was rendered through Diego Garcia has now been released, presumably without any compensation and most likely scarred irrevocably by their experience, living in constant fear of their life and without the slightest idea whether they will ever be released, or even put before the "military tribunals" now being set-up to try the most notorious of those held as "enemy combatants". This, as I've written before, ought to be a front-page scandal. Ministers should have resigned. A full judicial inquiry ought to have been set-up to examine not just ministerial complicity, but also security service involvement. Instead we had the whitewash provided by the Intelligence and Security committee. How deeply sad that the Chaggosians, who were treated as more expendable than animals, now know that they were not the only ones to abused in such a way on their paradise home.

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2/21/2008 08:45:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 

The same old tune.

This government, for some truly bizarre and strange reason, is in love with contracts. Maybe it's because rather than seeing themselves as politicians, they like to believe that they're in fact managers, albeit managers who haven't got the slightest clue on how to handle the workers, except from handing down opinions and pieces of paper which set out in minute detail exactly what they must do in order to earn their pay at the end of the week/month.

It's impossible to tell where this obsession began, but it might have been purloined from schools whom, at the beginning of the year, make the kids sign a laughable contract on how they're meant to behave, respect each other, etc etc. It's signed, then it goes out the metaphorical window within ten minutes. This though gives the control freaks of New Labour, who adore to micro-manage down to the very last detail, the feeling of having huge power while actually having none whatsoever. It's self-aggrandisement that would be harmless if it didn't seem so pernicious towards those who actually have to sign the patronising things in the first place. From schools the idea spread to those who are a few offences off getting an ASBO, that other marvellous New Labour achievement. They and their parents have to promise to obey the laws that they should have been in the first place. Supposedly these have been something of a success: perhaps because it involves the parents and doesn't just affect the children solely. One of Blair's last great big ideas was that these contracts could be extended even further; meaning if you wanted a hip replacement you might have to sign a contract that mean you'd promise to keep your weight down. It was one of the most revoltingly authoritarian, condescending and revealing policies Blair had ever suggested. Being a good citizen, paying taxes and doing everything else wasn't enough for this government; they wanted more.

That plan hasn't been entirely abandoned under Brown, as the idea of the rights and responsibilities of the ordinary citizen as outlined by Jack Straw of late underlines. Perhaps the real forebear of such a scheme though is to be introduced for those unfortunate enough to want to become a British citizen, as unveiled today. Like with ID cards, shortly to become compulsory for foreign nationals, it seems the immigrants and newcomers are to be treated as unwilling guinea pigs for what the rest of us must also soon have to suffer. The Tories tried their most unpopular policies first - including the poll tax - out on a recalcitrant Scotland where they had nothing to lose. The closest thing Labour has now is the downtrodden and most vilified in society, who currently are either binge drinking teenagers, which tend to already be citizens, or migrants. They've plumped for the latter.

Today's proposal is somewhat based on a Fabian pamphlet from last year written by Liam Byrne and the then communities minister, Ruth Kelly. That proposed a separate points scheme for those wishing to become citizens, to run alongside the one for those who want to come here in the first place. In order to accrue the amount needed to become a citizen, they'd have to do most of what has been set out today, but would have had points deducted for committing minor offences. Today's scheme is instead based around the idea of a "probationary" period, which you have to love simply for its shameless nod to the idea of criminality, not to mention how you need to prove that you are actually here for your own well-being and not merely milking the country for all it's worth.

That frankly is the main rub. While none of the rhetoric from ministers today has approached the disgraceful sop to the tabloids John Reid made while Home Secretary, shouting wildly about migrants "stealing our benefits", you can't help but notice but it's almost certainly been designed with their demands in full mind. Liam Byrne, writing a piss-poor article for CiF, says that we're not a nation of Alf Garnetts, based on his consultations which are published in the green paper, but the leader writers and columnists on some newspapers are close to a modern-day equivalent. How else to explain the cranking up of the visa fees, which are to go directly to a "transitional impact" scheme to provide additional funds to local councils which have had an influx of migrants who are stretching their spending? As Diane Abbot has already said, this is asking the overwhelmingly black or Asian visa applicants to foot the bill for the east European migrants which the government failed to plan for. In any case, much of the moaning has been exaggerated, but this is what it leads to. Today's Sun leader:

GORDON Brown has been warned.

Brits are more worried by the effects of record immigration than anything else.

