Paul Prentice

Canadian government threatens validity of same-sex marriages of foreign couples

2012-01-19T14:19:00.000Z

Same-sex couples married in Canada – but originally from other countries – have been threatened with the prospect of their marriage being declared null and void.

In response to a divorce filed by a lesbian couple, one of whom lived in Britain, the other in Florida, a government lawyer argued that since the couple’s marriage would not be legal in either jurisdiction, it was not a valid marriage in Canada either. Although civil partnerships are allowed in the UK and same sex marriage is legal in a handful of US states, same-sex marriage is illegal is both countries.

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The Iron Lady: and what it doesn't tell us about British politics

2012-01-11T18:22:00.003Z

It's convention in opening any piece of journalism about the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that the writer adds a caveat along the lines of “whatever you might think of her” or “regardless of your own political opinions”, maybe adding a “she certainly divides opinion” for good measure.

Normally, this is a neat warning to the reader that the writer does not intend to divulge his or her own political opinions. As a political journalist and muesli-eating socialist not shy of expressing my own views, I'll happily defy the prevailing orthordoxy, much like Thatcher herself. It is hard, after all, to be completely neutral about a politician who, with her government, presided over massive and very intentional unemployment, attacks on minorities and electorally convenient and poorly-executed military adventures. The effects of the deep social wounds inflicted on communities across Britain as a result of her decisions remain with us in 2012, ripping apart a post-war settlement which had up until the 1980s entitled full employment, industry that made rather than serviced things, security in retirement and a functioning, if not perfect, welfare state. I was born just after Thatcher's second election victory and my earliest political memories are of her resignation, so I've probably got some licence to comment.

Meryl Streep's portrait of an elderly Margaret Thatcher suffering from dementia was everything you might expect from a fine Hollywood actor - looking, sounding, and probably feeling the part she was cast in. Whereas Andrea Riseborough had really shone playing the young, ambitious Thatcher in The Long Walk to Finchley, Meryl Streep triumphed in her portrayal; from the wartime teenager to the shrill young Member of Parliament, newly elected Conservative leader and wizened elder stateswoman. That's all very well from a cinematic point of view, and if Streep doesn't get a BAFTA, I'll be stunned. But the film needed something weighty as its central theme, and it certainly wasn't politics.

I'd had an inkling that The Iron Lady wasn't going to give us a blow-by-blow account of the miners' strike, Michael Heseltine's televised flouncing from the cabinet room or the battle over the Poll Tax. But most dramatisations of the lives of significant figures - political or otherwise - capture to some degree the agonising over decisions that changed the course of history. Context is crucial, even in Hollywood, and The Iron Lady was let down by the vague references to nineteen seventies and eighties 1970s and 1980s politics. Political anoraks and historians must have hankered for just a little bit more narrative around some of the big decisions – the wars, the crises, the sackings, the speeches, and elections. Instead, we got a film made for an international audience, a somewhat apolitical film, and in turn, a less compelling sense of who Thatcher was as a person and a politician at the height of her powers. Yes, dementia is heart-wrenchingly sad, and the poignant scenes of an old lady looking back on her life are very effective, but Thatcher's politics were bizarrely portrayed as almost irrelevant in a film about a former Prime Minister.

I'll concede however that international audiences and younger Brits alike would have a limited recollection, if any, of Margaret Thatcher's 1980s premiership, let alone her gradual fading in retirement, meaning that the lack of political narrative of any substance is barely noticed. It's also true that there hasn't been enough light on her as a person rather than a politician, but the flip-side is that you end up feeling nothing but warmth for this shuffly old dear because the substance of what she was about as a politician is so absent. Yes, the audience squirmed with delight where she grandly reprimands one of her Cabinet brood (it could have been any one of a number of grey suits) - but this film was very much about a woman's personality and character, and really not trying to say anything about the politics of the UK in the last 40 years.

Maybe I'm being unfair. As David Wooding, former political editor of the News of the World said:

“Put the political ethics to one side and watch this as a piece of pure cinema. Forget the historical inaccuracies, too. Maggie never wore a hat in the Commons, she was not with Airey Neave in the car park when he was blown up and I’ve never before heard she barked “sink it!” when generals asked what to do about the Belgrano.”

Historians: beware.

The Big Society spin on the New Year’s Honours

2012-01-04T19:45:00.002Z

If the turn of the year is a signal of aspirations for the next, then we are left in no doubt that the enthusiasm for voluntarism and community action running through David Cameron’s government is here to stay.

An honours list, being a medley of awards to establishment stalwarts, unsung heroes, industry figures, creatives and performers, requires a fair amount of analysis to determine whether there are any trends in the group of people who receive them. In the government’s own words, “the vast majority of people recognised include those supporting the Big Society by making a real difference to their local community through volunteering, fundraising, social action and philanthropy”.

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2011: a year in politics

2011-12-28T14:55:00.001Z

A year ago, we could have described what had been a “challenging” twelve months in UK politics. And, if 2010 were challenging, then 2011 has been extraordinary. Harold Macmillan’s “events, dear boy, events” has never been a truer adage of the way politics can take unexpected turns.

David Cameron could surely not have expected an easy ride upon taking office as the Prime Minister of the first coalition government in over seventy years in May 2010. Convincing the electorate of the Conservatives’ deficit reduction strategy – and the consistent trashing of Labour’s record as big-spending, big-government and economically reckless - was the easy part. A generally acquiescent media helped Cameron and his party along the way, while the Liberal Democrats, as coalition partners, raised no significant objections to this line. But with no firm plan for growing the economy - austerity being the only dish on the menu – Cameron’s party has found that governing as if it were a single-party government with little opposition is not an option. Conflict would have to be engineered, distractions capitalised upon and personalities exploited if his party were to convince the electorate that despite being in coalition, it was still business as usual for the Tories.

As distractions go, no-one predicted quite how the Tories’ biggest friends in the media – Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers – would face such a spectacular crisis in the way that they did in July 2011 when news emerged that the mobile phone messages of Milly Dowler, a young girl who had been horrifically murdered in 2002, had been hacked into by News of the World journalists shortly after she disappeared. Within a week of these revelations – and many more - the paper was closed. Only a month or so before, the political establishment, including the Labour leader Ed Miliband, had cavorted quite happily in the company of Murdoch himself at News International’s summer party. All of a sudden, the political class was in crisis yet again, achieving a hat trick of scandal after cash for peerages and the MPs’ misuse of their expenses. Huge questions remain over Cameron’s personal judgement, both as Prime Minister and while in opposition over his hiring of former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as Communications Director, and it remains to be seen whether the resultant Leveson Inquiry into the ethics and practices of the media will draw out any hard lessons for politicians.

Despite the embarrassment of his murky media connections, Cameron, like Tony Blair, has demonstrated his own Teflon-like quality. Nothing sticks. What's more, he has found it convenient to direct flak in the direction of the Liberal Democrats. As leader of that party and Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg has never redeemed himself from the consequences of his party’s sudden u-turn in government in introducing fees of up to £9,000 for some university courses. A referendum on moving to the ‘Alternative Vote’ system for General Elections did not result in a Great Liberal Moment – with an overwhelming 67% of the voting electorate saying that actually, they didn’t agree with Nick. Any surge in enthusiasm for the Lib Dems during the 2010 election campaign had vanished without a trace by mid-2011 as the party struggled to make the transition from party of protest to party of government - still very much the third party, stubbornly languishing at around 10% in the opinion polls despite the trappings of office.

Meanwhile, there were plenty of distractions on the international stage. With the disaster of Iraq was still deep in the political consciousness, a decision to take military action in Libya eventually paid off with the eventual demise of Colonel Gadaffi. Rather, it was Europe that once again presented itself as a pressure point for the Tories, exacerbated by crisis in the Eurozone and Tory backbenchers’ desire to score one over their coalition partners. The supposed ‘veto’ wielded by Cameron against a treaty designed to save the Euro (supposedly threatening the City’s financial interests) left the UK more politically isolated than it has been for years. And although large numbers of British people remain of the view that things like immigration, justice, defence and employment rights should be decided by Britain alone, it remains to be seen however whether there is any appetite for the EU having a less of a role in areas such as the environment, foreign policy and trade rules. Asked about the UK’s continued membership of the EU in a referendum, one poll suggested that only 41% of voters wanted to stay in, with 41% wanting to leave – a sharp shift from recent polls indicating that up to 50% wanted to leave. Other countries went ahead with negotiations anyway, with a cost in personal and diplomatic relations, most graphically illustrated by President Sarkozy’s refusal to shake Cameron’s hand during a televised clip of the summit. There is no love lost between the two men.

Whatever happens in UK politics in 2012, it is less predictable than ever. While the coalition has remained stable, the condition of the UK economy does not show any great signs of improvement. Predicted growth has not materialised, youth unemployment is unacceptably high and the promise of many more vacancies in the private sector to replace those lost in the public sector failed to materialise. The next year will mark the halfway point of this notional five-year parliament – a point at which the Chancellor, George Osborne, may well have to adopt ‘Plan B’ for reviving the economy and creating jobs. Cynically, the government may choose to play the anti-EU card rather than admit defeat on the economy.

But with the aftermath of the English riots still raw in voters’ minds, there are evidently opportunities to bolster the government’s law and order credentials, a policy area in which Labour has been gaining some ground. Labour aren't keen to say too much about the deficit, or what they might do about it. But they are also aware that most voters reluctantly accept the cuts, and, despite the obvious pain, traditional opposition arguments based on public spending, jobs and growth may not wash with voters. Miliband will need a sharper strategy and need to think on his feet in response to the government attempts to woo voters with emotional causes such as the Europe question, or the question of whether they feel safe in their towns and cities, which ultimately have little impact on the money in voters’ pockets.

Getting all sentimental - about a bus

2011-12-19T23:11:00.003Z

A little over six years ago, I indulged myself in a secret geeky pleasure – a ride on the penultimate AEC Routemaster on a normal, cross-London bus route. It was a little misleading, because these 1960s veterans continued to ply their trade on two special ‘heritage’ routes, the 9 to Kensington High Street, and the 15 to Tower Hill. But the final day witnessed an outpouring of emotion for a public transport icon that only the British could be capable of (see files marked 'End of Steam on British Rail' and 'London's Last Tram').

As a reasonably recent arrival to London in 2005, I was already nostalgic for the Routemaster, with their 1950s design and quirks of a bygone age. They plied the streets of Dalston where I first lived, a flotilla of weathered red metal, rubber and comfy moquette. I missed them so much that I even ended up doing weekend work as a conductor and guide for a company that specialised in Routemaster charters when money became tight.

I'm normally never a stranger to sentiment, but I recognised these museum pieces couldn’t go on for ever without significant re-engineering, time and money (the first one was built in 1959 after all). An impending 2017 deadline imposed by the Disability Discrimation Act sounded the death-bell for these purring red beasts. Mayor Ken Livingstone had made it clear that, since the introduction of German-built bendy buses on the high-capacity Red Arrow routes in 2002, the future was not going to be the preserve of elderly double-deckers with an open ‘hop-on, hop-off’ rear platform. The Routemaster was, after all, evolved from a design which, admittedly with the addition of a roof and pneumatic tyres, was little different from the pre-war B-Type, and later RT type. Why then, in 2005, would anyone want to operate a vehicle that was prone to accidents around its rear platform and which, without passenger doors, could be very cold in winter?

It took a Tory mayor, Boris Johnson to take that somewhat retrograde step – much against the advice of industry professionals and those who said “it can't be done”. But Boris did it. The proof of the pudding for me was on Saturday, as I perused the Thomas Heatherwick-designed ~~Routemaster~~ New Bus for London. In tune with London's aspirational classes, it was parked up outside the brand-spanking new Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, itself the epitome of modernity situated on the Olympic park. Londoners were invited to inspect their new public carriage, and they seemed impressed during my short visit. It is indeed a beautiful vehicle which may finally render redundant the insult 'he/she/it looks like the back of a bus’; the NBfL is far from ugly. Its striking curves, traditionally-inspired seating and flooring and other bespoke design touches make it a winner, at least from an aesthetic point of view. Oh, and like many of London's new buses, it's a hybrid – so the Toyota Prius loving classes should come flocking.

Like all good design however, the proof of the pudding will be in how it fares in every day use. The new vehicle seats just 64, and there is less space for wheelchair users and those with pushchairs – facilities which bendy buses seemed to have in abundance. The first two prototypes of eight initial buses are due in service on 20 February on the arduous 38 route – a bus route which has become ridiculously frequent in recent years, and one which runs not too far away from Boris' own home in Highbury. So let's see how the residents of Hackney and Islington deal with an open-platform bus six years after the last one ran in their locality. It is a high-profile risk to take for a Mayor of London who is so keen to see this expensive and quirky pet project succeed. I hate to be a cynic, but even if it does succeed I'll wait for the first person to fall off the back of one and become seriously injured (or worse) and see what the Mayor thinks about his new bus then. 'Elf 'n safety may well win the day - the passengers of 2012 just aren't those of 1962.

Meanwhile, is it just possible that the average passenger just wants a seat on the way to work – and isn't particularly bothered about what the bus looks like?

Doing it all again: why I'm striking tomorrow

2011-11-29T22:01:00.003Z

Today I was told by a friend that, as a public sector worker, I'm part of a 'bloated, inefficient mess'. I thought hard, but struggled to see the relevance of his point, when considering the record performance of the small but high-profile part of the civil service I work for. Despite only having a workforce of about 415, and having shed around 40 or so jobs over the past year as a result of funding cuts, its staff are dedicated to what they do. All this is against a background of continuing redundancies, a government-wide recruitment freeze and a two-year pay cut.

We're confident that what we do is worth more than that though. Public sector workers – and yes, there are a heck of a lot of 'em – do vital jobs that are often unnoticed and yet are very noticeable in their absence. At the end of December, I'm leaving the civil service after eight years (with a few gaps) to pursue my career in journalism – I won't be a public sector worker for much longer. But I'll nonetheless withdraw my labour on 30 November 2011 as I would not be prepared to lose nearly £90 a month extra from my salary in protest as a result of the government's proposed 3.5% rise in employee contributions. I'll also have to work up to eight years longer for it. When the cost of living has increased so rapidly and living standards have in fact gone down, something has to give.

The truth is that public sector pensions are entirely affordable, and that public sector workers are a victim of short-sighted political choices, rather than remaining the beneficiary of the entirely reasonable status quo. Lord Hutton, the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee and even the Office for Budget Responsibility all agree. Yet, the proposed changes to pensions amount to nothing more than a levy that will raise more from public servants than the levy on banks in order to pay off the deficit.

To me, it is grossly unfair to shoulder even part of the blame for the deficit on teachers, ambulance staff, nurses, midwives, doctors, firefighters and civil servants. We didn't crash the stock market, wipe out banks, take billions in bonuses or dodge tax. In protest at this attack on our current pensions arrangements, it's all to play for and is worth fighting for tomorrow.

My Top Charity: Shelter

2011-11-29T19:20:00.000Z

It all started with an attractive bearded man with a clipboard on London’s Regent Street one cold, dark November afternoon about five years ago. I normally make my excuses when I’m approached by charity fund-raisers on the street, but unlike a lot of ‘chuggers’, he made a compelling case as to why I should give away my bank details there and then; among the heaving mass of shopping tourists. I hope he now works somewhere important in Shelter or another charity because my direct debit has been going out ever since. And quite unlike many other causes I’ve flirted with in the past, I have never wavered in my support.

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Guarding radio's sacred flame: Gwyneth Williams in conversation with Gillian Reynolds

2011-11-20T19:49:00.000Z

Watch the video of this event.

Meddle with the BBC, and you meddle with the psychology of a nation. Or, more specifically, should Radio 4 Controllers meddle with the fundamental cornerstones of the nation's best loved spoken word radio station, they will be told in no short shrift what listeners think of their decisions. If you have read the excellent potted history of the station, And Now on Radio 4, you will get a slightly more detached, yet sentimental view of this national treasure – much is written of the trials and tribulations faced by various controllers over the years. Radio 4 is, quite simply, the station with the most vocal and critical audience of any on the airwaves.

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The PCC is dead: Does television hold the key to better press regulation?

2011-11-20T19:46:00.000Z

Timing is everything. The Leveson Inquiry, which began on Monday to look into the culture, practices and ethics of the media, will make recommendations on the future of press regulation and governance. But what about the freedom of the press - that politicians constantly tell us they support - in that drive towards the highest ethical and professional standards?

Many in the media – particularly journalists – are somewhat aggrieved at what they see as an overly critical spotlight on their profession in the light of “the most important reputational issue the press has to face up to” - the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

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Eminently quotable...

2011-11-18T12:06:00.000Z

...according to Third Sector magazine. This was picked up from my Guardian piece last week.

Rethinking the unthinkable - are the Conservatives the new party of gay equality?

2011-11-11T16:15:00.001Z

Remember David Cameron’s cringe-inducing interview just before the 2010 General Election with GT? The then Leader of the Opposition got so flustered that he had to ask his press officer to halt the interview because he couldn’t present a convincing line on equality to the interviewer. With these images in the collective consciousness of gay voters, and without the convenience of the Tories being in government to dispel them, it was still easy to badge them as the nasty party, as Theresa May had once said.

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Does 'big society' spell the end of charity as we know it?

2011-11-11T16:12:00.002Z

With charities providing more public services, some feel like small government departments.

When is a charity not a charity? We are seeing the end of the clear dividing line between what government does and what the voluntary sector does. The government at all levels has made it clear that it is uninterested in directly providing public services, leaving it to charities, social enterprises and ethical companies to battle it out. The Victorian notion of a charity – giving money, goods or time to others – is becoming unfamiliar to the British public in the age of the big society. Are we, therefore, seeing the end of charities as we've known them?

Them and Us: A Special Relationship?

2011-11-06T19:24:00.001Z

If there's one thing that politicians and journalists really don't agree on, it's the so-called Special Relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. It deserves capitalisation not just because of the absurd way in which it is exploited, but arguably because it's often to the benefit of the Americans rather than the Brits. What makes it special is, as they might say, the Million Dollar Question. Like many long-standing marriages, it often appears somewhat dysfunctional and you're never sure whether the two sides really do love each other. American presidents come and go, while successive British Prime Ministers do all they can to rekindle the passion. Is it something that simply exists in the imagination of the British political establishment?

The Today programme anchor and long-standing BBC man Justin Webb is well placed to speak about the political and cultural differences between the United States and the UK. With his new book, Notes on Them and Us, he's taken the time to reflect on what stands us apart from our cousins across the Atlantic – as well as the bonds that tie us together. Webb returned to his alma mater, the London School of Economics, at the invitation of the Media Society and Polis to discuss his own reflections on the subject.

“We didn't have an academic interest in the US – we moved for the sunshine” opens Webb, in conversation with the New York Times's London correspondent and author of The Anglofiles, Sarah Lyall. With a young, energetic family and a career-defining opportunity offered by the BBC, you can't blame him. In fact, he's done the return journey twice.

But the culture shock was soon apparent, recalls Webb, when the unthinkable happened. “We knew a guy who worked at CNN . And we went to his party at which there was no booze at all”. And, horror upon horror, “they were drinking cherryade”. This might have been fine for the school tuck shop, but for a party of east coast media types? To a Brit, this was unthinkable.

It was occasions like this, as Webb jokes that are “a misunderestimation [sic] of the cultural differences between you and us”. Indeed, it's clear that Webb's affection for the country is unmistakeable. Something about community ties and a can-do spirit seem to have sparked his enthusiasm for this country. It's because “Americans are generous, not just to strangers but to themselves”. The first thing that comes to mind is a calorie-laden hamburger with fries, but there's more to it than that. Webb talks about an “ideal of attachment”, with references to religion and of pride in geographical roots. Americans are proud to be from Wyoming, or Maryland or wherever, but there is no corresponding sense of belonging from the citizens of Somerset, for example.

What's more, Webb concedes that the influence of religion on American politics is somewhat overstated, referring to Karl Rove's dismissal of evangelical Christians as “not terribly reliable”. The British, after all, have an established church, arguably wedded to our political institutions far more than Fox News is in the US. Nontheless, Webb is critical of the standard of broadcast journalism there. “American broadcasters don't get real players. They get proxies who just lay into each other”. That leads him to comparison with the UK parliamentary system. “It may look messy but at least we can do things". Lyall retorted: “at least our constitution is written down!"

While organs such as Fox bleat about America's supposed terminal decline, Webb sees it as somewhat relative “compared to the rest of the world”. And maybe that's not such a bad thing. Yes, there's persistent unemployment, and the ever-present threat of terrorism. But Americans have always been exceptionalist in their outlook, and Webb puts it into historical context: Barack Obama is clearly not the first President to be blamed for economic woes that pre-dated his term of office.

