'Crisis in Policing'

(NB: Since I wrote this in the morning, the news has just broken of the inquest of a 10 year old who drowned whilst a pair of "Police Community Support Officers" stood by and watched. Apparently because 'it would have been inappropriate for PCSOs, who are not trained in water rescue, to enter the pond").

This week, police blogger/whistle-blower Stuart Davidson is unmasked. He paints a picture of himself and his colleagues as misunderstood, plausible well-meaning chaps frustrated because the whole system is falling apart under a mountain of bureaucracy and political correctness.

Not really my own experience with the police.

And I’m not talking about the the numerous un-provoked and brutal attacks on peaceful demonstrations that I have witnessed over the years. Nothing as political as that. I’m thinking of the five occasions in the past ten years or so that I had dealings with them, however mundane or trivial.

• When we were burgled – living at the time on a new built estate there was a spate of break-ins. The police told us that they would mount a surveillance operation and not to be alarmed if we saw any of their plain-clothes offices in the bushes; we could easily identify them because they ‘would be white’(we live in an area with a large black community)...

• When there was a 999 call reported from our elderly neighbour’s house – two officers knocked on the door to say that a call had been made from the house but no voice could be heard – could we help ? We invited them to hop over the back fence and investigate. Not being in the best of shape they couldn’t actually make it over the fence, so , after breaking the fence and trampling the flowerbeds, they gave up. But they did tell us to get in touch if we didn’t see the neighbour for a few days or if we detected ‘any funny smells’…

• When the alarm went off at our kids’ nursery school – we got a call from the security company as we were key-holders. It was after midnight so we phoned the police station, less than a quarter of a mile away from the nursery, to ask if they would attend. They were ‘too busy’ and we were told we would have to investigate it ourselves...

* When my bike was vandalised whilst parked in the West End. A very nice bloke from the CID phoned me up to discuss it. He also had a Harley and we had a good natter about bikes ...

• When I had my Swiss army knife confiscated at our local ‘carnival’ - actually village fete would be a more accurate description but because this is a largely black area in inner London we have a massive police presence with metal detectors at the entrance. I was found to be in possession of a perfectly legal penknife that I have carried for about twenty years. I was told that whilst I hadn’t committed an offence, the police were confiscating it and got a receipt to reclaim it later. Afterwards I went to the station three times but was told; they didn’t have any record of it / it was in the safe and they didn’t have the key (!) / it had been given to CID at Area HQ and they’d get in touch. They didn’t - so I gave up ...

There you go – all absolutely true and with no embellishment.

In best New Labour fashion here are the findings from this brief survey:
20% of outcomes were positive: the police were pleasant and professional
80% of outcomes were negative; the police were at times rude, lazy, incompetent, dishonest and racist.

I would therefore suggest that the recommendations for the policing crisis are not a matter of more funding or resources, but a higher standard of police officer.

We all know that they have a difficult job to do – so why must we rely on fuckwits to do it ?

This is how it starts ...

I am deeply suspicious of the Cambridgeshire Chief Constable’s remarks about the strain that immigration is placing on policing resources.

I’m pretty sure that if a senior public servant like Julie Spence simply wanted more funding then private lobbying would be a more usual and effective tactic than calling a press conference. I see a deliberate attempt to manufacture and manipulate an anti-immigration consensus.

It’s no accident that only last week Gordon Brown launched a back to work initiative ‘British Jobs For British Workers’, and that this week the government want to rubbish the idea of an amnesty for illegal immigrants put forward at the the Lib-Dem’s conference. Or that it won't give up on the identity card campaign

These are worrying times because I can see this consensus building and there seem to be two kinds of people who are on this ant-immigration bandwagon.

Firstly, the Little Englanders who get upset about our culture being eroded. These people live comfortable middle-class lives that are in no way threatened by the social problems posed by immigrants – they don’t compete for the same low paid jobs or the same cheap housing. With the perspective of a couple of generations these people will appear as ugly and stupid as their forebears who railed against Jewish and Irish immigration.