Who says so? His private polling guru AND one of his most able ministers, Pat McFadden.

Hard-working Brits rightly deserve NHS treatment, schools for their kids and decent roads.

They’ve paid their taxes and expect public services in return.

Yet our swelling population means schools and hospitals can no longer cope.

We want Jacqui Smith to unveil some proper measures to tackle this issue so that taxpayers get the services they deserve.

To say so is not racist.

It’s common sense.


Ignoring the straw man about somehow this argument being anything to do with race, I obviously can't account for hospitals across the land, but my grandmother's had a stay in one recently, and having made multiple visits to see her, the last thing I saw was the image of hospitals conjured up by the press coverage. It was clean, the staff were incredibly helpful and there was nothing to suggest that anyone was having any trouble coping, and I live in an area which has had a reasonably large influx of eastern European migrants. What I did notice however was that if the same tightened immigration rules had been in place when a decent number of those staff had came to live here, they might not have been able to make the same contribution as they subsequently have.

Byrne says that all those he spoke to didn't want those seeking citizenship to have to jump through endless hoops to gain it, but that seems exactly what the proposal he now presumably supports is designed to put in place. The time it takes will now be 6 years, rather than 5; there'll be more rigorous testing of the command of English, just as the government has cut the funding for the English as second language schemes that are vital for those who need those qualifications; and applicants will need to "prove" that they've made an attempt to integrate, with those who undertake voluntary work within the community having their applications potentially accelerated.

Most of the proposals aren't intrinsically questionable, but I think the biggest problem with it is the very fact that it's no longer enough for you to pay taxes, to not break the law and to generally keep yourself to yourself; if you weren't born here, you have to prove that you've not come only to sponge off the state and take advantage of our wonderfully free, fair, tolerant, diverse and shining happy country. It's surely not churlish to point out that if poor migrants in search of a better life have to go through such bureaucracy to prove their good intentions, that the non-doms which the government is so obsequious towards also do exactly the same, paying their fair share of tax at the very least. The corporations and businesses which do everything they can to pay as little tax as possible, whether through loopholes, tax havens or offshore trusts ought to placed under the same "rights and responsibilities".

Fact is, the government is as usual stuck between a rock and a hard place. It will never do enough to placate those who want the door shut completely; they'll instead gravitate towards the Tories' disingenuous call for a mythical annual limit or even further to the right. These proposals don't even touch the eastern Europeans who have moved in such large numbers since their countries joined the EU, even if the tide does now appear to be turning on that score. It will also naturally offend those who object to the apparent establishment of there being a two-tier citizenship programme. If you're already well off and white, you'll be welcomed with open arms; non-white and/or poor and you're suspicious. That it so apparently pleases Frank Field, who long lost any touch with the party he's meant to be a member of is perhaps its biggest indictment.

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2/20/2008 08:45:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 

Taking Fayed seriously.

Not to go back to Flat Earth News yet again, but as I wrote in the review, Davies doesn't believe there's any evidence that advertisers either directly or indirectly influence the editorial line taken by newspapers.

Perhaps there is at least one example of this. It's widely known that Mohamed Fayed moved the advertising for his various interests from the Mail to the Express, for whatever reason there was at the time, and as the Guardian reported back when the Telegraph was up for sale, Fayed and Richard Desmond, owner of the Express, held talks about launching a joint bid for the paper. It also suggests that Fayed and Desmond discuss "business" on a regular basis.

Whatever the truth of the matter, while all the rest of the press have mocked Fayed's performance in the witness box at the Diana inquest yesterday, both the Express and the Star have been either deadly serious or respectful in their reports, with the Express even printing this pathetically craven sentence:

But at other times Mr Al Fayed was highly emotional, at one point wiping away tears with a tissue, betraying how raw his grief at his son’s death still is, a decade on.

Of course, it might not be anything to do with Fayed's advertising in the paper at all, and rather be all to do with how the Express has milked the conspiracies surrounding Diana's death for all they're worth, and if that involves taking their chief architect deadly seriously, so be it. I don't think however it should be something to dismiss out of hand.

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2/19/2008 09:30:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Reporting suicide compassionately.