There's plenty to learn about the ways in which the US can teach Brits a thing or two: questions about philanthropy for example are sparking “an interesting debate”. For example, the European way of increasing funds for the public good was through higher taxes, while Webb's observations in the US convinced him that it was not necessarily higher taxes that encouraged benefactors, but rather easy ways of giving large sums of money.

Webb's overall view is that there is a fundamental divide in the special relationship. But it is no more than a cultural split between the two nations, maybe in part due to a British uneasiness with American self-gratitude and an audacious, unapologetic embracing of religion. But with a more honest recognition of it – possibly even a celebration – a more mutually beneficial collaboration is possible.

Originally posted on the Media Society website.

Blast from the past: cartoon competition

2011-11-02T20:54:00.000Z

I don't really do restaurant reviews, but I do love the Gay Hussar. This Soho institution was opened in 1953, named in honour of the elite of the Hungarian army rather than marketed at the LGBT community as its location - and name - might suggest. Popping in there on a weeknight with a group of university friends, as I did last week, to devour platefuls of yummy Eastern European comfort food is one of life's pleasures.

It's probably not the most fashionable of eateries, which probably explains why it is particularly popular with backbench Labour MPs. Many of them have been immortalised in portrait form, drawn by the Guardian and Tribune cartoonist, Martin Rowson, and adorn the walls of the ground floor and stairs. Whether they're flattering or not is open to question, but I was reminded last week by one of my friends that Rowson had in fact drawn me. The occasion was the relaunch of Tribune back in 2005. (It recently announced its closure, only to be reformed as a co-operative venture).

So here it is. Rowson himself very kindly sent this on to me, and the first person to spot me (alas, not how I currently look) wins a copy of the West Wing Season 1 on DVD. It's a little bit biased towards people who actually know who I am, but I never said the competition was fair did I?

Have you got an interesting story to tell about community action?

2011-10-30T19:34:00.000Z

I'm very interested in the activities of neighbourhood groups and local organisations doing great things and organising to make people's lives better in some way. I'm looking for stories about the struggles they face and the hurdles they come across – and overcome - and the ways in which they raise money and succeed. The focus is politics, but with a small 'p'.

Your story could get a large audience - as well as my blog, I write for the Guardian's Voluntary Sector Network, and occasionally other publications.

If you've got something you'd like me to cover please email me and don't forget to include brief details and a way of me getting in contact.

Seeing red in London's mayoral contest

2011-10-25T23:37:00.002+01:00

I cried when Ken Livingstone lost the 2008 election to Boris Johnson to become Mayor of London. Yes, I know. I'm a silly, soppy thing who takes politics far too seriously. I have soft spot for the old warhorse, and I'd been canvassing all day. I'd had a few bottles of wine, and it was late. Ken Livingstone's valedictory address was heartfelt, and he was clearly gutted. And surely politically-savvy Londoners would see through the vagaries of The Blonde and re-elect Red Ken, the man who had remade London politics, with a landslide. Wouldn't they?

That was over three years ago. I've given up active politics since then, mainly because I couldn't do anything but feel guilty when looking at bundles of leaflets that needed delivering to nearby streets. I don't feel so guilty any more though. London's politics has changed – and elections are no longer fought and won in the hole of the 'doughnut' that is inner London boroughs. With credit to Ken, the centre ground of London's politics – a micro state within the UK – did shift westward. Even the Telegraph has called Ken the most successful left-winger of modern times. As a result, massive investment in public transport, the congestion charge and a commitment to police numbers have all been written into the rulebook for London's mayor.

Boris knows these truths, and in spite of the blustering demeanour is no fool. He is surrounded by smart people at City Hall; strategists, specialists, communicators. As Conservatives, they have realised how valuable City Hall is as a power base and they are not prepared to throw it away, despite the historic antagonism towards London local government under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Much has been made of the personal similarities between Boris and Ken – the mavericks acting outside the party mainstream, even their occasionally racy private lives. Boris isn't on the same page as David Cameron. Ken's rarely read from the same book as the Labour leadership. But both claim to be standing up for the People's Republic of London in their own way.

The New Bus for London – or the new Routemaster -is a big bold, physical manifestation of Boris making his mark on London. But Ken was right to scrap the original Routemaster, as I've argued before. He was right also to introduce the unfairly maligned bendy buses, which seem to operate in many of Europe's other cities without any trouble at all.

Boris and his team have been entirely wrong to scrap bendy buses, which have been well suited to the job expected of them. Preferring to listen to ill-informed advice on what might win him the election (it worked, but his advisors know nothing about running transport) we’ve seen chaos outside places like Waterloo and Victoria stations, where there are either too many replacement double-deckerscausing congestion at the terminus, or smaller buses which leave large numbers behind. Here's the evidence:

Enormous queues build up at Waterloo station every morning waiting for the 521 bus - down the stairs, double-backing several times and causing huge congestion like some sort of low-budget British horror film

Bendy buses on the route I use most often just vaccumed up queues and never left anyone behind. And, as for the urban myth that they're more dangerous to cyclists – well, not a shred of evidence could be provided to support that theory.

I’d personally like to see the return of the bendy bus, and for politicians to leave decisions over what sort of buses should be on our streets to the professionals, rather than getting stuck in a 1950s timewarp about ‘new' Routemasters. Yes, that's right – a bus based on a open rear entrance design that dates back to at least the 1920s, but built in 2011. It will leave TfL and the London bus companies open to lawsuits. But Boris powers on with his pet project, which although is undeniably pretty as buses go, is still unnecessary and expensive in an age of supposed austerity and budget cuts. The first is due in trial service in the new year.

Artists' impression of the imaginatively titled Emirates Air Line

Then there's the Thames Cable Car. Who remembers Londoners asking for this? It would have been expected that any incoming or re-elected mayor would have supported a new bridge in that part of London, easing the pressure on the Blackwall Tunnel and the Limehouse Link. It wasn't however, part of either Boris', or for that matter, Ken's manifesto and has managed to spectacularly overtake other long-hoped for projects such as the Cross-River Tram or Crystal Palace Tram extension, or the DLR's Dagenham Dock extension. The Emirates Air Line, as it will be called, has even sneaked on to the tube map. Like the new Routemaster, it's shiny and glossy and looks great in the run-up to a Mayoral election. But do we actually need it?

Non-Londoners may wonder why all this is of consequence. But what happens in London next year will undoubtedly have an impact on UK politics come the next general election in 2015, or sooner. Ken Livingstone has been busy attacking Boris on police numbers, for example. Boris sounds less combative towards his opponent and has grown in confidence significantly since taking on the job. He's even using similar language and the posturing of his opponent. Meanwhile, Ken really needs to learn the lessons of 2008 - and some have doubted whether he really can - if he is to wrest back control of the capital. There's even been muttering that he may be deposed as Labour's candidate. Either way, 2012's going to be an interesting year in London.

Civil partnerships or 'gay marriage'? What should progressives be arguing for?

2011-10-10T21:06:00.001+01:00

A month or so has passed without me banging on about some aspect of the politics of sexual identity. Yet I've been following the gay marriage debate with interest, watching the odd Conservative MP or two speak for or against it, the culmination of the debate being David Cameron's speech to the Tory conference last week. In the speech, he told the assembled blue-rinse brigade that he was for gay marriage “not despite, but because” he's a Tory. And despite the common perception that it's the older generation of his party that are most uncomfortable with it, there are plenty of younger Tories, including self-hating acquaintances from my past, who have also expressed reactionary sentiment against the idea. On the whole, however, it's reasonable to say that there is political consensus behind it.

Yet, to me, it's striking how little the gay community itself is talking about marriage equalisation. And let us resist the 'gay marriage' tag, because there's nothing inherently gay about making the law equal for same-sex couples. We don't after all, call the existing institution 'straight marriage'.

In reality it could only have been a matter of time before Cameron came out in favour of marriage equality, but I applaud him for his decision to once again make gay rights a cornerstone of one of his conference speeches. Speeches such as this are still important to leaders, if not the political rhythm of the UK more generally, and it took a confident centre-right Prime Minister to announce that he was in favour of marriage equality when the eyes of the UK's political class and media were on him. His speech means that the language of marriage equality is now commonly spoken not only by Cameron and all three mainstream party leaders, but by Peter Tatchell also, which is very rare indeed. Tatchell himself, in that classic liberal way of his, wouldn't even tie the knot in marriage himself, but believes it's a fundamental human right. I agree.

If and when the law to equalise the law does get passed however, it will pose an interesting dilemma for those gay and lesbian couples who are planning on getting hitched, or indeed are already in civil partnerships. I'm not sure which category my boyfriend and I will be in by the time that the law is passed – we officially registered our intention on Friday - but should we accept that a civil partnership is still as good as a newly defined extension of marriage? In other words, do we 'upgrade'?

Speaking purely for ourselves, we're actually quite happy with the relatively progressive institution of civil partnerships, the legislation for which has only existed since 2005. We are happy without the historical, religious and cultural trappings of marriage, and see our civil partnership as a more favourable evolution of the concept of shackling together human beings in matrimonial harmony. After all, whatever form of legal agreement we choose, we still have to decide who puts the bins out on Wednesday nights.

Chris Ashford's blog is another interesting read on this subject.

Oh, and this from Channel 4 News too. Had to have a little lie-down after half-agreeing with Douglas Murray.

Keep your hands off my balance sheet, Dave

2011-10-05T16:06:00.004+01:00

I’ll be paying back my student debt for some time to come, thanks to the last government’s zeal for vast loans and my complete inability to secure ample part-time work while I was studying. Resigned to not being financially secure until my mid-thirties – and that’s an optimistic outlook – I now realise that the semi-detached, picket fence comfort of my parents’ generation will be much harder to come by.

Short of inviting himself to kitchen tables across the land, armed with an accounts book, a calculator and a pair of scissors to guillotine our flexible friends, the Prime Minister’s response to my domestic financial crisis has thankfully proved short-lived. An early draft of his conference speech announced that “the only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households - all of us - paying off the credit card and store card bills."

All of this confuses the Government’s economic message; aren’t we supposed to be propping up fragile High Streets by spending on clothes, electrical goods, and holidays? Or should we be living as if we’re part of a religious order? What Dave has failed to explain is how we’re supposed to eke out a day-to-day existence in the meantime.

Yes, debts are terrible, nasty things that strangle our otherwise happy existences like a noose around the neck. Most of us enjoy luxuries such as shelter, food and clothes that make us look vaguely flattering, so we put off the inevitable. We limit your outgoings, dealing with one debt at a time. An instruction to pay off everything we owe on national television would have halted already fragile consumer confidence, plunging our retail sector into despair. The message is all the more insulting as when you consider that Britain’s Prime Minister and his consort are reportedly worth around £30million between them. Many of the Cabinet are also millionaires. They don’t have to borrow a penny to survive.

Here’s a better idea. ‘Plan A’ doesn’t work. Youth unemployment is at 20%, consumer confidence is at an all-time low. Cameron would be better off concentrating his efforts at macro-level, securing growth and jobs for those who really need them. That’s what he’s paid to do. Frankly, I’d rather be advised on my finances by the broadcaster and financial advisor, Alvin Hall. He’s got bags more charisma and would make a lot more sense.

Cat-call politics is back

2011-10-04T21:27:00.002+01:00

Every so often, a generation of politicians becomes afflicted by a rapidly setting form of collective amnesia, as they forget why a key piece of legislation exists in the first place. The Human Rights Act is one example. It’s not yet clear what its fate will be, but it’s another excuse to talk about immigration.

There’s something about discussing immigration in the UK which does more to uphold the image of the British as a nation of eccentrics than an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Something about it touches a nerve so that it becomes responsible for much unhinged ‘debate’. The Home Secretary delivered another of these crazy interludes when she claimed, while making her case against the Act, that an illegal immigrant could not be deported “because he had a pet cat”.

The tradition of Britain standing up for human rights goes back at least to the Second World War - during which fascism and communism had been responsible for some of the twentieth century’s worst atrocities. Hats off to the relative sanity of Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, who responded by wagering a bet with May that nothing of the sort ever happened. Recalling how Britain led the way in drawing up the European Convention on Human Rights, Clarke echoed a more serious politics.

I’ve a feeling that the abolition of the Human Rights Act is just mood music to placate rowdy Tory backbenchers, frothing at the mouth at perceived concessions to Liberal Democrats. We are still in conference season. Ideas are floated, dismissed, chewed over. David Cameron knows that any real attempt to rip this particular statute would be terminal for the Coalition, and worse, the prospect of minority government. Like other things which this government has told us it is against, the intention to do so something does not necessarily mean it will happen while it relies on Liberal Democrat votes.

Even May’s own department claimed that the pet defence did not have a role to play in the decision not to deport the man in question. So, don’t bet on it becoming a common factor in immigrants pleading with the UK Borders Agency in future. Aside from the odd parrot or two, how many innocent cats, dogs, guinea pigs or hamsters could we really expect to construct a defence of their owner’s right to stay in the UK? That’s cat-call politics for you.

The 23rd most popular left-wing blogger is...me!

2011-09-13T20:57:00.001+01:00

I'm dead chuffed to have been placed 23rd in the top 75 left-wing bloggers in the recent Total Politics awards. It's nice to know I'm being read, and strange to see my name close to longer established journalists like George Monbiot, and ahead of people like Johann Hari, although given his own troubles this year, maybe that's not so surprising. Big congratulations also to fellow City hack James Bloodworth too, who came in at eighth place with his Obliged to Offend blog.

I love writing about politics, and I try to resist being too self-indulgent or unnecessarily inflammatory in the subjects I write about. Maybe there's a bit too much of that out on the blogosphere - I pride myself on some semblance of balance and reasoned argument, and try not to take myself too seriously.

Thanks for reading, and especially if you voted for me too. It means a lot.

Why lifting the ban on gay men giving blood has made me more angry

2011-09-08T14:11:00.002+01:00

So, the lifetime ban on men giving blood who have ever had sex with another man has been – partially - lifted. After a 12-month ‘window period’ of effective celibacy, men who have ever had sex with another man can give blood. Great. A particularly discriminatory restriction has been lifted.

It’s fine if you’re celibate, or asexual, or a monk. As the Twitter feed of my favourite online magazine said when the announcement was made, “it’s that awkward moment when you realise you’ve not had any in so long, it’s OK for you to donate blood”. For some people, that will be the case, either out of choice or not through want of trying. The vast majority of gay men, I suspect will not fall into the monk category. After all, even in the most remote outposts of the UK, the internet has made it more than possible for men who want to have sex with men – regardless of whether they’re gay or not – to do just that. They don’t even have to define as ‘gay’ these days.

But how should you feel when you’re in a monogamous, long-term relationship of over four years, and you know that you’re free of any sexually transmitted infections (STIs)? I’m entering into a civil partnership with him next year, for goodness’ sake.

I take great issue at being pigeon-holed in that great mass of gay men who are at particularly high-risk of catching and transmitting hepatitis B, which is difficult to detect for up to 12 months after transmission. Quite rightly, this article points out the tacit failure of UK governments, past and present, to immunise against hepatitis B, as 85% have done. So, surely there is a big question about the duties of government and the public healthcare systems to protect against such diseases? I am a gay man, but I’m not a member of the mass of gay men who, somewhat mythically, carry a myriad of STIs. Whereas sexually active gay men may well be at high risk statistically, I simply don’t believe this is the case for many, simply because they don’t have sex, they engage in safe sex, or they engage in safe sexual activity which is within the confines of any normal, loving relationship. I do take responsibility for my health, funnily enough.

It couldn’t just be men who have sex with men who are prevented from giving blood, so I had a look on the National Blood Transfusion Service website, which gives some advice on who should, and shouldn’t give blood. At the top of the page, it gives its less severe advice. Apparently you should not give blood if:

“You've already given blood in the last 12 weeks (normally, you must wait 16 weeks)”Fat chance, the blanket ban was only lifted today so thus far in my life I’ve been prevented from doing so.

“You have a chesty cough, sore throat or active cold sore.”Hmmm, not lately. Last time I checked my phlegm-like output, there weren’t any STIs lurking.

“A member of your family (parent, brother, sister or child) has suffered with CJD (Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease)”Not as far as I know. Although we did eat British beef in the 1990s - does that count?

There are many other reasons given, including if you’ve had a recent tattoo or body piercing or if you’re pregnant (none, certainly not the latter, apply to me). Fair enough. I would assume there are valid, legitimate medical reasons behind all of this, not least in the interests of the health of the individual giving blood but also public health at large.

Going towards the bottom of the page (where most eyes will have begun to turn off, because the website isn’t brilliantly designed) it finally tells me that I should never give blood if I’m a man who's had sex with another man, even safe sex using a condom. So, I can be entirely clean, clear and safe of any nasty STIs or HIV, completely healthy, yet still banned (and that will still apply to me when the ban is partially lifted, because I’m in a sexually active relationship).

What’s more, any woman who has had sex with another man, who in turn has had sex with another man must never give blood less than 12 months after sex. That might rely on an awful lot of investigative work on the part of the woman who surely, shouldn’t be expected to know the sexual history of the man she’s in the sack with (and wouldn’t necessarily get an honest or reliable answer as a result).

Human honesty, therefore, is rather problematic. The National Blood Transfusion Service, quite rightly, needs to ensure that the quality of the blood it takes from people does not in any way endanger public health. But surely science is better than ever before to ensure that the quality of blood is never compromised? The questions that are asked of people should, surely be based on everyone’s unprotected sex and not just one group. There are significant numbers of people in the UK who still have unprotected or high-risk sex, without condoms, and in this instance, I’m talking about people who engage in sexual activity with the opposite sex.

I can’t say I’m in a massive hurry to give blood. But I’d like to one day. Who knows when a close friend or family member will need that particular blood type that I have because, God forbid, they’ve been involved in some horrific accident or has to undergo some sort of emergency medical procedure? It doesn’t bear thinking about. For the time being, I can’t go anywhere near one of those big trucks the National Blood Transfusion Service trundles around the country, and enjoy my first ever post-transfusion cup of tea and a biscuit.

What am I led to believe? The argument from the powers-that-be seems to be that a 12-month restriction can only rest on some sort of inherent homophobia at worst (and I hate to think this), at best a complete ignorance of the sexual behaviours of gay men, not least women who’ve ever had sex with gay men. My response is: let the science do the talking and treat us as individuals, gay, straight or whatever.

Anything less, and it will still feel like the state thinks what I’m doing in the bedroom is a bit wrong.

Worth saying also that London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard is a good port-of-call for advice on these matters: 0300 330 0630.

Review: London Road

2011-09-03T15:06:00.001+01:00

Cottesloe, National Theatre, London

14 April – 27 September 2011

If David Cameron were looking for an example of the big society in action, he may need look no further than the close-knit community of London Road, an otherwise unremarkable street in Ipswich, Suffolk. In late 2006, a group of previously disparate residents had come together in the most unlikely circumstances to forge new bonds in their community in the aftermath of tragedy.

Over November and December 2006, fork-lift truck driver Steve Wright terrorised this usually genteel town, murdering five prostitutes who worked in the red-light district; the consequent manhunt triggering the biggest inquiry evermounted by Suffolk Police – and the attention of the world's media. The extraordinary spotlight cast on London Road soon began to bring together the street's residents more often - a thriving annual flowers in bloom competition, a Neighbourhood Watch and a quiz night. All this attracted the attention of a writer, Аlecky Blythe, who began to spend a lot of time with the still emotionally sore locals, somewhat ironically employing a form of journalism that would later translate her conversations with them to the stage.

Blythe deserves much praise along with composer Adam Cork for the uniquely faithful yet sensitive setting of the residents' spoken words to music. If that sounds like a tall order in the context of the Ipswich tragedy, it has paid off tremendously. The conventions of the traditional musical are thrown aside to remarkable effect. Every intonation, flaw and variation of dialect is captured, often humorously, sometimes bittersweet. The audience, from the very beginning has been invited into the story, with the opening bars of “Hello, welcome” and the shaking of hands of those in the front rows, spoken to music by the character of Ron, the Neighbourhood Watch chair. And while initially it is odd to hear the openings to musical 'numbers' with lines such as “Yeah, s’quite an unpleasant feeling, everyone is very, very nervous …erm …”, the overall effect is captivating. In the words of Cork, “the choral presentation of this story in particular seems to underline the ritual aspect of human experience”. It is a story about deep, centuries-old aspects of the human condition – in which the usual societal boundaries have been broken down because London Road needs to heal itself.