Secondly, the genuinely aggrieved ‘indigenous’ population who are at the bottom of the pile and are competing for low paid jobs and cheap housing. They have been abandoned by New Labour and find themselves in a classic poverty trap. As a result they are being driven into the ranks of the racists and the Xenophobes.

To stop this drift we need to point the finger not at low paid migrants but at the likes of Tescos and others in the food industry who are making obscene profits on the back of cheap casual labour in rural areas.

If we don't, to quote Basil Fawlty: ‘this is exactly how Nazi Germany started’…

(Bloody hell now we’ve even got the small time savers rushing to get their money before the bank crashes !)

I

Catholics and human rights.

Some time ago the Vatican stopped its donations to Amnesty International. And now bishops in Northern Ireland have ordered Catholic schools there to ban Amnesty groups.

The reason ? Amnesty's definition of human rights includes a woman's right to choose. This was adopted not after some abstract ethical debate but as a specific policy in particular response to the widespread use of rape as a weapon of terror in the Balkans, Congo and Darfur.

Amnesty International debated this issue long and hard as it always bends over backwards to avoid adopting any position that can be seen as 'political'. I respect this and the pragmatic need to maximize their effectiveness by not compromising their 'impartial' stance. But of course ultimately it is nonsense - human rights are always going to be a political issue, and you can't help but offend someone by adopting a stance. Particularly bigots.

The kind of bigots whose message to refugees who are driven from their homes and subjected to systematic mass rape both as a means of repression and ethnic cleansing by 'breeding', is basically that they should put up and shut up. (Possibly 'offer up their suffering to God' - I never did understand that particular piece of sado-masochistic bollocks).

I shouldn't really be surprised though; this is the organisation that brought us the Holy Inquistion and the prescribed list. The real surprise is that there are any religious Amnesty groups at all.

Every religion will throw human rights out the window when it comes into contradiction with some 'sacred' belief, be it how we choose to dress, what we choose to eat, what we teach our children or our sexuality.

'Protect the human' is Amnesty's slogan these days - I would suggest that this can only genuinely be done by humanists.

Guy Moquet

An unlikely and roundabout route to this story…

With defeat at the hands of Argentina in the rugby and Scotland in the football, national pride in France is at something of a low ebb. A rather bizarre technique to boast the teams before their games was to read them the letter of Guy Moquet . And even more bizarrely , the letter is such a favourite of Nicolas Sarkorzy, that one of his first presidential decrees was that it should be compulsory reading for every French schoolchild: A sentimental note written by a 17 year old boy to his family on the eve of his execution by the Nazis.

Guy Moquet was an active member of the Communist Youth Movement and the son of a Communist Party deputy in Paris. With the Nazi occupation of Paris he was arrested and imprisoned at the age of 16 by the Vichy authorities, along with other known activists.

When the German commandant in Bordeux was assassinated by the Resistance the Nazis ordered the Petain government to take reprisals. Vichy authorities handed over 50 Communist prisoners to the Germans “in order to avoid letting 50 good French people get shot.” And so it came about that Guy Moquet was killed by a firing squad in October 1941, refusing a blindfold and crying out ‘Vive La France’.

The legacy of the Vichy government shames and divides France, but also has lessons for all of us nowadays.

Practically every French town still has its memorial to the ‘deported and the shot’. It is a reminder that the collaborationst government did much of the Nazi’s dirty work for them; a quarter of all French Jews, and a much higher proportion of foreign-born Jewish refugees in France, were either deported to German death camps or perished in camps in France, guarded by French Gendarmes. Along of course with many other ‘undesirables’ and political opponents, such as Guy Moquet and his comrades.

There were French Nazis in the Vichy government, but the majority, like Marshal Petain, were simply ultra-conservatives who saw co-operation with the Nazis as the lesser of two evils in comparison to the pre-war Popular Front government and the threat of socialism. Their position was perhaps best summed up in their replacement of the French Republic’s slogan of ‘Liberty, Fraternity and Equality’ with ‘ Work, Family and Nation’.

And the lessons for us now?