A few years ago, for a number of reasons, I became suicidally depressed. This wasn't just teenage angst on a grander scale; I was positively a danger to myself. I self-harmed; I hung from a railway bridge over a river and wanted, desperately, to let myself go, and when I pulled myself back up, I hated myself and my pathetic nature even more. For those who've never been depressed, let alone severely depressed, you simply can't know how a person ever thinks or feels when they're in that sort of a downward spiral. The gloom, the mood, whether you call it a black dog as Churchill so accurately described it, or something different, both inhabits and inhibits your every action. In every different person it manifests itself in a different way: I tried, as best I could, to hide it. I laughed, I joked, I tried to participate; then I went home and probably cried while I walked. In my case, I went to sleep praying that I wouldn't wake up in the morning, and then when I woke up I was even angrier and sadder that my wish hadn't come true. Your constant desire, if not always at the front of your mind then nowhere near the back, is to die, and as quickly as possible. At moments I was absolutely furious, both at myself and at the world at large; in the next I was so self-defeating that I would have accepted anything that anyone had wanted to do to me.

Thankfully, and with the help of both anti-depressants and a NHS mental health team that has bent over backwards, I've made something approaching a recovery. I can't pretend that the experience hasn't deeply affected me, and it's certainly changed my perspective on a whole host of things. It also I would hope have given me an insight into what it's like to be mentally ill, temporarily or permanently. That's why the coverage on the "Bridgend suicides" is now so concerning me.

The media at large are now reporting that the 17th suicide within the space around of a year has occurred. There's a problem with that very fact to begin with: it implies that there's a connection between them. As the police and the coroner have been at pains to point out throughout, they have completely failed to find any link between the suicides; no evidence of any pact; nothing to suggest that the teenagers had been encouraging each other to kill themselves; and certainly nothing even to support the contention that there's a cult linked to the online memorials to those who have killed themselves on social networking websites.

Instead, what there certainly is is a growing belief that the heightened media coverage is only exacerbating the problem. Wherever or whenever the suicides began, the pattern appeared to be that friends of those that had committed suicide were also making attempts on their lives. Doubtless the loss of their friends influenced their actions, but it would be naive to believe that was the only reason why they tried to kill themselves. Now it seems to increasingly be that those who had no dealings with the others are making what could be copycat attempts, although it's impossible to be certain. That hanging seems to have been the method chosen certainly suggests that's the case. Of course, this could also be to fall into the same trap as the media themselves have; we might be looking for patterns that aren't there, when we know that mental health problems will now affect 1 in 4 at some point during their lives.

The pressure and media move into Bridgend does however seem to have had anything but a positive effect. Very few of the organisations involved in reporting have taken any notice for example of the Samaritans' guide to reporting suicide. A number of its sections are worth quoting:

A fine line remains between sensitive, intelligent reporting by the media and sensationalising the issue. The focus should be on educating and informing the public. Copycat suicides account for about six percent of all suicides and the imitative behaviour can follow certain types of news reports and other portrayals of suicide.

Consider the timing.

The coincidental deaths by suicide of two or more people makes the story more topical and newsworthy, but additional care is required in the reporting of "another suicide, just days after…", which might imply a connection. There are 17 suicides every day, most of which go unreported.

One of the findings of a systematic review of research literature on suicide and the media concluded that "certain portrayals tend to increase the likelihood that imitative behaviour will occur", with prominent or repetitive news coverage of particular concern. When added in to how misguided and sensational some of the coverage, especially in the tabloids with the largest circulation and most likely to be read by the young has been, there's a high possibility that at the moment the media is doing more harm than good.

I'm not one of those who is completely opposed to suicide or any discussion of it whatsoever for fear that people will get ideas. I think that's an entirely wrong and simplistic message which people use to put all the blame on everyone other than themselves, especially when the young kill themselves. There are times when suicide should be accepted as something approaching honourable, or as the least worst way out, rather than as something to be dismissed as cowardly or as leaving others to pick up the pieces. Every case needs to be assessed on its merits.

I think we can all agree though that those who have killed themselves in Bridgend, especially the teenagers, have not experienced enough of life to be able to make any sort of decision on whether their life is worth living or not. Those who are mourning the death of their friends need space to be able to grieve and come to terms with what has happened; losing friends young is always incredibly difficult to accept or make sense of, and is especially likely to affect someone for the rest of their life. The media need to back off, leave Bridgend and at the very least adhere to the recommendations of the Samaritans. While the media should not be personally blamed for anything that has happened, as that itself would be to simplify and ignore the multiple reasons behind what has occurred, it needs to respect the requests of an increasing amount of those in Bridgend itself and at the very least stop its rampant speculation and lack of feeling for those caught up in what is nothing less than a continuing tragedy.