London Road will no doubt set the standard for a bold, fresh new take on the musical genre for years to come, and will undoubtedly encourage audiences to question what is being presented to them. We experience an honest portrayal of civic society's desire to improve its sense of community; that isn't just borne out of meddling by liberal 'do-gooders'. The residents act out of a desire for self-protection, a human reaction to shovel life's nasties away out of sight. But, for all the lighter moments and the sympathy imparted by the audience for a group of people whose lives have been invaded, a reflection by one character towards the end remarks disturbingly on Wright's crimes: “I'm glad they're gone – I could shake him by the hand for what he did”. Ominously, the prostitutes themselves feature just once in the entire production – standing silently on the stage in a poignant moment of quiet reflection. Do we question the girls' plight and the residents' reaction to it? Yes – and that's what makes this production work, because we are not fed the warts-and-all detail of their deaths.

Through the authentic, choral representation of its residents, the success of London Road is a reminder that occasionally, stronger society can come out of tragedy. And, if we had any doubt as to the motives of those behind this production, over £25,000 was raised for the Iceni Project over the course of the show's run – a real life charity helping Ipswich prostitutes and their families in dealing with drug and alcohol problems.

In defence of Sally Bercow

2011-08-24T22:02:00.000+01:00

Some Tories haven't the backbone to act to oust the Speaker of the House of Commons. Instead, they choose to attack his wife.

It’s unfortunate that in 2011, there are some people who just can’t cope with the idea that a politician’s wife might occasionally do things which don’t fit in with the stuffy, 1950s world that is the House of Commons. (Had I used the word Parliament, I would have included the Lords and replaced 1950s with ‘nineteenth century’). But generally speaking, we have more women in Parliament than ever before and they too have past lives and personalities which are far from the twin-set and pearls image of political spouses.

It seems that the archaic attitudes of olde England are alive and well in the form of Francesca Preece, who in a blogpost today on Total Politics, claimed that ‘political spouses should be seen and not heard’. Far from being a satire on the sort of patriarchal nonsense you might read in the Daily Mail, this article was for real.

In Preece’s line of sight was Sally Bercow, wife of the current Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow. Now, coming from the left of the party and highly favoured by Labour, the Speaker is far from flavour of the month with his erstwhile Tory colleagues. He’s attracting the sort of abuse and insults in the chamber that is not worthy of MPs – but that’s another story. Mrs Bercow’s crime it seems, is simply to have a high profile and a life story. She’s a prolific Tweeter, reformed alcoholic and a former drug user. She’s a bit bolshy, she’s had her own fair share of sexual conquests and, worst of all to many Tories, she’s a member of the Labour party. Sally Bercow does not fit in with the prim, proper world of political spouses who press the flesh and run the constituency office. So what? She is a human being. But Tories can’t stand it.

Were Bercow to battle past the men in tights to streak naked across the floor of the Commons while screaming crazed obscenities, her critics would have a point.

Were Sally Bercow to battle past the men in tights to streak naked across the floor of the Commons, screaming crazed obscenities while her husband sat back and did nothing, her critics would have a point. The office of the speaker should be respected. But the critics of John Bercow, not Sally, should be doing the honourable thing and seeking to depose him if they’re not happy with his performance.

It’s just not on to attack someone who, aside from her connection through marriage to the Speaker, is in no way responsible for that position. The responsibility for keeping order in the chamber is the job of the Speaker, and nobody else. And if Members of Parliament insist on applying this otherwise invisible moral code (I can’t see much evidence of MPs upholding a moral code any more stringently than any other human being), then they may want to begin with some of their colleagues. If a drug-taking past is so aborrent, how about picking on Louise Mensch? Or is criticising the Speaker’s wife just too easy a target?

Footnote: Sally Bercow is currently appearing in Celebrity Big Brother – and her nominated charity, Ambitious about Autism – have already received £100,000 as part of Bercow’s conditions for appearing on the show. If she survives the entire show, the charity will receive £500,000. Is such a sum not worth Bercow’s “outrageous, attention-seeking ways”?

Vote for me in the Total Politics 2011 Blog Awards!

2011-08-16T21:44:00.000+01:00

If you like what you read, that is! Just click on the link to go straight through to the voting page...

Voting closes at midnight on Friday 19 August. Please make me your number 1 choice :-)

There is no clear lesson to learn from the riots - yet. But we’re all responsible.

2011-08-16T14:29:00.000+01:00

< Insert terrifying picture of burning building here >

Yes, it’s a bit of a cliché. But it’s no joke. No mainstream politicians can escape some sort of responsibility for the rioting and civil unrest that ravaged England. Most are making noises about what should be done to ‘fix’ society; with David Cameron essentially repackaging many of the speeches he made when he first became leader of the Conservative Party with an angry tone of voice. This time, he’s added authoritarian zeal by calling for social networks to be closed down and has floated the idea of water cannons and rubber bullets. None of this illiberal nonsense seems bother Nick Clegg however, who in return has announced a ‘communities and victims panel’ which will fall tantalizingly short of the public inquiry that is really needed to get answers.

The impact of cuts cannot truly be felt yet and although it cannot be ruled out as a causal factor in helping create the riots, or doing enough to stem social disorder, the Labour party under Ed Miliband, to their credit are broadly right in their refusal to pinpoint the cause on anything in particular. That is sensible, clear-headed thinking at this stage. And although Miliband has instead called for a more wide-ranging, community-led inquiry into what went wrong, he cannot escape Labour’s failure to recognise the ties that bind in urban populations while it was in government, despite justified expenditure in inner cities through programmes such as SureStart and city academies. It may remain to be seen how much the public connects with his linking of the banking crisis, MPs’ expenses and the phone-hacking scandal and the apparent reaction of the ‘underclass’ to this irresponsibility, but it may well be a useful political narrative in the months to come.

Some people on the radical, Trotskyite left are convinced that looting is a political act in itself – and that what happened is somehow part of a wider workers’ movement. If that is true, then this class war that is horribly dysfunctional, when the communities that have suffered the most damage are pretty much characterised by the poorest parts of London: Tottenham, Brixton and Hackney, not to mention other areas of deprivation in the UK. It’s fairly perverse to support the wilful destruction of property of people who have nothing in the first place, whether that be homes or small businesses. A class analysis of the problem falls at the first hurdle.

That’s not to say that the left have nothing to say about the riots. But it needs to understand that an economic analysis is somewhat limited in its scope. We could blame Margaret Thatcher and the deliberate running down of certain British industries in the 1980s, but it wouldn’t fix our problems in 2011. Likewise, we shouldn’t discount traditional Conservative and right-of-centre politicians as completely wrong when they talk about families as the ‘building blocks of society’. A strong, family-type unit is crucial to a child’s upbringing, but strong families exist in many forms, whether that be a heterosexual, 2.4 children nuclear family or the sort with two daddies or one mummy. All of the above are preferable to brutal, murderous gangs which, as David Cameron has rightly identified, are no substitute for the caring, loving bonds of families and law-abiding, respectful communities.

So there are lessons for the left, as well as the right. And it seems irresponsibility by pretty much every section of society is to blame in some way or another. But the main parties are unwilling to lift up the rock to see what is actually happening underneath, evading the real answers as if nothing had happened. The causes of the riots are not ‘criminality pure and simple’: that is a woefully ignorant and inaccurate misreading of the mayhem which wreaked England’s streets last week. Opportunistic they may have been, but the riots cannot be defined on racial, economic, sociological or even criminal lines. In London, around half of those arrested in the first week after the riots were under 18, but among the balance were teachers, social workers, chefs and postal workers. No stereotypes there. So it is clear that whichever bit of society ‘broke’, it was by no means characterised by the unwaged and unemployed. Indeed, while we consider these facts, the most convincing analysis of the riots has come from people such as Peter Oborne and Camila Batmanghelidjh, who have at least introduced several interesting socio-political perspectives - as political commentator and social worker extraordinaire - into the debate.

We may have made some progress in our initial post-mortem of the riots. We might even agree that society – and that word is absolutely crucial - does need to teach responsibility at every level and cannot pretend the underlying problems of social decay don’t exist. Government plays a role in this process just like the rest of us, but it’s certainly not about single-parent families or ‘Left-Wing’ teaching in our schools. Similarly, it’s not purely about poverty or the cutting back local services.

We do need a moral code that at the same time is not ‘moralising’ but unites everyone, and which doesn’t play easily into the hands of ideologues whether they are political or religious. Sadly, going down that path could happen too easily. But blinding ourselves with an easy, readily available panacea doesn’t do the victims of last week’s unrest justice.

Sketch: Boris makes a clean sweep for the Big Society

2011-08-13T23:31:00.000+01:00

The Prime Minister must have woken up on Tuesday morning with a spring in his step, and hope in his heart. Not, surely at the sight of smouldering buildings and buses which had made a bonfire of parts of London. But rather at a movement which was gathering apace among those whose communities had been destroyed by the previous night's rioting. The previously vaunted Big Society had in fact reared itself up to clean up the streets, energised and angry in reaction to the mayhem in Clapham Junction, Woolwich and Croydon. It also probably filled up time for bankers and City types on annual leave.

It was a sad, sorry, mess though. Even the façade of the Party Superstore was no joke. The mask had slipped on this fondly regarded supplier of fancy dress for south London types, exposing a blackened and burnt out shell and leaving shards of PVC and broken glass in the street. But before many had woken up, something extraordinary and heartening was building among the more organised, socially aware elements of inner London.

After an enterprising artist on Twitter had come to the rescue with the hashtag #riotcleanup, hundreds of people had answered the call to marigolded arms, forming up behind the police cordon like an advancing army with a rainbow sparkling brooms that - being either brand new or hardly used - would have aroused the suspicions of Channel 4's Kim and Aggie.

And they took it in their stride and surged forward to clean up the mess.

Boris Johnson's people at City Hall got wind of all this activity, and thought it'd be a jolly good wheeze to get the Mayor out there, so he could look the people of Lavender Hill in the eye. A sort of modern day Queen Mother in a blonde wig, if you like. But these people had been waiting hours for the police to declare that the area was no longer a crime scene. They were agitated. And they certainly weren't in the mood for casually congratulating metropolitan leaders who just happened to be passing.

"I came as fast as I could" panted the Mayor, having rather reluctantly rushed back from his holiday in the United States. Facing a barrage of questions about the lack of policing and the apparent unpreparedness (the residents of Clapham Junction had all found out via Twitter that they were going to be attacked), the Mayor told them that there would be "many more police on the streets” and “robust policing”. But the public didn’t really know what he meant by that as it clearly hadn’t been present the night before.

The Home Secretary hovered nearby but was swiftly removed from view by Home Office press officers as if she had taken her cues from a Victoria Wood Acorn Antiques spoof, shuffling carefully out of sight as if she'd walked into the wrong shot. The cameras barely got a flash of her kitten heels. If Boris really was going to get into a public argy-bargy, Theresa May not be dragged into it.

It wasn't going terribly well, and City Hall press officers quivered at a potential PR disaster. And the thronging crowd weren’t interested in numbers or politicians’ rhetoric.

"WHERE’S YOUR BROOM, WHERE’S YOUR BROOM, WHERE’S YOUR BROOM?" hollered the crowd. It was a sign of the Mayor's eloquence and charm that he could continue answering questions with a pantomime backdrop of chanting middle-class street cleaners, who all wanted answers. Eventually, a kind man relented to the crowd’s demands, handing the Mayor the aforementioned tool. And, lo and behold, with typical Boris unpredictability, a potential disaster turned into a coup for the cameras as the Mayor brandished his newly acquired accessory high in the air as he went to address the assembled throng. It was a nice little spot for the telly really, but he relished the opportunity.

As the cameras drifted away, the Prime Minister was very proud that his big society agenda was being so publicly advocated by his long-time rival. Not only were the dreams he'd had before he became Prime Minister being played out in scenes on national television, pretty young ladies straight out of a Cath Kidston catalogue were playing bit parts in the show. Now all he had to do was to make sure that his old chum Boris didn't take too much of the credit. But with mayoral elections just around the corner, would Boris's new broom give him a clean sweep at the polls?

Welcome to the Big Society - a piece for the NMC Review

2011-08-13T22:55:00.000+01:00

I've been spending a lot of time over the last few months researching and writing about the Big Society, as part of my MA final project. And as part of that, I've been fortunate to be commissioned for the Nursing and Midwifery Council's excellent publication, NMC Review, writing the lead feature for their most recent issue.

And here it is. Needless to say, the subject is provoking a lot of debate in the healthcare professions at the moment.

Rupert Murdoch, as told to Michael Wolff

2011-08-01T22:36:00.001+01:00

Michael Wolff, author of The Man Who Owns The News

We thought we had a chance to “catch our breath and calm down” on this story, began Charlie Beckett from Polis, introducing the US-based writer and journalist Michael Wolff for a special event in conjunction with the Media Society on 28 July. That evening, revelations had emerged of Sara Payne's mobile phone being hacked, just weeks after she had penned a farewell column in the last ever edition of the News of World. This story was far from over, with numerous inquiries launched, investigations started, and resignations – well, many.

Wolff was visiting the UK at a time when the developing phone-hacking scandal has put Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation at the centre of a storm in public life, claiming the careers of its own executives and editors, both current and former, two senior police officers and the closure of an entire newspaper.

Rupert Murdoch - not always hearing what others are saying

Wolff has spent a lot of time with Rupert Murdoch, and it shows. Although The Man Who Owns The News was published in December 2008, his personal look at the world's most influential media mogul will have never been so relevant.

Wolff talked about the sheer longevity of Murdoch, the media mogul who has been a figure of British public life since 1968, far longer than many of the journalists and editors working on his own papers. “Rupert has held power for far longer than anyone else. They come and go, he carries on".

Having not so much been given explicit consent but had never been told “no” when seeking access to the man himself, Wolff told the LSE audience that he simply sought to understand more about a man who “followed his interest and passion and created one of the most peculiar, extraordinary businesses of ever time”. By his own admission, Wolff had secured a role as chief obituary writer when the media magnate eventually goes to the great newsroom in the sky. “When the end comes, I will be the first person they call. So be nice to me” he recalled having told Murdoch.

“How wonderful he's helping you with the book" said Dame Elizabeth Murdoch, Rupert's 102 year old mother. "He's never read one!”

Referring to him as 'Rupert' in the sort of informal, first-name-terms way that's telling of the sort of access he's been privileged to have had, Wolff talked of the Murdoch family in a way that many people probably aren't familiar with. Coming from a family he describes as the “Kennedys of Australia”, Murdoch's own father was a newspaper owner, and his mother, Dame Elisabeth, is still going strong at 102 with a wonderful acerbic humour as Wolff recalls: “How wonderful he's helping you with the book! He's never read one!”.

For those who haven't read it, Wolff's book will undoubtedly be a fascinating insight into the psychological profile of Rupert Murdoch. Wolff talked about a man who displayed somewhat “autistic” traits through his lack of awareness of what is going on around him. Anyone who watched him giving evidence at the recent Culture, Media and Sport committee appearance might have just witnessed a slightly hard-of-hearing octogenarian passing the buck to his son when things got too hard. Yes, there's a hard-headed businessman still present, but in the body of a somewhat more frail and forgetful man than the one who made his first foray into British newspapers in the 1960s.

“He will lose track of conversation mid-sentence. But Rupert loves gossip. Speak to him about specific things or people, and he can respond. He hones in on people's weaknesses”. Some of Murdoch's past editors say he takes a back seat in editorial policy, including Roy Greenslade and Patience Wheatcroft. But according to Wolff, he's far from being hands-off. “Rupert knows everything – everybody is doing things in the Rupert world view” - and especially in the newspapers.

Given recent events, a bright spotlight is shining on News Corporation, and the way its subsidiary, News International, is structured. Newspapers are unsurprisingly Murdoch's first love, and it is through those organs that his businesses have projected their 'brand': The Sun, and The Times for example and until recently, The News of the World. This has shown up Rupert's empire to look extraordinarily incompetent and embarrassed when times are hard. “Rupert's usually good in a crisis. But they [News International] are not good at dealing with issues of trust, credibility and transparency” said Wolff, who drew attention to the highly unusual, personally oriented set-up of Murdoch's business empire.

“They have never felt they needed a public face or a need to justify themselves. From a marketing standpoint, they're a very old-fashioned company, all about controlling monopolies and undercutting the other guy's price”.

But how would Rupert Murdoch feel about the emotional wreckage caused by the News of the World?

“Rupert's a compartmentalised man. He sells tabloid newspapers, and he's very aware of the product he's selling. Phone hacking was not perceived as terribly wrong”.

So far, we'd heard a lot about Murdoch the man, and the politics of NewsCorp. But what of his relationship with senior politicians?

"It was Wendi who told me 'Tony' was one of the people I should go speak with. Within a very short time I was sitting in Tony Blair's office. And it was almost creepy".

“It was a close relationship with Tony Blair – and it was Wendi who told me 'Tony' was one of the people I should go speak with. She would arrange it, and then within a very short time I was sitting in Tony Blair's office. And it was almost creepy. Why was he talking about the Murdochs in this hagiographic way?”.

“He disdained David Cameron, and was convinced by James and Rebekah not to oppose their support of him.” Since those days of easy access to Downing Street – albeit nearly always through the back door - all of the politicians previously courting his attention have now found ethical values. “Or found that Rupert is toxic” proffered Woolf.

At Murdoch's side throughout everything is his third wife, Wendi Deng, a woman who Wolff describes as having “a big sense of humour”. But she's also someone that News Corporation executives and Rupert's children don't like, with her “indomitable presence”.

What's more, “Wendi did not like Rebekah, who had aligned with his children” leaving Rupert in the middle of a “very fraught” family dynamic. We are surprised to learn that he's a hen-pecked husband, dragged along to somewhat unlikely social events with Hollywood liberals by Wendi – hardly his closest ideologues.

Maybe in the midst of tensions within his own family and inner circle, it is unsurprising that the “house of cards” as Woolf calls it, has collapsed. There may well be a separation of the most toxic elements from the company – namely the British newspapers, Rupert's first love above everything else. Criminal inquiries will reach conclusions, things will change. The man at the centre of it all retains an unflinching, unflappable ability to keep his head while those around are losing theirs, a not undesirable quality. As Wolff concluded:

"I liked him – he's without pretence and incredibly human. I related to him as a father”.

Maybe there's more to this media mogul than meets the eye after all.

Foaming at the mouth

2011-07-21T16:48:00.000+01:00

It might have done Parliament a favour had PC Plod looked a little more responsive following Wednesday's foam-pie attack on Rupert Murdoch. The world's media was trained on the octogenerarian media mogul and his sidekick as they gave evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee yesterday afternoon. The whole incident was somewhat overshadowed by the actions of one Jonathan May-Bowles - a.k.a. 'Jonne Marbles', the foam-pie protestor who is due at Westminster Magistrates Court next Friday for attacking the senior Murdoch while he was being questioned. The sitting was suspended, the room was cleared and journalists and members of the public were forced to sit in another room when it reconvened. Murdoch simply wiped his specs, removed his jacket and carried on.

In a way, it's the least he could do given that this was the first time he has ever held to account by a Parliamentary committee in this way. As a friend of mine said, "Keep the custard pie in perspective. Murdoch called for war in Iraq for cheap oil". Twitter marvelled at Wendi Deng's razor-sharp defence of her husband, but some MPs are beginning to worry that as a result of the incident, the public's access to debates in the Houses of Parliament is under threat, given that the Speaker, John Bercow, has launched an external investigation into Parliamentary security highlighted by Paul Waugh's excellent Waugh Room blog:

"That right to attend meetings is a very long established and precious freedom. I think it would be quite wrong for me to seek to constrain or circumscribe an independent investigation in what it can cover and what it can recommend. The point the Hon Gentleman makes is an important one...many people will share his point of view."

I am eternally grateful for the fact that our democracy allows me to attend such a wider range of Parliamentary debates, committees and meetings, which are easy enough to get into provided you've told the police officer at the door where you're going, and you're security searched and frisked in the usual way.

And although I can't say that I find every one of my visits to the Mother of Parliaments a scintillating experience, I would be deeply worried if such freedoms were to be curtailed because of the actions of what turned out to be just a harmless 'comedian'. It's easy enough to smuggle through shaving foam and paper plates into Parliament, but it would be pretty much impossible to try it on with anything else these days.

Public access to Parliament is hard fought for, and it seems can be taken away all too easily. After all, it wasn't until 1989 that Parliamentary authorities allowed cameras into the building, shining a light on what is still a gentlemen's club atmosphere. The infamous 'funpowder plot' protest by Fathers for Justice in 2004 resulted in enormous glass screens being erected in front of the public gallery - somewhat detrimental to the atmosphere of Parliament for the average visitor. And we heard yesterday that Parliamentary authorities had permanently banned the respected BBC producer Paul Lambert - withdrawing his pass and making it somewhat difficult for him to do his job.