Repression and reaction don’t have to come in the form of goose-stepping storm-troopers. The Vichy regime was the tyranny of small-town France and the petty-bureaucrat . De-facto fascism came in to power not by a coup d’etat but by a series of administrative measures.

And so the threat in Europe today doesn’t come from the boneheads of Combat 18 but from the populist nationalism to be found on the fringes of mainstream parties – the whole Daily Mail / Little England mentality is the home-grown descendant Vichy-ism. And asylum seekers are the Jews of the 21st century.

It is no accident that Le Pen’s Front National has distanced itself from its street-fighting wing and has sought rehabilitation for the ’mis-understood’ Vichy regime.

What the fucking hell is going on here ?

It's the ultimate betrayal of a generation. The so-called Labour leader has invited round for tea the arch-enemy of the Labour movement and the destroyer of its post 1945 achievements .

OK - so she's an old lady, but her mate Pinochet was also a dodery old codger - age doesn't get these bastards of the hook.

The only possible reason that Brown would invite her is to send out a clear public message (as if we didn't know) that "we're all Thatcherites now".

He praises her as a 'conviction politician ' which I suppose she is. But when these convictions amount to 'greed is good' and a contempt for ordinary people; then I'm not sure that this is really better than being an unprincipled careerist like Brown himself.

Just imagine the bollocks we are going to have to endure when she dies - I've seen it suggested that like Churchill she may be one of the few 'commoners' to receive a state funeral.

Personally I'll be joining the queue for those waiting to dance on her grave.

‘The point however is to change it …’

… And that other old socialist darling Tony Benn always used to say ‘its about policies not personalities’. (Of course this was in an earlier, pre-Blair age when there were actually some policies that marked a division between parties).

But his words sprang to mind in reading the obituaries of entrepreneur / philanthropist Anita Roddick. Depending on your point of view, she was either a pioneering campaigner worthy of induction into the radical pantheon, or a sell-out hypocrite.

Of course she was actually neither and both of these things. She took a stand against animal testing, campaigned for the environment and human rights, and yet at the same time, wouldn’t allow her employees to join trade unions and sold her business to a multinational that pretty much stood all her values on their head.

But the point is – it’s not about personalities: The likes of Naomi Klien and George Monbiot have done a fantastic job at exposing injustices in the world but they have a problem when it comes to a programme for change. Then, what they argue for all starts to sound a bit like caring capitalism; ‘business as usual but nicer’.

Which is exactly what Anita Roddick represented. But it really doesn’t matter if businesses are run by good well-intentioned liberal types, it’s the for-profit system that fucks us in the end. And no amount of organic dewberry lip gloss in eco-friendly packaging with a percentage of the profits donated to Amnesty is going to prevent somebody somewhere in the supply chain getting screwed over.

This doesn’t change the fact that if I’d met Anita Roddick, I’m pretty sure I’d have liked her.

In purely human terms if you’re going to be a entrepreneur how much better to be one with a conscience (albeit a fallible one) than an out-and-out cunt like those who run Walmart, Shell, McDonalds, BAE, Glaxo etc etc. I’m also pretty sure she did a damn sight more practical good than most of the armchair anarchists posting diatribes on the web.

Nowadays I find myself in a position of managerial authority. I’d like to think that I try to do the right thing most of the time. But that’s a matter of personal ethics, I’m not going to kid anyone, myself included, that this is going to change the world. Even if every single manager behaved that way.

Public trials and Madeline

In those dark days before reality TV and 24 hour cable, the hottest show in town was the public execution.

The golden age was probably the eighteenth century - just before Victorian sanctimony kicked in - but at a time when the blood-lust of a Roman arena could be married with the mass-sensationalism of easily available news-sheets and pamphlets. The ideal formula was a monstrous crime in lurid detail with either a pious confession at the scaffold or an defiant and unrepentant outlaw. Dignified exits were definitely disappointing.

Which brings us to the Madeline McCann case, where the latest developments have allowed the media, fuelled by an insatiable appetite for this sort of stuff, to revisit the entertainment value of an old time scandal-sheet.