Then again, Madeleine Moon is currently on Newsnight blaming the media when she was the one scaremongering recklessly about social networking sites in the first place. Perhaps there really isn't any connection whatsoever to anything.

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2/19/2008 09:25:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

The ghastly party.

Strange how things work out, isn't it? Yesterday Nadine Dorries wrote this delightful passage about our dear leader:

It is becoming scarier and scarier sitting so close to Gordon Brown. The fixed maniac-esque grin on his face is so un-natural and frankly his pallor was a really odd shade today.

I really would pull my children close to me if they were sat on the green benches. I have to resist the urge to lean over, and whisper into George’s ear “take care, don’t get too close now”; and I am ready to pounce and pull George back over the seats, should Gordon Brown lose control and come flying across the dispatch box, to try and eat him or something.


It seems she really didn't pull her children close enough, as this occurred shortly afterwards:

Today I was awoken by a policeman.

One moment I was in a warm, dark bed, tucked up in my dreams; next there were sirens screaming in my ears as background music to a man with an amazingly calm voice, telling me that my world may be about to tip upside down.

My daughter had in fact been upside down in a wrecked car, and was trapped in the foetal position, still in her seat belt.

Dorries' daughter is thankfully almost completely unharmed. I can't say I'm a believer in karma or fate, but the more superstituous amongst us might think of it as a warning.

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2/19/2008 09:12:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Scum-watch: Any evidence will do.

One of the rules of production Nick Davies outlines in Flat Earth News is to go with the moral panic. The Sun isn't just going with the moral panic with teenage binge drinking, it's determined to lead it. Here's today's leader on the subject:

BRITAIN is in the grip of an underage booze culture.

Teenagers have cash to spend like never before.

And they’re blowing it on frightening quantities of alcohol — against the law.

The Sun’s expose of a typical night out in two major cities is a disturbing read.


Let's take a look at the Scum's "disturbing read" then. In Leeds the first call-out is to a 40-year-old woman suffering a fit after drinking; the second is to a 19-year-old where her friends fear her drink has been spiked; the third is to a 16-year-old having a fit after drinking, but the call is cancelled before they get there; the fourth is to a 17-year-old, who's been drinking, but has got into difficulties because of the differences of temperature in the club he was in and then the cold after he left; and the last is to a pregnant 22-year-old, who promptly vomits in the back of the ambulance.

In London, they only make one call, and that's to a man in his 30s who's tripped and hurt himself after drinking 5 pints.

As I'm sure you'll agree, the evidence that teenage binge drinking is out of control is truly overwhelming.

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2/19/2008 08:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, February 18, 2008 

Gotta go back in time.

When you walked out the door this morning, did anything feel, slightly different? A bit greyer, perhaps? Was Radio 1 rather than Radio 2 strangely playing Yes? Come to mention it, wasn't the car itself slightly older than you remember it being when you parked it there on Saturday? Was the previously colourful area where you live apparently transformed into a faintly sinister Stalinist architectural hell-hole, indicative of the lack of investment that public ownership practised by a socialist government inevitably brings? And, most horrifying of all, was that person really wearing a waistcoat and flares?

Yes, we've gone back to the 70s in the Tory time machine! Whether a result of the tardis twirling through time commanded by Dr "Dave Cameron" Who, or due to the De Lorean driven by George "Doc" Osborne, we're back in the bad old days of the 70s, where the unions are strong, the 3-day-week is still a recent memory, the comedians are racist without calling it ironic or post-modern, and where Margaret Thatcher was still a threat of what was to come rather than a legacy surrounding us. Oh, and where the gap between rich and poor had yet to stretch further than the distance to the moon.

Perhaps then Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling did wake up this morning asking themselves whether they were mad, in a coma or back in time, but then again, Brown probably does that every morning anyway. Or maybe it was just a befuddled haze from the night before: "Urgh, did I really nationalise Northern Rock? What was I thinking?"

As you can tell from this hackneyed post, when the government decides that the best course of action is to nationalise a private company that has been technically insolvent for almost six months, it brings out the caricatures like a cartoon exhibition. The Tories still haven't quite chanced upon the best adjective to describe the desperate measure of nationalising Northern Rock, but they're keen on both catastrophe and disaster, when they're not doing their level best to try and suggest that New Labour, the party that took selling off its assets to such an extreme that HM Revenue and Customs, the department of government meant to combat the use of offshore tax havens, sold some of its properties to a company based in Bermuda, has dragged us all back to the 1970s with their cack-handed attempts to first sell Northern Rock to a bunch of chancers you wouldn't trust running a jumble sale, then finally giving in and accepting that Vince Cable had been right all along.