I can't help feeling that yet there's too much of a 'security first', 1950s attitude still in Parliament, where unelected officials such as the Serjeant-at-Arms have too much power over public access to the Palace of Westminster. Thankfully, any fall-out for broadcasters has been limited - we later heard Lambert had his pass reinstated following a protest from MPs and journalists alike, the MPs expenses scandal and now phone-hacking demand a greater level of transparency than ever in our political institutions, and we need to fight for every attempt to ebb away at it.

Chavs, the Mystery of the Disappearing Working Class, and Other Stories

2011-07-10T18:27:00.000+01:00

Whatever happened to the working class? A new book by Owen Jones tries to find the answer...

A debate on class in 2011 seemed like a rather archaic idea. We all define one way or the other though, and I suppose I’m middle class, if anything. Two degrees, a good job and living in a nice part of south London. Tick. But my parents are from proudly working class backgrounds – born in council houses in which they stayed until adulthood before earning half-decent money. And like a lot of baby boomers, they bought their first house in their early twenties and have been propertied ever since. Neither have resisted the allure of foreign holidays or nice cars, and made sure that my sisters and I got a good education.

We didn’t miss out on working class culture though, as kids. To say that the older women in my family love bingo is an understatement, while my grandparents took us shopping at the Co-Op before it became fashionable. We loved Only Fools and Horses. And we always mopped up the gravy from our Sunday roast with bread from a sliced loaf.

"All the things that were off the menu for my grandparents are the very things I’ve benefited from growing up and in adulthood".

Taking the contemporary sociological understanding of class – you may be born into one class but it’s possible to move up or down – means that defining myself as middle-class now makes a lot of sense. All the things that were off the menu for my grandparents are the very things I’ve benefited from growing up and in adulthood.

Is the concept of working class still relevant? Does it really matter how you identify? The last fifty years have seen the fetishisation of middle-class values, if not lifestyles, as incomes have gone up and education is seemingly more accessible. Yet the gap between rich and poor has become ever bigger, which means that the group of people in society who would traditionally define as working class have become ever more distant from an all-consuming middle class.

So I was intrigued by a Young Fabians invitation to a discussion between Jon Cruddas MP and Owen Jones, author of the recent book Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. But first, a disclaimer. I haven’t read Chavs – although I’m planning on doing so – which means my thoughts on the subject haven’t yet been shaped by the book itself.

Cruddas claimed that Chavs had reinvigorated the debate about class, an area which Labour is revisiting as it seeks to redefine itself. “Working class” no longer had any positive connotations, as according to the pollster Deborah Mattinson at BritainThinks, we’re all middle class now – 71% of us in fact, while 24% still consider ourselves working class. At the same time Mattinson asserts through her research that the working class tag has become an insult – or rather the derogatory insult ‘chav’ – a word that no-one really knows the origin of. “It just means being poor” according to one of the people surveyed.

For Jones, the marginalisation of the working class was at worst demonstrated through the media’s sweeping generalisations of poor people, as opposed to the educated, affluent journalists. Dewsbury, the West Yorkshire town where nine year old Shannon Matthews was abducted and later discovered 24 days later, was a “white underclass” – the “tip of the iceberg” for all that was broken with Britain. New Labour and the Tories alike have since been sucked into linking the deprivation of poor white working class people – Iain Duncan Smith linked the deprivation of Dewsbury with reforming social housing and incentivising tenants’ good behaviour. All this because of a mythical, feral, lawless group of people whose only crime was to be poor.

Save for a few irrelevant interventions on the merits of electoral systems – which the working class had already made quite clear it wasn’t interested in - there were opportunities to be romantic about big, extended working class families of the past. It’s the sort of thing that Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour harks back to, and not necessarily in a hopelessly nostalgic way. But these families broke down. The working class had been destroyed economically as some people became more aspirational. For those left behind, the BNP and the far-right moved in to fill the void vacated by a new, latte-sipping Labour party.

Owen Jones claims that as a result of all this breakdown, we’re all much more insecure. Really? I wondered what my 96 year old grandmother would make of that. She’s lived through two world wars, became a single parent at 44 and had to struggle to make ends meet for pretty much all of her life. OK, she coped well enough to save her pennies and still had enough left over for the odd coach trip to Great Yarmouth, or a chalet on the Isle of Wight. But if anyone was ever insecure on low-wage, arduous work, benefits and the state pension, it was people like her. The point is, while old social structures have gone and jobs have changed, people are still better off than they ever before – there is more support and security for people now than at any time in history.

"Are there really still people who have never set foot in a branch of Iceland in their lives?"

The working class thing is still novel for some people though. One woman at the event talked about the “culture shock” of working alongside working class people for a whole two years. In 2011, I thought, are there people like this, who have probably never set foot in a branch of Iceland in their lives really so far removed from those who struggle to survive on a daily basis? I rolled my eyes in the direction of our principal speakers for the evening. Maybe they were just being polite, but they seemed to have glazed over. Maybe the middle-class spectrum is so wide that the two sides of it hardly ever see each other, let alone understand each other.

I doubt Jones’ book has been staple reading for the people who go to Britain’s bingo halls and bookmakers. It’s been book of the week for the Times and Guardian and has received favourable write-ups in the rest of the quality press, but it probably doesn’t tell us anything about the gap between rich and poor that we don’t already know. It could just be a sure sign of modern middle-class attitudes – that we’re still fascinated by the cultural and economic horrors of those less fortunate than ourselves. But whatever it is, I’m looking forward to reading Jones’ book myself.

This post was originally published on hackeryblog.

Another great publication

2011-07-04T22:30:00.000+01:00

Another day, another opportunity. I'm very proud to be writing for a great LGBT-oriented publication, So So Gay. These guys are going from strength to strength and really providing some quality voices in gay media. My first piece for them was published today - a review of the weekend's London Pride event. Hope you enjoy it, and share, re-Tweet or Facebook if you do!

Some thoughts on Pride

2011-07-01T18:00:00.000+01:00

Here's a short piece I penned for the Guardian's Comment is Free. They didn't want it after all, so here it is in its full, unedited glory.

It’s a common grump among the gay community that Pride is no longer political. Worse still, meaningless. Civil partnerships, equalising the age of consent and the abolition of section 28 all happened while I was growing up. In a flash, full legal equality was delivered on a plate.

Sometimes we don’t know how lucky we are. While New York has only just legalised gay marriages, we’ve had civil partnerships since 2005. The changes are cultural too. I'm comfortable holding my boyfriend’s hand in public, and give him a peck on the lips each morning at the station, just like any other couple.

While the benefits of ‘proper’ marriage are being considered, I don’t care what it’s called. The day before last years’ Pride, my boyfriend proposed. I said yes, and sobbed tears of joy behind my shades as Pride-goers from London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard congratulated us en masse in a Soho church garden.

I’ll be there again for the same reasons I always go – a celebration of what it means to be gay. There may be four gay cabinet ministers in the Coalition, but as long as politicians need to be reminded of the spectrum of human sexuality, there will always be Pride. Just ask Peter Tatchell, permanently brain-damaged as a result of his bravery supporting pride in places such as Russia.

But if it means anything to me right now, it’s an obsession with finding a venue for 120 people and a decent photographer.

Lucky strike?

2011-06-21T23:25:00.001+01:00

The right to strike is a crucial tool in the armoury of anyone who sells their labour.

It’s been a few years since I went on strike. Before you picture a militant firebrand, weather-beaten by picket lines in the 70s and 80s, I’m actually only in my late twenties. But I’ve already taken part in industrial action on a handful of occasions. As a civil servant, I currently work for an agency of the Home Office which means I’m represented by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS). On Friday, PCS announced that they would be joining the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, the National Union of Teachers, and the University and College Union in a day of industrial action over changes to public sector workers’ pensions on Thursday 30 June.

I’m sympathetic to industrial action where it’s appropriate and justified – my politics are very much on the left after all. My decision to strike along with many other colleagues on 30 June is far from a knee jerk reaction however. There have been plenty of strikes called by my union that I haven’t supported, but this is different. It’s all very well working until I’m 90 or so – I’m resigned to that anyway. But for the government to change the pensionable age for people after they have joined the pension scheme? It’s just not on.

My mother is in that category of women who will be most affected by the changes to the pension age. Born in October 1957, she’ll be forced to work until she’s 66. Being the sort of person who enjoys work I don’t suppose she’ll be too worried about the extra six years that the state requires of her. Even so, she’s not been planning for this sudden change in her financial arrangements all her life – and given that the Coalition’s brought forward Labour’s plans it’s even more of a shock. Just as well my stepfather is a financial adviser.

"Organised labour can and should use their legal right to withdraw their labour in a focused way when it’s the only tool at their disposal."

So why strike? The “it won’t change anything” argument is, to put it simply, hollow. I’m taking action not just in my own interests, but in the interests of my parents’ generation too. Organised labour – whether union members or not – can and should use their legal right to withdraw their labour in a focused way when it’s the only tool at their disposal.

The government have made it quite clear that they aren’t interested in negotiation, and what’s more, they’re hell-bent on undermining public sector pay. Looking at the bigger picture, the stagnation of the last year or so may be a good thing, given the gap “which was apparent eighteen months ago”. But even so, I haven’t had a pay rise for two years, and that becomes harder to bear as the cost of living goes up – particularly in London.

"The reality is that a huge number of public servants are earning nothing like the sums at the higher end of the spectrum – or anything like what David Cameron or his millionaire wife earns/"

Yet we’re still “all in this together” according to David Cameron, who continues to use every opportunity to bleat about public servants earning more than he does, when he’s not trying to relaunch the Big Society. The reality is that a huge number of public servants are earning more like the average £23,660 – nothing like the sums at the higher end of the spectrum – or anything like what he or his millionaire wife earns.

Why get bitter about all of this? I don’t plan on being a civil servant for the rest of my life. But when I took this job, I signed up to a package. It included certain stipulations around pay, pensions, terms and conditions, and now the income that will provide me with the basics when I’m dribbling into my soup is being seriously undermined.

I’ve kept my side of the bargain by turning up for work and doing my job to the best of my abilities. The government hasn’t, and they’re even trying to take away the democratic right to strike when union members justify it. I’ve every right to be angry.

What does the 'Dunkirk spirit' mean today?

2011-06-08T01:07:00.001+01:00

A reflection on what the ‘Dunkirk spirit’ means in 2011, with a fair bit of personal knowledge and experience thrown in for good measure.

What does the ‘spirit of Dunkirk’ mean today? It’s a question that Matthew Cain tried to answer in his film for Wednesday night’s Channel 4 News, but in which he sadly failed to capture the true significance of the event itself. The inspiration for the report was English Heritage’s excellent new ‘Operation Dynamo‘ experience, which opens to the public in the underground tunnels at Dover Castle the end of this week. It tells the story of this fabled milestone in the Second World War, and I was lucky enough to be able to preview it at the weekend.

Operation Dynamo was in fact the codename given to the evacuation of some 338,000 British, French and Belgian troops from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, France, between 26 May and the early hours of 3 June 1940. The troops had been cut off by the advancing German army during the Battle of Dunkirk in the Second World War. And the operation to remove these troops from what Winston Churchill called a ‘a colossal military disaster’ was planned deep within the chalk cliffs underneath Dover Castle in Kent. Headed by Vice Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, the operation infamous for the ‘little ships’ – a flotilla of 700 merchant marine boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft and lifeboats which brought the soldiers across the English Channel.

Why do I know all this? My first job after leaving university was in visitor operations at Dover Castle, and a big part of my role was to undertake guided tours through these very tunnels. It’s a place close to my heart, not least because it was a very enjoyable first career job. The castle has played a very important role in British history over 2000 years, due to its strategic importance on the south east coast. They didn’t call it the ‘key to England’ for nothing. Historical tracts aside, I can also remember the naïve but jaw-dropping questions of American cruise-ship tourists from the two years I worked down there. And, seven years since leaving the castle, I still know a lot of the staff. It’s the sort of place people don’t want to leave, and for good reason. Who wants to work in an office when you can explore a magnificent historic site all day long?

The problem with becoming so emotionally attached to somewhere like Dover Castle is that you become quite defensive of it. In fact, I love the place.

But the problem with becoming so emotionally attached to somewhere like Dover Castle is that you become quite defensive of it. In fact, I love the place. I found myself annoyed by Cain’s report’s with its confusing references to the ‘new museum’. It implied that the tunnels themselves were some sort of fabricated entity without a back story. Yes, Operation Dynamo relies very much on audio-visual technology, as do many museums and attractions to provide effects, show films or present graphics. It’s the best solution to EH’s dilemma on how best to present the story of Dunkirk. As the curators used to tell us, it’s not easy preserving authentic artefacts and exhibits deep underground, even though the extensive air-filtration system hasn’t been switched off since 1942.

And although Cain’s film did acknowledge the significance of the tunnels as part of the Dunkirk story, it didn’t appreciate the full story. The tunnels have existed as an underground army barracks during the wars against Napoleon, as well as a field hospital and joint command centre. The complex even served as a rudimentary nuclear bunker up until 1984 when the Home Office finally decommissioned them (many of the files are still classified on this particular era). There’s even an abandoned BBC studio down there, but that’s a story for another time. Dunkirk may well have been the Dover tunnels’ finest hour, but it was just part of a long story stretching back nearly 200 years.

But I speak not as a flag-waving zealot for the castle’s role in past military ‘glories’ but as someone who’s been fascinated by the social history of places like this. Cold, damp, dark, over-heated and dusty, it can’t have been fun for the uniformed services working down there. Each member of staff was assigned to their own individual area and under strict instructions not to talk to anyone not on their section. There were representatives of the Army, Air Force, Navy – including the Women’s’ Royal Naval Service in the plotting rooms (of which I had the pleasure to meet a long-retired representative of once), as well as Post Office technicians and some civilians. And despite the military environment, in a strange sort of way, it encouraged some sort of egalitarian values and a sense of ‘we’re all in this together’, long before our current government attempted to hijack the expression. Many of the people who worked there were just ordinary people from the surrounding area, with families of their own, not forgetting an large absent male population away fighting on the front line.

The spirit of Dunkirk is a parable for ordinary people enduring challenging circumstances or tragedy and coming out the other side

The spirit of Dunkirk is undoubtedly part of our national psyche – a parable for ordinary people enduring challenging circumstances or tragedy and coming out the other side. And if anything’s truly representative of Dunkirk, it’s the ordinary soldiers themselves and the people who helped bring them home from the challenging confines of the Dover tunnels. Whether the ‘Dunkirk spirit’ really does exist 71 years on, I don’t know for sure. But it’s as part of our culture as sliced bread, red telephone boxes and queueing for just about everything. And if you want to learn just a little bit about who we are as a nation, you’ll learn a little bit about our shared history in this quite unusual setting. It’s something you won’t get through a website or sanitised TV documentary.

Labour's good society: moving beyond the state?

2011-06-01T02:16:00.002+01:00

One year on from a general election defeat, is Labour finally signalling a new approach to the state, and the prevailing orthodoxy around the provision of public services?

It's an important question for a party that is searching for a credible response to the deficit, while the coalition uses every last opportunity to attack the last government for “this mess we're in”. Despite Labour riding on the crest of a wave in national opinion polls regularly showing a four or five point lead, many on the left are anxious for Labour to deliver a new narrative. Concepts such as the 'good society' – first mooted a few years ago - and 'Blue Labour' more recently – are being bandied around as possible replacements for the New Labour view of the world.

Chuka Umunna, Labour MP for Streatham

I'd arranged to meet Chuka Umunna, the charismatic Labour MP for Streatham in Parliament's Portcullis House to get an idea of where the Labour leadership is 'at' on these ideas. Half-expecting to find our interview cancelled at the last moment [Umunna was promoted to Shadow Business Minister the day before] I'm relieved when the man himself appears. And he's even prepared to share his chocolate wafer with me, while we discuss what Labour's really thinking about the 'big society', recently relaunched by David Cameron for the fourth time.

It's no accident that Umunna has recently been promoted to a key role on Labour's front bench, only months after being appointed to Ed Miliband's inner circle, initially as Parliamentary Private Secretary. Umunna appears to be genuinely passionate about a new way of thinking, and it's the sort of upbeat, optimistic tone which is very much present in Ed Miliband's speeches.

Our conversation begins with the historical perspective, always an encouraging starting point when considering the future. Umunna outlines the two differing approaches that the Labour party had taken in the latter part of the twentieth century with regards to delivery of its policies.

“As a party, this period in opposition gives us a chance to rediscover our soul and what our underlying principles are behind the programme to cut” says Umunna.

“From 1945, when the Welfare State and the National Health Service was born, until the mid-1990s you had a Labour party which believed in the state as a vehicle for positive change - a period in which the state was incredibly active and controlled everything not far from where we're sitting right now.

“From the mid-nineties, the party sought to show the British public that we'd made an accommodation with the market, and we became a lot more market-driven than we had been before. But we still continued to use the state” - Umunna refers to tax credits and other innovations as a vehicle to redistribute wealth, measures that became synonymous with Gordon Brown as Chancellor, an unambiguously pro-state politician. “It improved the lot of the people that I represent”. That includes me as Umunna's constituent, so I can see where he's coming from.

Then there's this idea of 'One Nation Labour' – which Umunna says he very much identifies with and peppers our conversation with, using it to define his vision of what the Labour party should be about.

This new thinking doesn't just appear to be a reaction to David Cameron's Big Society, of which Umunna says there is “some merit”, but is more of a reappraisal of what Labour's attitude to governing should be.

You might notice that we've been here before. Surely New Labour was itself an attempt to govern through the politics of consensus? And the term 'One Nation' is something that traditionally associated with the Conservatives from the post-war consensus period – Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath, let alone Benjamin Disraeli (who coined the term) even further back in time.

Regardless of the origins of these terms, there is a clear recognition by Umunna that New Labour sometimes didn't fully understand the consequences of its actions in power.

“The Labour Party was insufficiently social, and insufficiently democratic – dismissive of the ties that bind and the community bonds that exist throughout society”

“For a social democratic party - and I do believe that the Labour party is that – we were insufficiently social, and insufficiently democratic.” Referring to both the state-centric and more market-friendly approaches to government in the later half of the twentieth century, Umunna is frank about where Labour went wrong.

“We were rather dismissive of the ties that bind, and the community bonds that exist throughout society. So the state was rather overbearing or patronising if you like, to some extent encouraging a dependency culture” - and we're not talking about benefit scroungers here.

The issues are obvious on Umunna's doorstep. “In Lambeth, we have a massive third sector in terms of the quantity of groups, rather than how big they are. But they are all quite dependent on commissioning from local and central government. Umunna regrets that while it was in power, Labour didn't promote alternative forms of ownership.

“We saw the receipts of our embrace of capital, but there were problems. We didn't do enough to promote models that encouraged co-operative ways of working, or social enterprises that were self-sustaining."

“The market was just concerned with the bottom line – increasing the share price and the dividend payback, and was quite dismissive of anything that got in the way. It led to people being treated like commodities.

“The market was just concerned with the bottom line – increasing the share price and the dividend payback, and was quite dismissive of anything that got in the way. It led to people being treated like commodities.

Unsurprisingly, Umunna is undoubtedly a passionate advocate of 'mutuals', the sort of structure that has traditionally been the preserve of building societies until many turned into banks in the 1990s. He speaks enthusiastically about his own campaign for the re-mutualisation of Northern Rock, still in state hands after being nationalised in February 2008.

“Financial services should be the sector you start with, but it was a missed opportunity for the last Labour government. We didn't institutionalise social democracy by promoting these things.”

What else could be mutualised? “Imagine if the train you got to work was mutually owned. You only have to look at the much higher level of satisfaction with people who use building societies compared to banks. They're better run for a start”. It's an appealing prospect for those who mourn the passing of British Rail and yearn for a more accountable, publicly-owned railway.

“The challenge for us going forward is how we build that build that good society and and rebalances the relationship between the individual and the market.

Umunna talks about a better capitalism, reflecting Ed Miliband's speeches of late. “In 2003, productivity grew at twice the rate of wages. But wages have since stagnated, which is why we've had such an increase in household debt. People want to sustain the same lifestyles. Meanwhile, the top 1% have, in Umunna's words “flown away to a different planet, so for most people capitalism isn't delivering enough any of the time”.

“Taking it back to first principles, my politics comes from the belief that we are mutually dependent beings. Yes, we want to flourish and achieve as much as we can as individuals, and for our families too. But we aspire beyond that, to being ambitious and aspirational for the communities that we live in. You can see that where we live in Streatham. Umunna points to the many street parties held in the constituency for the royal wedding, which happened “not because of some doe-eyed adulation, but people wanted to associate and mingle.”