I won't presume to venture an opinion on what the outcome of this case will prove to be, but I'm pretty sure that it will not be a happy ending. Whatever truth comes out in the end some people are going to end up looking pretty silly. If the parents are guilty; those parts of the media that championed them, or, if they are innocent; the Portuguese police and all those pop-psychologists who are now coming out of the woodwork to say 'there was always something fishy about the McCanns".

In fact, both these parties look pretty silly already.

The Mail and Express in particular are usually champions of the forces of law and order. Any time there are murmurings about civil liberties the mantra is repeated that only the guilty have anything to fear from DNA databases and increased police powers. Unless of course the suspects are white, middle-class, articulate and photogenic professionals and the authorities are some johnny-foreigner. In which case the same media becomes a crusader against mis-carriages of justice.

And of course the Portuguese police have done nothing to shake off the bumbling Clouseau-like view of them held by the xenophobic media here. From day one, when they failed to secure the crime scene, there does seem to be a litany of incompetence. More fundamentally there also seems to be a problem with the 'inquisitorial' nature of those European legal systems that are based on Roman law. Apart from anything else it appears to place the emphasis on the investigating police building a case that will produce the confession of a suspect rather than focusing on finding the missing child. As an aside, it is yet another argument for defending our peculiar Anglo-Saxon based legal system which is out of step with the rest of Europe from attempts at 'reform' by various governments.

The media circus sensationalises and scandalises on the one hand, and on the other satisfies a deep seated need for moral reassurance in mutual outrage. A sociologist would say that in this it plays an important role in social cohesion and legitimacy ( as did the scaffold at Tyburn).

But it has precious little to do with justice, or finding a missing toddler.

Rugby World Cup

The start of the Rugby World Cup this weekend.

Looking at the papers and tv is would appear that our football (soccer) obsessed nation has suddenly discovered the real 'beautiful game' which it pretty much ignores the rest of the time. This process now seems to happen every four years, but I'm not convinced that it wins significant converts - even after England's victory at the last world cup, attendance at Premiership club matches was laughable by football standards.

And I'm not sure why. Even in a fairly average game of rugby there is far more passion, excitement, drama etc than in the painfully slow defensive play in football that seems to end so often in a 0-0 draw.

And from the point of view of a live spectator there is really no comparison. Rugby fans are not herded like cattle into segregated pens - in fact as a rugby fan there is usually more danger from a surfeit of Guinness than being stabbed by a rival supporter or having your head cracked open by the riot police.

Actually, I do know why rugby will probably remain a minority sport in this country; it's socio- economic demographic...

Although my enthusiasm far outstripped any ability, I loved playing rugby at school.

The fact that I even had the opportunity to do so at a state school is unusual and probably was only because it was a comprehensive that had formerly been a grammar school. I had every intention of continuing to play when I went to university. But university rugby clubs (at least at my particular institution) were (are ?) magnets for the most obnoxious, reactionary public-school wankers imaginable.

Certainly at that time in the 'eighties membership of the rugby club and of the student Left were pretty much mutually irreconcilable, and so ended my rugby-playing days. Almost 10 years later, in a moment of madness, I ended this retirement and played in light-hearted 'social rugby' events for a couple of seasons.

I loved every minute and regretted that I had ever allowed the arseholes to put me off.

Our boys

There’s a phrase that I keep hearing in the news this week: The Military Covenant.

I understand what is meant – it’s basically a campaign to ensure that servicemen and women are treated right. And I’m totally behind it. However wrong the wars that this country fights are (and the current wars are very wrong), the poor sods that do the actual fighting, along with their families, should be treated with dignity, compassion and respect.

And at the moment the housing for military families, the medical provisions for wounded troops and their general working conditions are all a fucking disgrace.

But to talk about a Military Covenant mistakes the nature of the military in this country.

We don’t have a nation-in-arms or a people’s army. In fact in the 400 years of so of the British army, it has only been that kind of army for five very distinct and relatively brief episodes:

(i) The New Model Army in the 1640’s and 50’s - the most politicised army there has ever been in this country.
(ii) Kitchener’s ‘new armies’ of 1915 – the massive wave of volunteers that flooded into the army in a tide of patriotic fervour.
(iii) The conscript armies of 1916-18 – truly a nation-in-arms now united by a shared suffering in the horror of the western front rather than by patriotism.
(iv) The conscript armies of 1939-45 - with a shared vision of fighting a crusade for democratic values.
(v) Post war national service –a generation united by a shared experience of boredom and pointless authority.