This is of course a matter of great and fundamental importance, seeing as every single one of us unfortunate taxpayers now has the equivalent of £3,500 of our own money in keeping Northern Wreck afloat before it is eventually returned to the private sector, but I'm more interested in just how opportunist and shameless the Conservative party can be. With both its leader and shadow chancellor never having to have wanted for anything, and with Dave's wonderful record of having been involved behind the scenes of the Treasury on Black Wednesday, you wouldn't think they'd have the slightest clue what to have done with Northern Rock, and you'd be right. All they know is that nationalisation is a scandal and an outrage, and despite having the best part of six months to come up with a solid policy on what they'd do or have done if they'd been in power, that's as far as they've come. Their wheeze today, presumably written on the back of Cameron's fag packet, was that the Bank of England run Northern Crock down, but as the inestimable Mr Cable has pointed out, this is just nationalisation by another name. For a party that screams, moans and gurgles if Labour so much as shows the slightest sign that its decisions might be influenced by dogma, "old-thinking" or ideology, the Conservatives have relied on their most base prejudice, that being that state ownership is always wrong and unacceptable regardless of the circumstances. Their allegiance to the tenets of neoliberalism, however badly it's been singed by the huge fallout from the sub-prime crisis, is absolute. Just to be awkward, and despite initially supporting the government in more or less whatever it did, they'll also vote against the emergency legislation being hurried through parliament authorising the nationalisation. When in opposition you can of course be as opportunist and shameless as you like in your thinking, but if there was a clear sign that under Cameron the Tories still haven't got the first clue of being able to govern, this was it.

There are two legitimate and damning criticisms of the government's response to Northern Rock's collapse, and the first is that the Financial Services Authority was never given enough teeth or powers in order to regulate the banks and their unsustainable, founded on pure greed business models in the first place. The light touch scheme so beloved of the City, which nevertheless complains bitterly about the slightest amount of bureaucracy or checks and talks darkly of business moving overseas if any more is imposed comprehensively failed. Again, the Conservatives have no answer to this and can't make anything out of it because John Redwood in his economic policy paper had recommended removing all the current red tape from mortgages entirely. Second is that it even bothered looking for a private-sector solution when it was obvious from the beginning that only those with very deep pockets looking to make a cheap buck would be interested in taking the liability on in the short-term. While the government dithered, hedge funds bought huge quantities of Northern Rock shares at rock bottom price, and are now going to be the first at the front of the queue demanding compensation. They don't deserve and are not entitled to a single penny. The "saviours" that did emerge were the private equity firms that would have stripped the bank to the bone, employees along with it in record time and far quicker than the government will. Oh, and there was Beardie, the grinning Cheshire cat of the piece, with Gordon Brown prostituting himself to the eternal Virgin, ignoring his tax-dodging, use of offshore havens and numerous failures and lesser offer than that of Olivant, purely because, well, he's Richard Branson!

What has in fact always been the least worst move is now being portrayed as a complete and utter disaster. For this Labour has no one to blame for itself: Brown has been so desperate to avoid being portrayed by the Tories as the throwback to Old Labour that he has opened himself right up to their other similarly mostly idiotic charge, that he dithers. He certainly has dithered over Northern Rock, and for all the wrong reasons. The other truth of the matter is that New Labour has become so beholden to City that even the slightest move towards finally making it actually pay its dues have been watered down. £35,000 a year after seven years for non-doms who pay the same amount of tax as the cleaners of their buildings do? Scandalous! An 8% increase in capital gains tax even though Labour had cut it from 40% to 10% to begin with? A disaster for the aspirational! It's little wonder then that it spent so long looking for the private solution which was never to arrive. Anything less would have been unforgivable and an abuse of power. With it has gone any authority that Alistair Darling had as chancellor. If the previous chancellor was the most powerful and strongest in living memory, than Darling is certainly one of the weakest, but then whoever was given the job always had a poisoned chalice Whether Labour can recover its record for competence might depend on how quickly his services are dispensed with, pathetic Tory calls for his head or not.

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2/18/2008 07:23:00 PM | | | links to this post

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