“What people value more than anything and what makes them happy is the time they spend with their friends and family. And you can't attach a value to association and togetherness”. Umunna defines “our communitarian values” as Labour's terrain. “The Tories don't have any of the answers on all of this, and we need to explain why it's our lawn, and why our concept of the good society is different to their concept of the big society.

“But it's not just Thatcherism with a nice smile – there is a deeper challenge.

“The Tories want the state to get out your hair, but we see the state as your friend, not as your boss.”

“The big difference is that they want the state to get out your hair, but we see the state as your friend, not as your boss.”

I get the impression that Umunna is attempting to get to the heart of what the relationship between state and citizen should be – or at least ask some crucial questions about it. While other left-leaning parties seem to be fairly certain of the balance between the role of the state and the role of communities, it's not clear whether Labour has come to any conclusions just yet. And it may have another four years to work out the answer.

The personal is political - and David Laws should be an advocate

2011-05-14T12:26:00.000+01:00

Can someone tell me how using the public purse to pay your partner rent is in any way justifiable?

Of course it isn't. Parliamentary rules have stated that payments to relations and partners have been prohibited since 2006. But Liberal Democrat MP David Laws got away with it until shortly after the Coalition government was formed last summer.

Privacy is once against a topic of heated debate, whether it's super-injunctions, secret recording or sado-masochistic sex orgies. And, while I have some sympathy with David Laws for his desire to keep his personal life separate from the giant magnifying glass of the media, I wouldn't be true to the strapline of my own blog if I didn't preach that 'the personal is political'. The saying is actually an old feminist mantra, but it cuts through public life whether we like it or not, and I would argue that those who go into politics supposedly to encourage a more equal and just society should live out those values.

Laws says that one of the reasons he didn't declare that he was paying rent to his partner James Lundie, was that he didn't want to disclose his homosexuality. While I'm not in favour of outing people against their will, an individual who goes into elective politics should have felt able to do so without feeling that they would somehow be treated unfairly by the expenses system for having a same-sex partner. Frankly, it's a bit cheap to expect privacy when you're fleecing the public purse to the tune of £40,000 for the weekday convenience of a smart central London property when your supposed 'main' home is in Yeovil, 135 miles away in rural Somerset.

Worse still, Laws ain't short of a few bob, with an estimated wealth of between £1-2 million thanks to a lucrative City career.

The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner has seen sense and has responded robustly to Laws' actions with a full report condemning his breaking of six rules related to the claiming of expenses. And Laws has rightly apologised for his actions, and in fairness has paid back £16,000 more than he needed to. With a seven-day ban from Parliament also imposed on him, he's paid the price in more ways than one.

I hope I'm the last person to criticise an MP for wanting to keep what's personal, private, but I'm no apologist for someone who sits in public office to expect the (admittedly flawed) systems around him to cater to his whims of financial convenience, just because he happens to be gay. It does no favours for the cause of equality. The last thing we want is the sort of Parliament where MPs feel they have to sneak under the radar of the expenses regime, hiding their sexual preferences as if they were some sort of dirty secret under the pretence of a “landlord-tenant relationship”, as James O'Brian put it on the BBC's Question Time. Parliament is in enough of a 1950s timewarp as it is.

Election reflections

2011-05-08T00:12:00.000+01:00

So, it's all over, after a lot of shouting. Politics certainly gets rough and dirty sometimes, but the UK-wide referendum campaign certainly plummeted to new depths of scaremongering, insults, half-truths and just downright lies. And that was just the Prime Minister.

For the Liberal Democrats, both the local, Scottish and Welsh elections proved that you can't just go from being a party of protest to being a party of government overnight without there being any consequences. The impact will be certainly be felt because it begins to soften the buffer between Labour and the Tories. A weaker Lib Dem party could limit Labour's options for coalition or co-operation, come the next General Election. It is a challenge for the left of British politics because Thursday's elections were undoubtedly a victory for David Cameron. The Prime Minister's authority will become stronger – as it has begun to do so already in recent months – while undermining the junior partner in the Coalition further. Nick Clegg will hang on because there is still no real appetite for decapitating yet another leader – the risks of a bloodbath are just too high in government. And it's hardly in Cameron's interest either.

As for the referendum, it was disappointing that the public took against the Alternative Vote in such numbers. I live in Lambeth, one of only eight areas which voted yes – no surprises there given the support my own MP has given to the Yes campaign and the generally progressive nature of the politics around these parts. Others too have pointed out that Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh were all areas that voted for change – all reasonably affluent, liberal bastions of democracy where it's probably fair to say that a higher than average number of people understand and support the alternatives to our current voting system. The dilemma now will be whether to come back with another question as Chris Huhne has mooted, or whether it becomes part of Labour or Liberal Democrat manifestos in the future – maybe the closely related AV Plus, or the Single Transferable Vote. But while the public voting overwhelmingly against change, our political institutions are still tired and dysfunctional and the issues around plurality and accessibility to smaller parties in our democracy will only become more apparent.

Nick Clegg didn't help matters, of course, but it was fundamentally a matter of timing and utter naivety on the part of the Liberal Democrat leadership that we had this referendum when we did. The idea that the Tories – and more conservative Labour stalwarts - would just play nicely and allow the referendum to pass by as a harmless sideshow. Given a year or so, and the opportunity to heal significant wounds caused by the Lib Dem u-turn on tuition fees and the outcome may have been different. It may also have influenced the thinking behind the campaign itself, which seemed to rely on stoking up anti-political feeling and gushing support from liberal celebrities such as Eddie Izzard, Stephen Fry and Helena Bonham-Carter. They're fine entertainers and personalities, but they don't do hard politics. Sometimes you need seasoned politicians to come out and fight a vigorous campaign, and not have to resort to the pathetic campaign tactics that the Yes campaign used at times. The failure of the Yes campaign made ample space for the likes of Labour big beasts John Prescott and John Reid at the No campaign, whose messages resonated with ordinary voters that were ultimately confused by the multitude of essentially academically derived arguments pushed by AV's 'supporters'. (And it might have helped if the Yes campaign had stopped saying 'it's not perfect and not what we really want, but...').

With people distracted by high unemployment, and the simultaneous destruction of public services, sticking with the status quo was just the simplest choice requiring less thinking at the ballot box. Any large-scale progressive campaign in future should remember that.

The fuss over AV might have also overshadowed the campaigns in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Suddenly, the political establishment has woken up to the reality of the Scottish National Party governing with a not insubstantial majority, and the clearest mandate yet for any party in the Scottish Parliament. Without anyone noticing, the break-up of the United Kingdom within 10-15 years has suddenly become more of a possibility. The political consequences of that can only begin to be imagined. Certainly, there is no reason to believe that Labour could ever make a comeback in Scotland without a serious reappraisal of what their role could be in a changed environment, and it's positive to hear that Ed Mililband has ordered a root-and-branch review of Scottish Labour.

On the whole, Labour didn't fare too badly but Ed Miliband was no runaway winner. The journey on the road to recovering the party's electoral fortunes has begun but negotiating the obstacles placed in front of it by the Coalition has added an extra dimension. Re-drawn boundaries, a deficit reduction plan that may or may not work and new thinking around public services will challenge Labour's strategists for months to come. Now these elections and the referendum are out of the way, it's time for some serious, credible and meaningful opposition from Ed.

Tom Harris and the case against the Alternative Vote

2011-05-01T20:12:00.001+01:00

“No more loathsome piece of flotsam has floated to the surface of Scottish New Labour than the lumpen piece of wood that is Tom Harris” said George Galloway. A little cruel you might think, but Galloway was never adored in Parliament. With some pride, the Member for Glasgow South, not known for being a meek about his politics, displays this quote on the noticeboard above his desk in a small office above the House of Commons.

You can't criticise Tom Harris for being distant or aloof either. The spur for our meeting was very much in the spirit of the age, arising from a 'robust conversation' on Twitter about the Alternative Vote. I arrive in his office on a warm April evening and he asks if I would mind being recorded. Not a question you expect a politician to ask a journalist. But Harris was once a journalist himself, and I'm from a generation of hacks who've grown up with Twitter and podcasting, so although we disagree on changing the voting system, we do have something in common.

Harris is adamant that the current voting system is something that's worth hanging on to. In his view, there's nothing unholy about campaigning alongside Conservatives. Yet although he favours the status quo, like the larger partner in the coalition, he is similarly dismissive of the 'new politics' that Nick Clegg has supposedly tried so hard to champion.

“Give me a break! If the new politics is all about a lack of transparency, back-room deals and cynicism – in other words, everything this government has represented since last May - I'm very proud to say I'm anti the new politics”.

For Harris, the campaign is very much about the political expediency of the Alternative Vote (AV) for the LibDems. There's no love lost over Clegg and he has even less time for the Yes campaign's arguments for moving to AV.

“Clegg says vote no if you want to see more duck houses. This is the man responsible for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority” - to you and me, that's the new body responsible for paying MPs' expenses.

“I mean, what a cretin. They [Lib Dem MPs] must know he was lying through his teeth - what an insult to their intelligence”.

Clegg-bashing aside, I asked Harris what his overwhelming objection to AV was:

“How much time you got? First of all you have to be very careful before you ditch an existing system. First Past the Post has its faults, but it has provided us with a very workable system that's easy to understand, as well as stable government, which people often sneeringly dismiss”.

“Yes, we had Thatcher, but we had Blair too, and if you look across the world stable government is actually quite prized in a lot of areas.

“I'm not saying that coalitions should never happen, but I do genuinely believe that AV will result in a likelihood of more hung parliaments because the Lib Dems will obviously benefit from AV.

“If we have more Lib Dems then we will increase the chance of having hung parliaments.

But if you want the perfect electoral system, go and search for the Loch Ness Monster instead. You'll find that a lot more rewarding and productive”.

I point out that the current electoral system briefly brought us 'unstable' government in the form of a hung parliament. After all coalitions are now the reality of our political system, AV or not. And in terms of outcomes, the only tangible difference would be an increased number of seats for Liberal Democrats, at least based on the 2010 result.

Harris does not buy my argument. “It is a profoundly dishonest campaign to say that AV is in any way an improvement over FPTP”. Indeed, his hostility to AV goes right to the heart of what democracy is all about – and the old tribal attitudes become a little more obvious.

Deep down, Harris tells me he has an instinctive reaction against the idea that we should be encouraging people to dilute their political views.

“Politics should be about taking a stand and being principled. I was speaking to a colleague today, who was going to vote Yes, but whose 87 year old mother is voting no. She was giving him a hard time about it, saying that she didn't want to vote for anyone apart from Labour”.

“In this country we're always being told that politicians have sold out and that the Labour party have sold out, and that we need conviction principled politicians. Are we really going to get conviction politicians under AV?

I am trying to work out whether Tom really does see Westminster politics as nothing more than a rigid two-party affair, and remind him of the well-known statistic that fifty years ago, 96% of people voted Conservative or Labour, yet at the 2010 General Election, 35% voted for other parties. How do we translate this? Don't we need to react to the reality of people voting for other parties by changing our electoral system?

“A lot of people are telling me I should vote for AV because otherwise we will entrench the two-party system. Well, we probably have a two and a half party system”. Whatever that is.

But if I felt my voice was never being heard, wouldn't AV provide some form of redress? Isn't it possible to create an electoral system in which every person's view is represented?

“At the root of this whole argument are a lot of people who say 'I'm not represented, I'm not getting my voice heard'. That's an attitude that goes wider than politics - that if you believe in something then you have the right to be represented by someone who believes exactly the same as you. Well, no you don't. You have the right to go and vote. And if there are other people who outnumber you, that's democracy. Politics is about winners and losers.

“That's maybe not fashionable. But it is democratic”.

That's maybe so. But what if it turned out that AV actually helped Labour?

“If it's for party political advantage I'm not interested” claims Harris. “After the 1992 election even I was tempted to look down the road of electoral reform. I was so discouraged by the fact that we had lost for a fourth time, and that the only way we were going to get into government was through electoral reform.

“But you go for it because it's the right thing to do. You don't go for it because it suits your party for the next five years - that's a ridiculously short term view, and a triumph of tactics over strategy.

“There's an incredibly arrogant and short sighted view that Conservatives deserved to be in government for three quarters of the last century and Labour was in opposition for most of it. And that's because we deserved it because we kept losing elections. But the Tories had better arguments. That's how you win elections, and if you keep losing them, you shouldn't be in government.

“I want Labour to win the next election because we've got the best policies”.

So what would the political consequences be if it's a yes vote come Friday 6 May?

“David Cameron will be very unpopular among his backbenchers. And in the Labour Party, I'll accept the result if that's the settled will of the people.

“If it's a no vote, Clegg will be under the same sort of pressure as Cameron would be with a Yes. With the new constituency boundaries facing approval by Parliament at some point in the next couple of years, why would the Lib Dems vote for new boundaries without AV?”.

Supporters of AV say that it is a stepping stone to a more proportional system, and without a yes vote there is scant hope of changing the way we elect MPs. And Tom Harris says he can see how Clegg settled for a referendum on AV from the coalition agreement.

“If he had come out of these negotiations without any commitment to electoral reform at all politically his position would be untenable.

“I understand and agree with that notion the AV is a stepping stone towards full proportional representation [PR] – that's why I'm voting no. I'm absolutely, unequivocally, against PR”.

But Harris thinks that Clegg has the “wrong deal”.

“We know that historically the Lib Dems have never supported AV – they've never stood on a principle in their entire existence. If Nick Clegg doesn't get this it will be bad for him personally.

“The game-plan if they win on 6 May is to start the campaign to get rid of it on 7 May”.

Labour: stop blindly following your tribe and vote Yes in the AV referendum

2011-04-19T08:49:00.001+01:00

For a moment, I felt utterly repulsed seeing the former Home Secretary John Reid on a platform with David Cameron yesterday, explaining why he was in favour of retaining the status quo for our voting system. But I quickly got over it – remembering how right-wing he was in Government. Reid is no progressive, but the worst kind of Labour dinosaur – a tribalist who is apologetic for a discredited and discounted form of politics. He must have felt at home with Cameron. Genuinely progressive politicians should have no business on platforms with Tory politicians – not on issues as fundamental to our democracy as this, anyway. But Reid, like Cameron, can't see beyond vested interest.

As anyone who reads my blog regularly will know, I’m voting Yes in the referendum on the Alternative Vote on 5 May. And while I relish the opportunity to convince others of why a Yes vote is a good idea, I'm increasingly sick and tired of the increasingly ignorant arguments put forward by opponents of AV. And I know it's not perfect. No voting system is perfect – our current system (First Past the Post) has proved that. But I can't get my head around why other so-called progressives – and by that I mean Labour or non-aligned left-leaning people – are campaigning for a No vote in the referendum.

Some just can't stand Nick Clegg and wish to spite him. Fair enough, but he won't be around forever the way the Coalition is going. The future of our democracy is, I hope is obvious, more important than any single politician, hated or not.

There also seem to be plenty of proportional representation (PR) purists that have sprung out of nowhere, who take a rather unrealistic view of how the British 'do' politics. These people seem to think that some sort of electoral reform revolution will happen, some time in the near future, when we’ll suddenly get full PR in whatever form that might take. A lot of liberal or left-leaning people seem to think this way. But the way things stand, the prospect of 'full PR' hasn’t got a cat’s chance in hell. The Alternative Vote – the arguments for which are simple and straightforward – is the only way of achieving the aim of electoral reform at this moment in time.

The only alternative I can imagine, should the Yes campaign fail, is a manifesto pledge by Ed Miliband to introduce the Alternative Vote or another system in the next Labour manifesto. That would probably preclude any possibility of further referendums and would certainly face opposition from the likes of John Reid in his own party.

The No campaign seems to have this one in the bag if we are to believe the polls. But, as I've said before, the future of British politics will actually mean a lot more coalitions. As a socialist I hope that means more governments which stand up for public services, a fairer economic system and greener policies. And we desperately need a voting system that reflects the will of the people – not a Tory-led government elected on less than 40% of the vote, and a Parliament composed of MPs with jobs for life because the electoral system makes it comfortable for them.

If Labour really is as progressive as it would like to think, party members should vote Yes. It’s not about the outcome of the next election, or the last election, or whether you think Nick Clegg is a sell-out. It’s about a long overdue reform to our Victorian voting system which belongs with gas-lamp lighters, workhouses and rickets – in the past.

When a kiss is not 'just a kiss'

2011-04-16T22:32:00.001+01:00

When is an innocent kiss between two young men in a pub deemed 'obscene'? That was the question on everyone's lips - if you'll excuse the pun - at a 'kiss-in' protest outside the John Snow pub in London's Soho last night. The catalyst was the reaction by a complete stranger in the pub, and the landlord's response, to a seemingly innocent snog between 23-year old James Bull and 26-year old Jonathan Williams, who had the audacity to show more than a little interest in each other after a successful first date on Wednesday evening.

As far as I know, there's no law against kissing. But, I know that landlords are entitled to throw people out of their premises if they are causing a disturbance, or discomfort to other patrons. And it's entirely true that heterosexual couples have been thrown out of pubs for over-affection. But, as Williams has said, “public decency laws tend to, from my understanding, apply to indecent exposure. We were kissing on the lips”.

If I am a complete stranger to you and I kiss my boyfriend, as a gay man, without doing anything lewd or obviously inappropriate, am I *really* offending you? Or do you just ignore it and concentrate on having a good time with your own friends or partner?

I don't like to assume that Britain is fundamentally homophobic. Public attitude surveys have recently shown a clear swing towards tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality. But I wonder if Britain is still just far too prudish in an age of sexual liberation and enlightenment and, as a friend said to me “uses prudishness to justify homophobia”. Maybe this is true. I fear that in an age of civil partnerships and employment equality we're still in danger of letting archaic views go unchallenged. Yes, gay and lesbian people have more or less got legal equality. But I still can't go down most streets in London – let alone anywhere else - holding hands with my boyfriend without attracting stares, while straight couples go completely unnoticed. I don't want to be noticed. I don't want to be tolerated, nor accepted. I want complete ambivalence. And that goal seems so far away, even in my lifetime.

The politics of Wednesday's protest were a bit of a mess and it was hardly a coherent campaign built over a long period time. It was a spontaneous event brought together by the power of Twitter, which may have been unthinkable a few years ago. Social networking and mobile phones have helped mobilise people in a way that people had maybe forgotten how to do until recently. As someone Tweeted:

“I got thrown out of a bar once years ago for kissing my boyfriend. But it was before Twitter had been invented, so we just laughed”.

But I began to wonder how the trend towards spontaneous protesting had influenced the John Snow event, in the context of a government which is finding new outposts of dissent every day, not least the enormous anti-cuts protests just a few weeks ago. Gay and lesbian people - often accused of being apolitical or indifferent – have an opportunity in the aftermath of this incident. If the LGBT community wants to take this further, the John Snow protest could build into something a lot bigger. It's hardly a comparison, but the attitude of Barclays Bank in South Africa in the 1980s soon changed when it became clear that the younger customers who might otherwise bank with them boycotted them for being complicit with apartheid – and they pulled out.

Here's a bit of free consultancy for the Sam Smith's public relations people – if you even exist. Listen and take note of what your customers are saying about you. Because the protests will be back outside the John Snow every Friday until you apologise to Jonathan and James and change your attitude.

Sketch: George Osborne's petrolhead's budget

2011-03-23T23:58:00.000Z

If the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s budget red box could be personified, it would probably take the form of Jeremy Clarkson, driving a dirty great Ferrari. And as if Treasury civil servants had discretely passed Osborne’s budget statement to the producers of Top Gear for editing, Osborne delivered a gas-guzzling, petrolhead-placating budget, the opening paragraph of which appeared to have been written around a BBC conference table with Richard Hammond and James May pitching in every fourth line or so.

With a frog in his throat, possibly caused by the Chancellor being asphyxiated on the exhaust fumes created by parking his supercar budget in the Commons chamber, the occupant of the space opposite – let's say a quiet and thoughtful Toyota Prius such as the Green MP Caroline Lucas - must surely have considered it a blast of carbon monoxide in the face to anyone hoping that the Tories might be taking green issues a little more seriously. (Actually, the Member for Brighton Pavilion was more concerned with a Green Investment bank that isn't really a bank, and a windfall profit on nuclear energy via a carbon floor price, but let’s not let small details get in the way of a good sketch).

“Last year’s emergency budget was about rescuing the nation’s finances and paying for the mistakes of the past” said the Chancellor.

“Today’s budget is about reforming the nation’s economy so that we have enduring growth and jobs in the future.

“And doing what we can to help families with the growing cost of living and the high price of oil!” he shouted.

It’s on everyone’s mind of course. The crises in the Middle East have crystallised debate over many a breakfast table, by every water-cooler and in every corner shop. How on earth are we going to continue to feed our poor, starving cars?

It was a budget for making things and not for making things up, apparently. It was about the difficult decisions we’ve already taken.

“We gambled for a debt-fuelled model of growth that failed” continued the Chancellor on his motoring analogy, already laden with metaphors.

He then turned to the forecasts for the next few years, delivered with the same sort of measured aplomb as Lord Prescott's attempt at the Shipping Forecast for Comic Relief. It's just a formality really, the Chancellor's forecast.

“It has been known for Chancellors to rattle these off at such great speed that no-one will keep up or notice.

Not so for George in his first 'non-emergency' budget.

The outlook wasn't great, to be fair. Growth had been weaker than expected in the final quarter of 2010, although slightly stronger growth in later years was expected over Cromarty, Forth and Tyne. Visibility, moderate occasionally poor.

Further wrath was incurred for Gordon Brown and the Scandalous Selling Of The Gold Reserves. The Conservative benches are always up in arms at this, and the Chancellor announced that “we will purchase a range of high quality assets, to replenish our reserves”, accompanied by indignant cries of anguish.

“We will not be able to replenish the gold reserves sold at a record low” said Osborne, now morphed into a Billingsgate fish merchant, wheeling and dealing cod, haddock and plaice.

But the most amusing thing about these budgets is the obscure announcements which are thrown up. Savings in the transport department meant that we could afford more investment in regional railways.

“We can commit to Swindon-Kemble redoubling scheme!”, he announced, which will quite literally move mountains of ballast in the Cotswolds. No doubt the Chancellor had been watching Richard Wilson's expose of the country's rail network on Channel 4 on Monday night and like the veteran One Foot In The Grave actor, had decided that reading your Guardian in a carriage toilet just wasn't good enough. It was certainly a case of “I do believe it” for one or two Coalition MPs in that area.

It all ended with a bit of karaoke from the Labour benches, in not-so-angelic unison.

The Leader of the Opposition talked about the Prime Minister's priorities for “growth, growth growth!”. But it was “DOWN, DOWN, DOWN” according to the bellowing basses and screeching sopranos in the opposition.

“And when the economy retracted in the fourth quarter, what did he do? He blamed the snow! He was away on the piste!” jeered Mr Miliband.

“The right type of snow for a skiing holiday, the wrong type of snow for our economy!"

As Mr Miliband said, the Chancellor should just calm down a little bit. He might actually break something...

Constituency profile: Ipswich

2011-03-22T20:12:00.003Z

A little look at the politics and the people of my home town, which had a Tory-Liberal Democrat administration before it became fashionable.

The historic Wet Dock - one of Ipswich's more sought-after areas

As the administrative capital of Suffolk, and one of the few English counties with no motorways, it's hardly surprising that the town of Ipswich has tried for city status in recent years. Despite first impressions, an 'everyone knows everyone' vibe radiates from the main shopping streets to its football ground. The earliest continuous settlement in England, dating back to the seventh century, Ipswich was, and still is a major East Anglian shipping port. The town's name comes from the medieval Gippeswyk, meaning 'town on the Gipping' (the river Gipping a tributary of the picturesque river Orwell – inspiring the pen name of the author of 1984 and Animal Farm).

Deceptively close to the capital – London is but an hour away on the Great Eastern main line – Ipswich has many parallels with towns such as Reading or Northampton, but none of the advantages of Norwich, its historic rival.

Yet for all its market-town spirit, there's still a somewhat urban feel about the town centre, which in parts retains a weathered 1960s grittiness. The local football team, Ipswich Town, much maligned since its Premier League days is a constant reminder of this contradiction – a large stadium on Portman Road surrounded by tall modern office developments.

Ipswich has actively sought new economic fortunes in the last 20 years or so, with the decline in big industry biased towards agriculture and the growth of the DINKY - 'double income, no kids' - class. Under Labour, the local authority aspired to attract young professionals to new and converted apartments on the Wet Dock, providing desirable homes for the workforce of Ipswich's insurance giants which have clustered there over the past 40 years or so, as well as those who choose to commute further.

Apart from short interludes in the seventies and late eighties, the town's industrial past has unsurprisingly lent itself to long periods of Labour rule. Surrounded by Conservative MPs (Tim Yeo to the south, and Dan Poulter to the north) as well as a Tory Suffolk county administration, it was hardly surprising that the MP for the majority of the town would slip out of Labour's hands in 2010. Benedict Gummer, son of former Suffolk Coastal MP John, keeps the family torch burning in this corner of East Anglia, beating the Labour incumbent Chris Mole by just 2,000 votes.

Yet some locals feel that the sort of growth in evidence in the town just a few years ago has already begun to reverse:

“Ipswich has had a somewhat depressed feel in the last, say, two years compared to the buoyancy of four or five years ago” says Rob Adams, a local financial adviser.

Adding weight to this view was the announcement by French insurance giant Axa, who in recent weeks have announced that up to 56 jobs are under threat. “The greatest indicator of this is the rapid development and expansion of the building around the docks. As well as the new apartments, a lot of bars, restaurants and hotels also opened, making for a very desirable residential area” adds Rob.

“But with the economic 'pulling in of horns' brought about by the banking collapse of 2008, that expansion has ceased."

This new type of development contrasts with the high-end properties around Christchurch Park in the centre of the town, the traditional retreat for those who 'made it' and chose to live within the borough's boundary.

The town has benefited from a higher proportion of students, making for a night-time 'buzz', and as Rob observes, “it's no coincidence that one of Ipswich's most thriving bars is just a stone's throw from the main University College Suffolk building!”. New facilities house clinical skills, sports and exercise laboratories which are giving local young people new opportunities.

It wasn't always like this however. The gap between the old, industrialised town and the new centre of aspiration was hard for some. Like many provincial towns, Ipswich suffered its own brain drain and despite a number of good or outstanding schools, many young people have fled the area.

“I counted down the days to leave, got as far away as possible and won't go back!” said another native, Anna Browning, now resident on the south coast. “I didn't feel it had any character or anything going for it – it was just another place at the end of the A12”.

Some locals are more optimistic about the town's fortunes. The choice of MP for the area will more likely reflect national opinion, but the make-up of the council has pointed towards the 'new politics' for some years. And, if the Westminster coalition government was an unholy alliance in 2010, this was nothing new in Ipswich. The borough council was run by Labour for a solid quarter-century until 2004 when a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition took over. Frequent borough elections have not altered this arrangement and although Labour is currently the largest party - with 23 councillors - it remains in opposition. The controlling majority is composed of 18 Conservatives and 7 Lib Dems and there are few signs that this may change any time soon.

On a county level, Labour support continues to be concentrated in the tough Priory Heath and Gainsborough, and despite the general collapse in support for the party in the Suffolk county elections in 2009, it continues to hang on to two seats in the centre of the town.

This core support, coupled with tendency of this urban concentration to turn red, means that Labour could well regain the parliamentary seat at the next general election.

Catch me on the radio

2011-03-02T19:40:00.006Z

Last Friday I completed a two-week stint of jury service at Southwark Crown Court, which was an interesting and fulfilling experience, although quite tiring at the same time.

I’ve already published some of my initial thoughts about the experience, which resulted in a phone call from a researcher on Radio 4’s Law in Action programme. On Saturday afternoon I found myself with another recent juror at Broadcasting House to take part in an interesting recorded discussion for the programme with Joshua Rozenberg. The programme was broadcast yesterday afternoon at 4pm. And although our ‘bit’ only covered about 10 minutes, we covered quite a lot of ground around the topic of juries and whether they’re prepared and equipped from their courtroom experience to make decisions which do, of course, affect many peoples’ lives.

Have you been a juror or had an interesting courtroom experience? As Rozenberg points out, it’s illegal under the Contempt of Court Act to discuss anything that happened in the deliberation room, but I invite you to listen again and comment below on what you think about our thoughts. I come in at about 20 minutes into the programme. The other voice you’ll hear is the fabulous Milly Hill. We could have gone on for hours had the studio not been needed for The Archers...

Fashion, fun – and Felicity

2011-02-28T13:18:00.005Z

If the 'glass ceiling' held women back from progressing their careers in a time when there were few women at the top of their professions, Felicity Green smashed through it. From early beginnings as a shorthand typist, Felicity rose to become Associate Editor of the Daily Mirror – and the first woman on the board of a national newspaper in the 1950s.

Introduced as someone to inspire 'respect and fear' to a Media Society audience by Geraldine Sharpe-Newton in the aptly stylish surroundings of the Groucho Club, Felicity now mentors protégés of her own at Central Saint Martin's. In 2005 she was named one of the top 40 British journalists of all time.

And, although working on a big Fleet Street title has always required a certain discipline and hard-headed nature, Green is nothing other than charming, funny and fascinating to listen to.

Although never having had formal journalism training herself, Felicity's enviable 140 words a minute shorthand skill earned her first big break at Women and Beauty magazine. In the days when an enthusiastic letter could earn an aspirant journalist a job, Felicity wrote to the editor, saying “this was the most amazing magazine I'd ever come across”. And, ever since, Felicity has attributed her successful career to “good mentors”.

“I was taught to be a fashion editor by editor in chief Phyllis Digby-Morton, and although I started off making the tea and walking an unwilling dog, I was to only promise one thing - pull your stomach in!”

“After the boss told me she was leaving for The States she gave me a note addressed to the chairperson of Crawford’s, the famous advertising agency. It simply said: ‘This is Felicity - give her a job.’ And so she did. Felicity was to follow Digby-Morton and embark upon her own adventures in the States, and after a stint of doing PR for Dannimac raincoats – in which she even improved the product itself by calling in royal designer Hardy Amies – it was Fleet Street which was to be her best-known calling.

“I became associate editor on Women’s Sunday Mirror, the first modern newspaper for women, and after a year I was moved to the Sunday Pictorial, which shortly became the Sunday Mirror.”

Fashion journalism was in many ways a safe and accepting environment, but Felicity relished the challenge of being a young woman in a world dominated by older males as she took her next step.

“I met Hugh Cudlipp, the infamous editor and Mirror Group chairman and said 'I want to be Associate Editor on the Daily Mirror'”. And that's what she duly became.

In the 1950s, the Daily Mirror had a circulation of five million copies a day, and a readership three times that number.

“It was a very, very exciting time in the world of tabloid journalism and The Mirror was influential world-wide. And it was a time of a lot of pride and fun.”

“But I was given a very valuable piece of advice. 'Look out for the rocks,’ my first editor warned me – ‘you’re going to have a lot of men older than you who find themselves working for a younger women and they’re not going to find it easy; so if you have to give a man a bollocking, make sure he leaves the room with his balls intact!”

Felicity's next big move was to that of the Mirror Group's director of in charge of press, publicity and events as well as the company's television campaigns – so becoming the first female board member of any Fleet Street newspaper.

“I was creating promotions that readers could enjoy. One of those was a ball at the Royal Albert Hall for charladies – headlining little-known acts such as the Beatles and Cilla Black”.

“Hugh Cudlipp never understood me, but trusted me” says Felicity. But even he did not appreciate the big names that Felicity had lined up for the Albert Hall gig – dubbing the Beatles as “f*****g louts!”.

Felicity left the Mirror after 21 years, and was even courted by one Rupert Murdoch – who had recently taken over Cudlipp's creation, The Sun. As the recent film Made in Dagenham

“I was on £14,000 at that time, and when I found out that a new director got double what I did, I decided I was too young for this”.

But Felicity's career went on to encompass the Daily Telegraph under Max Hastings' editorship, as well as Marks and Spencers' customer magazine, at which she even met Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. All in all, Felicity gave a snapshot of an incredibly exciting and fulfilling career.

There are few evenings like this that have been worthy of an encore. Felicity's goldmine of anecdotes and inspirational stories captured, entertained and enthralled her audience. And if there is one story worth telling both for future journalists and those more experienced who have followed Felicity's career, that would be a book worth buying.

An edited version of this piece can be found on the Media Society website. tells us, equal pay was a struggle of that period. Felicity, as self-confessed feminist and active socialist, recalled:

To AV, or to AV not?

2011-02-19T00:08:00.012Z

I'm not sure how many times the Prime Minister has been stopped in a busy shopping street by one of those ever-so-nice market research people to explain his views on the sort of washing powder he prefers, or his preferred brand of mayonnaise. I suspect it hasn't happened very often. But most people will have experienced such an encounter at one time or another, being asked to rank their preferences with a 1,2, 3 and 4 and so on. This 'complicated' task is mathematically very similar to voting for contestants on the X-Factor, or the Eurovision Song Contest.

Choosing a brand of mayonnaise, a preferred washing powder or Simon Cowell's next signing are just three of the sorts of tasks the British public are expected to grapple with on a daily basis. It's also a bit like selecting an MP under a new-fangled voting system – the Alternative Vote (AV). But does David Cameron place such faith in the intelligence of his fellow citizens?

Like the opponents of decimalisation in the late sixties and early seventies, the No to AV campaign, led by Cameron himself, has decreed that AV is complicated and could be costly to explain and run. The evidence would, however, suggest that the electorate are rather more comfortable with changing the way we do elections than the vested interests of the Conservative party – and the more tribalist elements of the Labour party - might like to think. One poll in the last week showed the Yes campaign was 10 points in the lead, although this has not quite been matched by other polls.

Recognising its weaker position, the No campaign has scrambled to rely on an incoherent ragbag of arguments, which can hardly be said to be responding to a general public disenchantment with politics and politicians. It is also trying desperately to ignore the statistical evidence – that every government since 1945 has been elected with less than 50% of the vote. Even with its landslide victory in 1997, Labour only secured 43.2% of the vote. And in some seats at the last election, seven out of every 10 voters wanted other candidates.

The No campaign tells us that hung parliaments are more likely with AV, as if this is in itself an undesirable outcome. Playing on the supposed British preference for strong, single party majority, they've completely forgotten the democratically questionable results thrown up by hung parliaments of the 1920s, 1970s and in 2010 – all under First Past the Post. Each resulted in a single party being unable to effectively govern alone.

Yet the No campaign, as personified by local organiser and 2010 Tory candidate Chris Philp at a talk given to City University students in January, Philp criticised Clegg for 'making deals in dark rooms' – despite the essential presence of the third party in supporting Cameron's government. He then made an extraordinary personal attack on Clegg in his role as 'kingmaker'. But it's clearly news to Philps that the Conservatives can no longer rely on the support of a healthy chunk of the electorate to form a majority government. Those who oppose AV in the Labour camp are similarly misguided. And, where I slightly depart from the Yes campaign's official line, I believe coalitions will remain just as likely, if not more likely in the future as a result of the slow ebbing away of support for the major parties, including the Lib Dems. Negotiating a programme for government with other parties will become a part of the course to Downing Street.

We've easily established there's nothing difficult about AV. The hard work is left to returning officers and people who count the votes – and they're paid to do that. It will mean that election results come in much later in the day. That's a price worth paying for a move to fairer representation. What's more, the Yes campaign knows that there is still a clamour for change, despite general public disenchantment with the Lib Dems. And although introducing AV didn't feature in any of the manifestos in 2010, neither was 'business as usual' acceptable to the electorate in the cold light of day after the MPs expenses' scandal.

As Serge Lourie, AV proponent and a long-serving Richmond councillor also said at City, it's time for 'grown-up politics'. Lourie conceded that no electoral system was perfect, but the 2010 General Election was a rejection of the old politics, and the absurdities of tactical voting and MPs with 'jobs for life'. For me, if the Liberal Democrat side of the Coalition is worth anything, it's worth a push for change.

A slight smell of justice

2011-02-16T20:36:00.006Z

I’ve experienced a welcome change of scenery this week by participating in something I’ve always wanted to do - being called to do jury service. My ‘number’ had come up just after Christmas –perfect timing for me as a trainee journalist. And so, on Monday morning I duly presented myself at a central London Crown Court expecting to get stuck into some nice juicy cases.

For obvious reasons I can’t go into too much detail about what went on in the courtroom itself. Last term’s module on media law with the irrepressible John Battle of ITN gave me a reasonably good overview of what I can and can’t say about a court case, so I’m not going to be tempted to break any laws this early in my career. If you’re interested in what the juror’s experience generally entails, the HMCS website is actually pretty good at preparing you for what to expect. But it doesn’t prepare you for what appears to be a remarkably inefficient system of selecting jurors, once you’ve turned up. I suppose there must be some sort of logic to their system, but I didn’t sit on a single case on Monday, presumably because there were just too many people available. Maybe this is a good thing, as judges are not the sort of people you keep waiting because there aren’t enough jurors (as we found out – read on). I ended up spending a full day back at work before being called back.

Yet it’s still a tight ship. The administration of justice is well organised, with a formidable jury officer, whose matriarchal yet terrifying demeanour strikes the right balance between making sure people are welcomed and keeping the place running to time as far as possible.

Back in court today, I had hoped there would be a little more excitement. I was eventually called just before lunch to sit on a case which, although relatively minor, had made it all the way to Crown Court – costing the taxpayer over £4,000 according to an irritated judge. One person who might have had something to say about that was none other than Harriet Harman, who turned heads when she arrived in the jurors’ assembly area earlier. It made me realise what an egalitarian duty jury service is - even the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party can’t get out of it. I suspect she probably enjoyed a visit back to her roots (she’s a former solicitor after all), and she appeared to be busying herself with constituency business during the downtime.

For what it’s worth, today’s trial was resolved remarkably quickly, after a few hiccups. A point of law and faulty audio-visuals held up the trial for two hours. Then, after lunch, an overpowering smell of what seemed to be paraffin began to give everyone a headache, so we rose again. The usher had warned us that the antiquated building suffered from a lack of fresh air which might send us to sleep, but I wasn’t quite expecting this. It turned out to be an infiltration of fumes into the air-conditioning system, caused by nearby builders putting new asphalt onto a roof. And to top it all, a late juror prompted stern words from the judge.

As we sat for the third time, the defendant changed his plea to guilty, incurring the wrath of the judge and no doubt the court staff, who knew that had he done so at an earlier stage, taxpayers’ money would not have been spent needlessly and the case could have been heard in a magistrates’ court. If the clapped out building and defunct equipment were anything to go by, they need every last penny.

A moment of madness

2011-02-10T17:25:00.006Z

The excellent Enemies of Reason blog carries an 'application' to join the Daily Mail trainee reporter scheme, which closes shortly.

Most other journalism students I know detest the Hate Mail and its view of the world. But few people acknowledge that the Mail has one of the best training schemes for journalists in the English language. And that's not to be sniffed out in a declining newspaper industry - although the Mail is well ahead of its rivals selling in circulating over three million copies a day.

I'll admit it now. For a few, unhinged and not-altogether-of-this-planet moments I considered applying to the scheme, as a natural progression to the first-class journalism training I'm currently undertaking at City University, which concludes in mid-September.

But, hold on:

Jan Moir?

'Mad' Melanie Phillips and her gay maths?

Richard Littlejohn?

A tyrannical editor?

A scattergun firing selective and preachy moral judgements about anyone who isn't white, middle class, heterosexual and Christian? In what kind of parallel universe would I ever feel comfortable having my words printed alongside these people, and these values?

Steven Baxter at Enemies of Reason says it much better than me.

Cutting to the chase

2011-02-09T23:20:00.003Z

Where on earth are anti-cuts campaigns leading to?

The left of British politics seems to be stuck between the old, bureaucratic model of rigid union-based organising, and the 'flashmob' style of campaigning which organisations such as UK Uncut and False Economy are encouraging.
UK Uncut have swooped on unsuspecting Saturday shoppers with the likes of tax-dodging Vodafone and Topshop in their sights, building a movement through Twitter and Facebook. The TUC, on the other hand, promises a big demonstration on 26 March ‘All Together for Public Services’ – organising through all its constituent member unions in the workplace. Both marshal support from very different ranks.

Neither campaigns are based on anything insincere, or are fundamentally incompatible with each other. The people who attend the demonstrations, sign the petition or even just ‘retweet’ a powerful statement mean what they do, I’m sure. But I wonder how long ‘just being angry’ about the state of the world, and expressing a generally anti-politics view in reaction to the cuts will achieve.

So what are we campaigning for? Is it a new world order, or just the reinstatement of Joan the lollipop lady? Are we against the flogging off of our forests, and the savaging of our libraries as well as the cuts in rural bus services? And if we are against all these things, what binds this movement together?

If you’ll bear with me, I’m going to indulge in the romance of my Trotskyite days as a student anti-war campaigner and part-time revolutionary socialist.

To me, the different approaches that have been adopted in reaction to the cuts mean that in many ways, I struggle to find a parallel with the enormous anti-war movement which developed after the September 11 attacks on the US. It all meant there was a considerably limited use of the internet as an organising and campaigning tool compared with 2011.

The hierarchical structure of the Stop the War Coalition encouraged a united opposition to a single issue, and it was good at organising. The build-up consisted of rallies in every major town and city, even then encouraging school-age students to protest, and a flotilla of coaches culminating in a million-strong march in London on 15 February 2003. In 2003, there was no social media, and Facebook was just fictional dollar signs in Mark Zuckerberg’s head. Communications technology, in every sense, has exploded since then and it’s not inconceivable that we could witness such a huge scale protest now, if not bigger. But although this movement achieved success in mobilising opposition in quite a substantial way, it did not ultimately achieve its goal – of preventing war in Iraq. The movement which built up towards that demo drifted away, graduated from university, and found new political enemies. Fundamentally, the politics of the anti-war movement was always too fragmented, and too fragile to become anything substantial in the long-term.

Maybe the anti-war movement set an example which has yet to be beaten in terms of sheer support and the steady, long-term building of a core base of support.

Yet the current wave of protests – and they are just that at the moment – means that there is nothing on the scale of the anti-war movement, let alone something on the scale of the Chartists or the suffragists.

In response to latest surge of protests, some on the Labour supporting-blogosphere, including Owen Jones, Aaron Peters and the TUC's Nigel Stanley have begun to comment both in support of and against the two campaigning models. They also argue for a mixture of the two approaches.

But to me, the answers to these conflicts are clear:

Don’t 'expect' leadership – become the leaders!
If you need a democratic structure to do that, with an elected ‘committee’ – make it happen.
Define what you're for, not necessarily what you're against and be absolutely concise about it.
Have a clear set of goals in order to get you there, and a coherent view about how we want things to be.
Be unambiguous about your politics, even if you’re not aligned to a particular party.

Without any of the above in place, the means is irrelevant. Neither the traditional model nor the flashmob method will endure, because neither can achieve anything on their own.

If there is no consensus on the right approach, I’m wondering if it's as simple as lots of localised anti-cuts campaigns around the country - in which Labour candidates in marginal seats fight the 2015 election in order to ensure Labour becomes the next government. It might be the best hope of the progressive left that the deficit can be tackled in a fairer way. After all, anger may win the emotional argument, but it only gets you part of the way.

Do the gay maths...

2011-01-25T23:37:00.035Z

Oh, how I love it when Melanie Phillips writes something so outrageous that my Twitter feed goes into a complete spin – or laughs it off. The beauty of social networking sites is that they can instantly make humour out of a situation.

Here's a good one:

“Marcus is going out on Friday and Saturday night, but he also has a dinner date on Tuesday, and a lunch to attend on Thursday. How many spray tans will he need? #gaymaths”

Or, more more ironically:

Q: Steven and Martin live in Bristol, and decide to book three nights away for a romantic weekend break at a small town in Cornwall. If they arrive on the Thursday afternoon, what is the likelihood (in percentage terms) that they will be returning home on Thursday evening?

A: According to the hotel's website "there are no petty restrictions, you can come and go as you like”...

Hmmm.

There are, justifiably, plenty of people writing about the wave of homophobia which has hit public life recently. It may be tempting, but I'm not going engage in a round of Melanie Phillips-bashing. She's barmy enough as it is, and probably best left in her own mad, sad little world. I'd love to think that we could “build a paywall around the Daily Mail website to keep the articles in", as David Schneider proposed, but it's never going to happen until Melanie meets her maker, or the Mail goes bankrupt.

Phillips, of course, is no stranger to this sort of controversy and nor is the Mail. But Phillips does join a hateful festival of vitriol which has been playing since Steven Preddy and Martin Hall won their court battle against the Chymorvah Hotel for its refusal to accommodate them in a double room.

Hot on the heels of Roger Helmer's ignorant outburst (and a later article on Conservative Home), we witnessed the brief appearance of a blogpost by Richard Drax MP in which he slurred the “questionable sexual standards” of gay and lesbian people in the context of Phillips' unhinged rant about gay maths.And there's a vocal cabal of Tories who are doing everything they can to undermine Cameron's new fluffy approach to LGBT issues.

In the open comments section of his blog, I asked Richard Drax what it was exactly what it was about my sexual orientation that he found so questionable. Was it the fulfilled and happy social life I enjoy with like-minded friends, some of whom also happen to be gay? Or maybe the loving and committed relationship I share with my boyfriend? A matter of hours later and the blogpost was gone, replaced by a mumbled half-apology and a restating of his not-originally-coherent views on education in schools.

It looks like Drax may have been got at by the Tory high-command, although quite how Roger Helmer got away with it, I don't know. But a new surge of homophobic sentiment seems to be creeping in from the Tory right.

I'm no fan of conspiracies, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone, somewhere amongst the Tory backbenches is crying out 'please bring back Section 28'. And if they aren't, isn't it being inferred anyway?

One theory is that an increasing number of backbenchers are so incensed by the realities of the coalition that they're keen to make as much trouble for David Cameron as possible. That we know already in fact, judging by the recent rebellion over Europe. And, if you were under any further illusion that the new breed of Tory was somehow more progressively aligned, take Dominic Raab MP's tirade in the London Evening Standard today.

I hope, (and I do believe) that Cameron personally will not stand for anti-gay sentiment, but his inconsistent approach in dealing with ignorance, let alone outright homophobia in his party makes a mockery of the new, fluffy-bunny-Toryism. And Cameron is too damaged by his own past failures to let his party return to its default setting of prejudice.

Big trouble in the big society

2011-01-15T23:15:00.004Z

How one local authority is facing a 46% budget cut

Will the citizens of Hastings take up the reins of the Big Society?

Hastings is a seaside resort famous for its connection with the Norman conquest. In 1066, William the Bastard became William the Conqueror after his victory at the Battle of Hastings, defeating Harold II as King. It led to William securing control of most of England, but twenty years of rebellion and resistance.

Today, Hastings is somewhat less concerned with dramatic occupations, and more in keeping the fabric of essential local services intact. A Labour-led borough council – unique south of London – is opposed by a docile Conservative party which steadfastly refuses to condemn the severity of the cuts which have hit the council. The area's Tory MP, Amber Rudd, even goes so far as to call the cutbacks “an opportunity”.

But in the words of the council itself, Hastings has just been handed “the toughest settlement in living history”. And this is a town which knows a thing or two about tough settlements.

Local government took a massive blow in the aftermath of October's comprehensive spending review. Over the next four years, government funding to local authorities will decrease by a total of 28%. Hastings loses an astounding 46% of its total funding; £3.6 million from an Area Based Grant (cut altogether), and its Formula Grant cut from £9.1 million to £7.7 million. A 'transition fund' replaces some of the lost funding - £2.6 million in 2011/2012 – but this too is reduced next year by around a fifth. Like other Labour-led councils, which are suffering disproportionately through the loss of central government grants, Hastings is emerging from the shock of the CSR to deal with the reality of cutting essential services as well as generators of economic growth.

Labour Councillor Paul Barlow “fell in love with the town” when he moved from inner-city London in 2003, just after a substantial amount of government grants had been awarded to breathe new life into the area. “I wanted to buy somewhere for an investment,” says Barlow, who came to work for a regeneration company, recognising the potential of what could have been just another unloved seaside town. His talents have recently been rewarded with a cabinet post, without any single portfolio, helping to run the council in an extraordinarily tough economic environment.

Barlow's 'patch' reflects a personal passion for regeneration and renewal, covering the Castle Ward, which aside from the castle itself, and everything from the railway station to the main shopping areas and the beach. It also includes the famous Victorian pier ravaged by fire in October and now the subject of a Heritage Lottery Fund application to restore it to former glory. A feature of the seafront is distinctive Georgian architecture, much of which seems to be looked after a lot better now than it has done for years. A variety of thriving independent businesses dominate the town centre: only a branch of Costa stands out as a rare concession to the global coffee giants.

Under Labour, Hastings received substantial public investment. The Priory Quarter office development is a prime example of the sort of boost – a speculative office development that has coaxed major employers such as Saga, which brought 800 jobs to the town. The new Sussex Coast College offers degree level courses to a young population habitually bound by the confines of the borough and lacking in aspiration. But despite these redeeming features, Councillor Barlow's ward is still the 29^th most deprived in the UK.

Barlow is understandably proud of the progress over the last ten years or so, and is keen to emphasise the council's overall vision for the town:

“Many seaside towns like Hastings fell into a spiral of decline in the 1960s and 1970s because there was no-one to drive things forward and councils allowed the downward spiral to continue. When we took control in 1998 much of the seafront was semi-derelict, but using our planning powers we forced landlords to use their own money in refurbish their properties.

"The council's own 'Grotbusters' team helped out, working with owners of run down buildings to help bring properties up to scratch.

“We've now changed the seafront so dramatically, at one point the town even ran out of scaffolding!” laughs Barlow.

Indeed, the pleasant surroundings of the White Rock Hotel, where I meet Barlow, is testament to the general improvement of the area.

But Barlow is fearful that this sort of progress could be reversed:

“We recently won money for developing the fishing industry in the town from the European Union, but a lot of our regeneration staff are paid for from area-based grants – which are going completely. So, we lose much of our regeneration funding, and the ability to put forward applications for new money.

“These people provide a lot of added value to the town. But we're losing experience that we've built up. And if the council doesn't provide direction and funding, who does?”

In the aftermath of the spending review, Barlow has to help make decisions on what, if any of this sort of work can be continued.

“There are things we have to do, like development control, but there's very little guidance on what you have to provide. We will have to bring things down to a level we think is safe, and look at what else we've got left in terms of savings.”

In that case, what happens when the council says they can't afford to certain things any more? Isn't the Big Society already waiting in the wings, geared up to provide services more cheaply?

Unsurprisingly, Barlow is sceptical of this notion.

“It's rather patronising to assume that there are lots of people just waiting to take over – there aren't.”

Barlow questions the benefit of increased involvement by the voluntary sector:

“They may have a different angle. But it's hard to think what else we could outsource - there's no way any other organisation can provide a lot of things cheaper. Local government is already the most efficient way of doing a lot of things.

“Much of the regeneration money goes through the council's budget to Hastings' voluntary sector. The Pier and White Rock Trust already has some great people doing a full-time job voluntarily. But as a result of cuts in our regeneration budget, we're going to see a smaller 'Big Society'. It will contract and shrink as a result of the cuts."

Barlow points out that the council have already begun to consult with local residents about what's most important to them.

“We had a borough wide conversation about people's priorities. Not what about we improve, but what we dramatically reduce, or cut. People prioritised safety things, environmental issues, cleaner streets - a greener town.

“Lower down on their agendas are things like arts and the theatre. But we're a small council, and very often services are provided by just one or two people. If you make a 40% cut in some arts services you end up stopping it altogether. The severity of this is pretty much out of the blue, and we're still in the process of going through what's possible”.

Barlow is convinced that central government fundamentally misunderstands what local authorities like Hastings actually do. He argues that local government is an essential co-ordinator of services, not necessarily responsible for carrying them out.

“They've a weird idea that local government is a monolith, but most money simply goes through us to organisations that work on our behalf. And there's this myth that people will provide things for free - that's not going to happen. Even the Friends of the Park requires office space and structured professional support to keep them going. And we're already engaging local people in the management of the park”.

Does Barlow have any faith in the government's vision for more localism?

“The net impact of localism so far has been zero because we have no resources to achieve it.

“We have some staff for example, who help develop community forums. But when you no longer have the grants for these kinds of things, how do they happen? You just get the same people coming forward at planning meetings and organising petitions”.

In the light of all this, what successes might Barlow have to his name in five years' time?

“We're going to be hard pressed to identify great achievements.

“I suppose I'm quite lucky in that I've been able to take control of a trust which, under an Elizabethan agreement, dictates that an area of land between high tide and low tide would be given for the benefit of the people of Hastings. It got drowned by council bureaucracy, which we managed to unpick. What we have now is a large area of the foreshore which is now land – not underwater – including fairgrounds and a car park – and which has an income. Once the trust pays off its costs, there's an opportunity for the excess to be spent in a targeted way. We can focus it on the most needy in Hastings and St Leonards – and possibly some seafront improvements."

At the same time, Barlow is realistic about his political responsibilities:

“My main role, as local campaign co-ordinator for the Labour party - is to see that our Conservative MP has a short tenure, and that she's replaced by a Labour MP. The previous Tory MP only lasted one term – and the way the current MP is going, she could follow him.

“If we can keep things ticking over in a way that protects the most vulnerable – that's probably the best achievement we can hope for”.

That was the year that was

2010-12-29T23:32:00.006Z

And so I've come to write my look back at 2010 – a sort of between Christmas-and-New Year special – in which I pick out the things that have made an impact on me this year from the political, to the personal, and the things that just didn't quite make sense. Or just or made me laugh.

As 2010 dawned I think I can safely say I was one of those people who would have put a bet on a hung parliament being the most likely outcome of the General Election. Six months on from that political soap opera in May I think the electorate probably think that overall, they made the right decision – namely, refusing to vote for any single party to have a whopping majority. Although the polls are looking positive for Ed Miliband's Labour with a backdrop of savage cuts to public services, most people aren't quite ready to trust them with government again just yet. They may even be prepared to give them a further drubbing with the Oldham and Saddleworth by-election early in 2011 – but for what it's worth, I don't think it matters. Labour's still my party and I want it to do well but Miliband is a wise man to play the long game, and not be forced into the sort of short-term tactics that damaged his predecessor.

Whereas, at the beginning of the year most people would have wagered on David Cameron becoming Prime Minister one way or another, I'm not sure many would have envisaged the stratospheric journey of Nick Clegg and his subsequent appointment as Deputy Prime Minister. It was hard to make sense of a new sort of Liberal Democrat party, half of them parachuted into ministerial positions by Cameron's 'open and generous' offer. In one bold move, Cameron enacted Blair's pre-1997 dream, except this time it was the Tories and not Labour who were joining forces with the third party in the 'national interest'. I'm still not sure whether LibDem ministers could quite believe their luck at being able to play with the big boys at last, but it's clear that there were many more of the so-called 'Orange Book' free market types able to work with some decidedly Thatcherite Tories in government. The Labour party has enough ideological baggage to permanently put them at odds with the Conservative view of the world – not so for the LibDems who didn't take too long to decide whether they wanted real power, and after all have happily worked with Tories in local government for years.

Despite the cosying up and the rose garden love-ins, we've already witnessed some of the bloodiest battles already and the next year could highlight more dividing lines in the Coalition.

The certainties of politics and I think, the nature of democracy have been called into question in other ways. We now have a spontaneous, radical student movement, united in opposition to tuition fees that has taken politics in protest to a new level. While it's fair to say that this movement haven't quite agreed what they're for – there may be a few disagreements down the line over the extent to which education should be funded by general taxation – there's a renewed engagement in ideas and the way in which debate is framed. Politicians themselves seem ever more terrified of the prospect of having to have a genuine conversation over these 'policy outcomes'. The only comparable 'movement' of any kind I can think of was the poll tax riots in 1990 – and possibly the anti-war movement, in which over a million people marched against an invasion of Iraq in 2003. The UK Uncut campaign will be interesting to watch too. I've already boycotted the January sales at Topman in solidarity.

***

Technology – and in particular the web - has been a bigger part of my life this year than ever before. The edge-of-your seat political blockbuster of 2010 has been accompanied by a revolution in the media. Although the 2010 General Election was by most accounts a TV election, the part played by social media can't be ignored. I followed every development of the election campaign – and plenty of other big news – through the all-knowing Twitter and Facebook and many other sites through my trusty laptop, not to mention the background distraction of rolling news. And when you're me, it really is a terrible distraction. I love 'microblogging' and the conversations of the Twitterati, but I must learn in 2011 to focus my creative efforts on more than 140 characters. But cats in wheelie bins, Chilean miners, rogue Geordie gunmen and bigoted Daily Mail columnists all make up the rich tapestry of life and I suppose the media would have even more space for DFS adverts if these things didn't make the news.

***

I got engaged in July. Andy caught me completely unawares, since I'd always assumed it had been my responsibility to pop the question. It all happened in a quite beautiful location on 2 July, in the garden of a pub overlooking the Millennium Dome – or the O2. There's nothing quite like that place to represent an exciting new beginning, marking the transition from my relationship with Andy over the last three years – to the beginning of the rest of our lives. It was lovely, and beautiful, and a bit soppy! Plans remain at what I call the 'storyboarding' stage but once I've got this MA out of the way I'll be in full wedding mode.

Talking of the MA, I took a bold decision to apply for a Political Journalism course at City University in May, and subsequently got offered a place, accompanied by a generous bursary which was a much appreciated reward for my written efforts. It's going well so far, and I can't say I've ever been bored or unmotivated during the week-night lectures which have included some fantastic guest speakers. Over Christmas I became the proud owner of a new digital voice recorder (thanks, Dad!) which I think symbolises me becoming a 'proper' journalist at last – even if I'm not being paid for it just yet...

The next year presents just as many questions as the beginning of the last one, and I'm not going to make any more predictions here. Except to say that it won't be dull – and I hope that everyone who reads this blog will continue to read my occasionally thoughtful analysis of what's going on in the world.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

Alastair Stewart and the new theatre of TV politics

2010-11-30T00:31:00.002Z

Alastair Stewart, moderator of the first ever UK General Election televised debate

“The TV debates were a tipping point in how we do politics” according to Alastair Stewart, who made history as moderator of Britain's first ever televised election debate between the three main party leaders. And having experienced in the flesh the effervescence of the man himself, I couldn't think of anyone better to do so.

For Gordon Brown, there was much to fear from a new spotlight on his persona. For David Cameron, it was a chance to prove his statesman credentials. Nick Clegg would be the new boy with the clean slate, railing against the 'Labservative' duopoly. They had everything to lose, and everything to gain. For the broadcasters, the debates were a long-awaited “alignment of the planets” as according to Ric Bailey, the BBC's political adviser, previous Prime Ministers had refused their rivals an equal footing.

It would have been easy to write off the debates as presidential. But for Stewart, they were a chance to revert to “old fashioned campaigning...when TV meets people who are trying to get your vote”. And it worked. Viewing figures compared favourably with, say a Friday night episode of Coronation Street, with the first debate watched by 9.6 million – and remaining consistently high for the Sky and BBC broadcasts.

The debates came at an opportune time for parties to get their message across when public trust in politicians was at an all-time low, in the wake of a damaging expenses scandal and an enormous budget deficit. Stewart reflected the overall feedback seen afterwards in the press, and throughout on social networking sites such as Twitter. Brown came across as “ill at-ease, and made no 'killer' points”. Cameron “hadn't a clue what he was doing”, but Clegg “shone from the outset, with a natural, compelling narrative”.

“The penny dropped in enormous numbers” as the public fell for Clegg's seemingly invincible message. Joint favourites of the 2010 General Election had been the Tories and 'change' – and the result fulfilled a general desire for a hung parliament. But as Stewart said, “the real impact didn't change the outcome” - but did confirm the perception of politics as presidential...the brutal ideological battles are now struggles of the past”.

In articulating party policy, those “three to four minutes of interplay were better than reading out verbatim statements on policy” and for Stewart, from that “brash, commercial channel”, prime time viewing figures were encouraging: “We got 10 million people to watch a TV show about politics – and I'm personally very proud of that.”

Stewart's perception of the debates was unsurprising. And, like Stewart, I'm only partially in agreement with Andrew Rawnsley in that the TV debates dominated to such an extent that they 'sucked the oxygen out of the rest of the campaign'. It could be the fault of the parties themselves, for not creating enough 'real' events. Arguably the only other exciting element of campaign in 2010 was Brown's infamous encounter with Gillian Duffy, which benefited Labour ultimately as they snatched the seat from the LibDems. Might the campaign have benefited from more unscripted encounters? Maybe. “Television has to reflect the tussle that's going on” said Stewart, and, what's more, “there were lots of local candidates who were not being covered by national TV. Local TV needs to work better.”

And, having delivered his script, in true TV style this seasoned pro shuffled his papers as if signing off from the evening bulletin. I half expected the lights to go down and a rousing theme tune to play him out...

Cameron's cult of personality: a response to Simon Heffer

2010-11-18T00:09:00.002Z

Simon Heffer's recent Telegraph article on David Cameron's cult of personality suggests that the recent expansion in the Prime Minister's 'vanity team' masks a massive vacuum of policy. Asking his readers whether they'd prefer he stopped holding politicians to account and offer a defence of Wagner (assuming he means the German composer and not the X Factor's unlikely contestant), Heffer criticises the decision to put 26 people on the public payroll working in roles as diverse as personal film-maker, 'web guru' and a 'behavioural insight team'. All of the above, of course, would not be out of place in the PR department of any large-ish public organisation.

But Heffer rails against a leader whose 'court photographer' has started to give him a monarchic air – and when the monarch herself is appropriately frugal these days - it's not hard to disagree with his argument. Whereas the case for employing communications professionals in many parts of government has never been stronger – given the need to communicate a great deal of change both internally and externally - when half a million public sector workers are projected to lose their jobs, the right of the Prime Minister to employ hand-picked individuals to make him look good should be questioned.

None of this is at all surprising coming from the pen of Heffer, a man known to be deeply sceptical about the entire Cameron project, and especially since it has been somewhat blurred in league with the Liberal Democrats. And, although I share his scepticism, the subtext of his article is that an alternative Tory government, probably led by a socially conservative leader well to the right of Cameron, is infinitely preferable.

Governments need people to present their policies, and it's right that political parties spend more time and money doing so today than at any time in history. I agree with Heffer's point, but he inevitably misunderstands that brand is crucial in politics. The Prime Minister Cameron brand is six months old, but has not yet developed enough gravitas or substance in order to make a clear break from Cameron the mischievous Leader of the Opposition, to Cameron The Great Statesman. Aside from that, this brand has to jostle for space alongside that of Nick Clegg and the increasing beleaguered Liberal Democrats, although it shouldn't be too difficult to assume dominance given the electorate's rapid falling out with the Deputy Prime Minister. In a year's time we will know a great deal more about what the Prime Minister is capable of. The problem is that there just isn't any substance, because of the lack of clear mandate from a hung parliament, policies are more often or not made up on the hoof. Cameron knows this, and so in Heffer's words 'the deeper motive of survival is more likely'.

If the Coalition is to survive in the Cameron mould, he should look to Margaret Thatcher, the grandmother of Tory strategists, who would tell us that presentation comes second, and policies should be foremost. Even if you disagreed with her politics, she had a formidable presence which didn't so much need to be created, but simply tweaked to suit the television age – for example, she had lessons to lower the pitch of her voice to project more authority. Her government became quite expert in its use of propaganda and talented artistic types to present their policies, paving the way for new Labour in the 1990s.

Footnote: Cameron decided yesterday that his employment of a personal photographer and film-maker had sent a "wrong message" so it seems that general pressure from the public and the media have forced a u-turn,which means two of the so-called 'vanity' team will be placed back on the Tory party payroll.

Tuition fees are the right answer to university funding problems

2010-11-13T19:25:00.008Z

It wasn't hard to feel sorry for the 50,000 students and lecturers who marched against cuts on Wednesday, in defence of their right to a fairly funded education. The vast majority of demonstrators protested peacefully, underpinned by a serious and coherent political point. But it is understandable that a sizeable group of the electorate should feel let down by a political leader who promised the earth when he knew he'd never have to deliver on his pledge. Now the Liberal Democrats are finally in power, Clegg is eating his words.

I was in the House of Commons in 2004 on the night that the Higher Education Bill, which introduced top-up fees, passed its second reading. It was clear then that Labour was already well down the road of enforcing a greater personal contribution to the cost of higher education. The Coalition's policy takes these Blairite goals further.

It's true that Lord Browne's report recommended that there should be no cap on fees at all, and the only reason that this was not implemented was because selling that to the electorate wasn't palatable. The Coalition has to balance imposing even more personal debt when the country is supposed to be paying off a record structural deficit – and paying for it by cutting vital public services.

But despite public anger, the arguments for a £6,000 cap on tuition fees have never been stronger. The government is in no doubt that higher education has a value. It has also made a firm commitment to ensuring that students from the poorest families have exactly the same opportunities to study at not just any university, but also Russell Group universities which on paper would be closed to them. It has made a significant policy break in deciding that those who decide not to go to university should not have to subsidised by those that do. Self-funding, and the subsequent debt incurred post-graduation by fees, is a fairer prospect than any of the alternatives. A graduate tax would be an education penalty on an individual for life, but the cost of a degree can be paid off over five, ten or fifteen years depending on earnings.

Those who protest are wrong in assuming that thousands of pounds of fees would have to be paid up on day one of an undergraduate degree course. If it were desirable to attack the government for landing all students with a massive bill, upfront, for their education, I'd be doing just that. But, higher education, in theory and at to a certain extent in practice, means better and more fulfilling job prospects.

The irony of the case against fees is that the middle classes - who find home ownership and the inevitable mortgage so desirable - cannot comprehend the value of a degree as something to be invested in and paid for over a long period of time. Debt is a part of life, and it was absolutely right that Labour invested in higher education and introduced fees to fund it – recognising that investment in education is worthwhile not just for the individual, but for society as a whole.

The protests will mean nothing unless they're attached to genuine anger against the scale of the cuts – an 80% reduction in university teaching budgets is counter productive and vandalises the fabric of the excellent institutions already struggling to survive. Students and lecturers alike should continue to fight back - because it's not yet clear what damage the funding cuts could do.

Meddling with the psychology of a nation

2010-11-06T18:54:00.001Z

"I woke up to a mental image of Moira Stewart standing outside the BBC shouting SCABSCABSCAB in Alan Dedicoat's face"

The good people of the BBC don't strike very often, but when they do, it's somewhat eerie. Turning on your television set on the morning of Friday 5 November, a day usually set aside for remembering a certain dramatic occasion in history, you may have been forgiven for thinking that a national emergency of some sort had just occurred. It hadn't of course, except that several thousand journalists working for BBC news outlets on television and radio and its website, from Humphrys and Paxman downwards, had refused to cross picket lines. The reason was a strike called by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) in protest to the Beeb's management over pension reform.

It was said that, during the Cold War, when Radio 4's Today Programme stopped broadcasting, civilisation and society as we know it had ended, and it would be only safe to emerge from your deep level nuclear bunker or Protect and Survive inspired domestic shelter once the programme had started broadcasting again. In fact, as was reported yesterday, nuclear sub commanders supposedly watched for this as sign UK obliterated by nuclear strike. Listening to Radio Four at 7:45am yesterday, I kept expecting to hear a four minute warning and a stern, patrician voice telling me to 'STAY INDOORS', in the sort of imaginary post-apocalyptic way the wonderful Mitchell and Webb sketch so brilliantly parodied.

So, instead of the usual Today gang, we got an peaceful and easy going early morning documentary on birds and, as an extra special treat, like your mother letting you off doing your maths homework because it's your birthday, even Thought for the Day was forfeited. There just weren't any journalists around to 'make' the news. I doubt for one moment many of the big stars were actually on the picket lines, but I loved the spoof 'bbctvcentre' Twitter account, which gave us a running commentary of the comradely solidarity outside Television Centre: “Keep it up, my loves," trills Brucie. "I'll see you in the bar for a drink afterwards”. And the Guardian had its own take on the allegedly gaping void left by Today, with its own live blog 'covering' the same sort of stories that would normally be broadcast.

Did we miss our usual diet of news, current affairs, religious lectures and sport? No, I don't think so. As a friend of mine, who's worked in the centre of the government's media operation, said: “no disrespect to the NUJ strike at the Beeb, but I can't say I miss the Today programme on Radio 4. Tired format, self-important presenters”. And as Breakfast and Five Live carried on with a mix of stand-ins and skeleton staff, repeating old news and even drafting in senior executives, commentators reflected on the different tone set by the lack of BBC news coverage. “The world feels a calmer place” said Steve Richards from the Independent, as “news is determined less by what happens but availability of journalists and tone they take”. It seems maybe for the first time, that the Westminster village (and I put the media at large in that category), is beginning to doubt the quality of the BBC's output and a style of journalism and programming that could be putting self-serving inflated egos before audiences.

I don't doubt that the BBC needs a morning news magazine on radio, and a light and fluffy television breakfast show (which my boyfriend calls 'middle class live'), but I get the feeling that it's time to take a step back and take a proper look at what audiences actually want. The Today programme supposedly plays to a very important Westminster audience who would be aghast if anything were to change, but the BBC needs to remember its wider remit and bring its radio output up-to-date. BBC Breakfast is so twee I can't watch it, and only gets bigger audiences than 'the other side' because its new rival is so awful, and sets the standard of coverage at such an insulting low. News coverage needn't be dry or boring, nor insulting or patronising – it is possible to cover both current affairs, culture and 'lifestyle' issues without assuming your audience are either members of Mensa or can't even sit in a chair because they can barely function.

I'll be pleased when normal programming returns because I like to know what's going on in the world when I start my day. And I support the journalists' dispute, but that's a separate issue here. But a short break in normal service is a great opportunity to reflect on what could be – a sharper, more interesting and less 'personality' led style of broadcasting – which is genuinely led by professional journalism and not mythical audience whims.

The US midterms: will Obama be too late for the Tea Party?

2010-11-02T20:15:00.000Z

On Thursday 4 November, President Barack Obama will find himself exactly halfway through his first, and possibly his only term in office. In today's election, the results of which will start to trickle through shortly, 435 seats of the House of Representatives, and 37 in the Senate will be up for grabs.

Regardless of the result, Obama should then be able to determine a strategy in which he can survive the rest of his presidency and possibly run again in 2012. And, whether the Republicans can cause an electoral upset not seen on a level since the 1970s remains to be seen.

The first big question is around the impact of the Tea Party, so far an unknown quantity, which has successfully injected a new form of anti-politics into public life. Their success or failure will be a signal of the extent of an hitherto repressed anti-Obama feeling – undoubtedly underpinned by a subliminal racism - which was easily overwhelmed by the media hype around his election in 2008. Since then, hopes of change have been raised and dashed, the American electorate is more insecure than at any time in its history and a strong anti-state feeling has pervaded throughout politics on both the left and right.

The second big question asks whether the Democrats have been able to create an American tale that expresses the hopes and dreams of ordinary citizens in 2010. With unemployment stubbornly lingering at nearly 10% and foreclosures affecting one in every 371 households in September, it's not just about improving your lot, it's about surviving.

A Republican landslide would be a tragedy for America at a time when it needs state intervention more urgently than ever. Political historians point to how Bill Clinton successfully fought off challenges from a Republican dominated Congress in the 1990s – but Obama has even less experience in the sort of political street-fighting skills you need when your legislature doesn't naturally swing your way. And although Clinton presided over a period of healthy growth and economic stability, he also produced law which proved a disappointment to liberals – an example of which includes the pernicious and regressive 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy excluding lesbian and gay people from the armed forces, which Obama will need to fight hard to retract. The political implications for the next two years could see Obama being forced to compromise and water down further his grand designs to prevent the constant threat of gridlock in Congress, alienating those who put him in the White House.

American politics is having one of its periodic bi-polar episodes, the cure for which in many conservatives' eyes is Sarah Palin, a sort of George W Bush in drag. She will speak for the comfort zone of mid-western, small town politics but where she has seemingly boundless ambition and small-town charm by the RV-load, she has neither the nuance, the political skills or the oratory to lead America away from its own self-destruction. The next few days will be very telling indeed.

Big Society, little town

2010-10-31T19:49:00.000Z

2-4 High Street, Shefford

I've just got back from a weekend staying with a good friend of ours, Angie, who lives in a town called Shefford in Bedfordshire. It's a pleasant little community that still has a few pubs, several restaurants, a fire station, a bowls club, and a brewery. Some of these places are housed in fine historic buildings, many of which seem to be well looked after and inhabited by businesses or private residents. Coincidentally, it also resides in the Mid Bedfordshire constituency, the Member of Parliament for which is one Ms Nadine Dorries, as I pointed out in my previous post.

As we drove into Shefford at the weekend, Angie pointed out a cluster of attractive Grade 2 listed buildings, in which she's become rather interested in developing a small business. Having a rather useful knowledge of English Heritage databases, I delved into the history of 2-4 High Street a little further. Parts of the building date from the early 17^th century, encased by a more obvious early to late Victorian structure. Peering inside, there are beautiful old beams, low ceilings and great space, all elements of the buildings character which give it so much potential for a variety of uses.

Another view of the building, from the 'shop front' side

The significance of these old buildings- which nestle quite happily on a prominent junction at the end of the High Street - is that Angie wants them to be the home for a new venture called 'The Retreat', which she hopes will be the leading centre for yoga and complementary health in Bedfordshire. In Angie's words, “the Retreat is a beautiful and growing sanctuary offering an abundance of complementary treatments, classes and workshops, which are designed to feed mind, body and soul”. It will offer a range of different styles and disciplines of yoga for different abilities and ages, crystal healing, reiki, Oriental facial massage, Tai Chi, Indian head massage and pilates as well as relaxation, meditation, personal development workshops and coaching. Angie already runs successful workshops in her own home and strongly believes people achieve health and balance in their lives through developing their spiritual, emotional and physical health.

The Retreat would be a one-stop shop for people wanting to explore ways in which to further their development. Although Angie would clearly run the place, she won't – and can't - take it all on herself. That wouldn't be the point, given the amount of services she would like to offer in the building. There would be a Fair Trade organic cafe and music rooms to use for local young people for example. Some of the rooms could be used as a small-scale business awayday venue, as an alternative to stuffy, modern and overpriced hotels, and a range of local voluntary organisations and societies could use the space for performance arts and similar activity.

Angie's keen on getting investment from a wide-range of sources – possibly local businesses or public sector organisations. There's clearly a potential for some sort of community interest company to be set up – Angie doesn't anticipate making millions from the venture – but it would provide a means of an income to her and others, as well as volunteering opportunities.

The real potential is in the role that The Retreat could play in becoming a hub of health and wellbeing, filling the void where other local services are likely to be cut back as a result of local government funding cuts. Shefford is growing – new, high quality housing is being built on old industrial land and there are around 6,000 people resident in the town, who Angie believes would be a ready client or customer base for the Retreat. And with good road links to other villages and towns in Mid-Bedfordshire, it could easily be a destination for others too.

Is this the Big Society in action? There's something about Angie's plan which isn't 'just another business' – it needs community support from many quarters for it work and, if it does work, would become a real asset to Shefford, which fundamentally is not an unappealing place by any means, but could do with some investment and creativity. What's more, the local unitary authority is not likely to be getting any funding windfalls any time soon so it really will fall to Shefford citizens to come up with the initiative and the capital to provide facilities for their own community.

I'm really excited about what The Retreat could become – not only because I want a close friend to have success in her venture, but because from a political angle I think it could serve as a barometer as to how the Big Society that we're all expected to be a part of can actually become a reality. Perhaps I also feel the need to give Government the benefit of the doubt, considering my less than positive thoughts on the subject a few weeks ago.

I've asked Angie to keep me posted with her project, and I hope that I can return to it on this blog when there's more to tell. And, when the time comes, I've even offered to dab a paintbrush here and there and help restore the place. It's early days, but I'm convinced that with the right people and a sound business case, it could help transform a little corner of Bedfordshire for the benefit of many people. There's still many hurdles to overcome – but with the right plan it could be saved from becoming yet another soulless supermarket.

Nadine Dorries: '70% fiction'

2010-10-21T16:55:00.001+01:00

In quite an extraordinary way, the MP for Mid Bedfordshire, Nadine Dorries, has admitted her blog was '70% fiction' in a somewhat bizarre attempt to 'reassure' her constituents that she was not shirking her duties.

"My blog is 70% fiction and 30% fact. It is written as a tool to enable my constituents to know me better and to reassure them of my commitment to Mid Bedfordshire.

"I rely heavily on poetic licence and frequently replace one place name/event/fact with another."

Dorries suggested she had been subjected to "bullying" by the media after the expenses scandal broke.

"In the light of the bullying onslaught of the Daily Telegraph I used my blog to its best effect in reassuring my constituents of my commitment to Mid Beds," she wrote.

Sorry Nadine, but that's not bullying - that's fair game.

More from the Guardian.

What with Andrew Marr's outburst last week and Nick Robinson's perplexing Blogger of the Year award, we bloggers have some work to do.

The crushing brutality of the new state

2010-10-21T16:48:00.004+01:00

Crowds of people 'celebrate' the coming of the Big Society

Yesterday afternoon George Osborne announced the biggest cuts in public spending in 80 years. In a systematically crude and overtly political move, Osborne sought to rewrite the chapter of history book which covered the banking crisis, which forced governments all around the world back into a classic Keynesian model of injecting capital into the economy, telling the British people upfront that they had to pay the price for a decade of free market gambling.

Hundreds of thousands of public sector workers who rely on government contracts face the misery of unemployment, knocking their self-confidence and forcing them into Iain Duncan-Smith's new, 'progressive' welfare system.

People already dependent on state handouts, who know what it's like to simply live hand-to-mouth, will face an even more crushing disadvantage as local authorities cut back the services which they rely upon to enjoy any sort of quality of life. Citizens of rural areas will quickly find their wings clipped and face disconnection and isolation on an enormous scale when their bus services are axed - because the Department for Transport will no longer support the subsidy for their local routes - making it far more difficult to find an already scarce job, or enrol on a college course. And, for those who can't afford £500 iPads or home PCs, small community libraries will wither when local authorities find there's actually quite a high market value in a solid Victorian building ripe for redevelopment.

But, hold on! Like an omnipresent supernatural force, the Big Society is here to step in and fill the gaps left by dedicated public sector workers! They who once ran high-quality local services will run your library for free and happily shuttle across the Shire counties in minibuses, ferrying pensioners, aspiring students and single mothers between centres of prosperity, because, after all, they've nothing better to do anymore. Who needs a salary?

Sarcasm aside, the broader political question obstinately remains. Does George Osborne really have the credibility to redefine fairness, a man who, as Johann Hari pointed out today, is the beneficiary of a £4m trust fund he did nothing whatsoever to earn? Does he really get what it means to live in a town dependent on the public sector for employment and endemic post-industrial health problems? The state as we know it, as a provider of public services and an enabler of prosperity, is being redefined so fundamentally and so rapidly, that the howls of protest over one cutback are being noisily drowned out when another is announced.

Worse still, when the government decides it's simply going to stop doing something, the persistent apathy which pervades our parliamentary system means that our democratic institutions won't be strong enough to resist, as Paul Richards' excellent book points out:

"On the housing estates and in the inner cities, democracy is ending not with a bang, but with a whimper. If democracy fails, it won't be because of a coup d'etat. There'll be no revolutionary soviets or troops in the streets, no capture of the radio stations and martial law. It will die because we couldn't be bothered to save it".*

We might agree with some of the decisions being made by the coalition, particularly when they genuinely enhance individual liberty and protect the public services we value most, but struggle to understand or support public policy initiatives which the coalition idly leave to the Big Society - an initiative which the Tory party have struggled to comprehend, let alone the public at large.

It's Government, Jim, but not as we know it.

Anger over rail fare increases ‘could see MPs losing seats’

2010-10-20T19:36:00.001+01:00

A transport policy group has warned that raising train fares above the rate of inflation could cost some MPs their seats at the next election.

A poll of commuters in the Home Counties suggested that 74% would consider switching their support away from parties that want to raise the cap on rail fare increases.

By raising the cap on rail fare increases, the Campaign for Better Transport believes that some commuters in Surrey, Sussex and Kent will be paying up to £1,700 more for their annual season tickets by the time of the next election.

The biggest increase could affect the cost of a Brighton to London season ticket, which by 2015 could be £4,268 – a £1,164 rise from today’s price.

A spokeswoman for the campaign said: “the poll shows that commuters aren’t going to take excessive fare hikes lying down. Passengers have been promised ‘fair fares’ by the Government, and now many could be paying hundreds if not thousands of pounds more for their season tickets in just a few years’ time.

The votes of commuters and other regular rail users could be decisive in many of the key battleground seats in London and the Home Counties that changed hands in the 2010 general election.

It is highly likely that next week’s Spending Review could see the Department for Transport change the rail industry’s current RPI+1% formula to a new RPI+3% formula, causing large fare increases.

In constituencies such as Brighton Kemptown, won by the Conservatives at the General Election, 13.8 million people use nearby Brighton station every year.

Other constituencies where commuters votes’ could cause seats to change hands include Basildon South, Croydon Central, Thurrock East and Watford.

"We need to encourage more people to take the train, not price those who already do back into their cars.”

Season ticket costs in five years?

• Hastings to London: £6,337 (increase of £1,729)
• Milton Keynes to London: £5,269 (increase of £1,437)
• Gillingham to London: £5,236 (increase of £1,428)
• Reading to London: £4,659 (increase of £1,271)
• Brighton to London: £4,268 (increase of £1,164)

Source: YouGov