At all other times, the British Army has been a professional one fighting for ‘national interests’ that in reality meant the defence of the empire abroad and in earlier times, the status quo at home.

In the course of this the army built a reputation for excellence out of all proportion to its size, and for a peculiarly British kind of understated bravery. In fact pretty much the exact opposite of the over-blown US military. And it has done this with ranks filled by the most under-privileged sections of society along with an the officer class provided by some of the most over- privileged. (Socially not very much has changed to this today).

Throughout this time the military has invariably been treated like shit by those governments whose dirty work it has done. Badly supplied, underpaid, poor medical provision are all nothing new – a posting to the West Indies in the eighteenth century was regarded as a death sentence from disease – in the nineteenth century the mismanagement of the Crimean War became a national scandal – and in the twentieth the 1914-18 war has become synonymous with military incompetence.

Whilst public sympathy for the ‘common soldier’ has come out at various times – the sentiment of ‘lions led by donkeys’ - we are on the whole, a pretty un-militaristic nation. Certainly in comparison with both the US and other European nations.

It is no accident that whilst the French have the Gendarmerie, the Spanish the Guardia Civil and the Italians the Caribinarri all paramilitary organisations partly controlled by the military we have an entirely civil police. When Robert Peel set up the police in the 1820’s he was at pains to design a uniform that was civilian (even including a top hat !) to distance the new organisation from the army in the public eye. He knew that the restless masses with memories of the yeomanry and the Peterloo massacre wouldn't stand for any anything that looked like the army.

So what’s the point of all this history?

Well the military are very strong on tradition so it is important to question how this marries up to historical truth.

But most importantly the lesson is that how soldiers are treated reflects what they are used for. And if they are cannon fodder for empire they will, sadly, be treated as such.

Possibly the French do it more honestly. Their military tradition may date back to the Revolution, Napoleon and Verdun; the nation in arms and the ‘patrie en danger’. But until recently their enormous conscript army stayed at home peeling spuds and doing parades. Meanwhile the actual fighting in various shitty campaigns is undertaken by the mercenary Foreign Legion. And when they hold out to the last man defending some far flung last outpost of empire nobody at home really gives a toss.

Cromwell Anniversary

Every year I get a kick out of watching the ridiculous fancy dress parade that is the state opening of parliament pass by in the shadow of Cromwell's statue.

He is there as a silent reminder of still unfinished business when it comes to democracy in this country. And this is despite his corpse being dug up by the monarchists, re-'executed' and publicly displayed.

Maybe a flawed hero - he was after all a man of his times - a time when political ideas were expressed in the language of religion - and of his class - his democracy extended only to free-men and that was defined by some sort of property. But a hero nonetheless.

In an age when the divine right of kings was a cornerstone of political consensus he dared to fight and bring to trial a king. He rejected the idea of monarchy in favour of representative government, even when he was in a position to take that power to himself. And in an age when the Church claimed the ultimate moral authority, he championed the rights of individual conscience.

In other words, he had the balls to 'turn the world upside down'.

All of which is why we should commemorate Sept 3rd, the anniversary of his death, as Cromwell Day.

And amazingly 350 years on, as I write this I can already feel the backlash from those gnashing their teeth at this eulogy.

Bollocks to 'em - I know what side they would have been on at Naesby - crypto-royalists the lot of them.

Summer Recess Over - Death in Texas

My own Summer Recess is over. Not of parliamentary proportions, just two weeks in France.

(I think the over-long and ill-deserved holidays of our elected representatives dates back to when MPs were country gentry who needed to return to their estates to oversee the harvest.)

My own recess was a bit more modest. And it was brought back to a bump when I saw my first newspaper for two weeks.

Texas has executed Ray Conner, the 400th person killed since the US brought back the option of capital punishment in 1976. Of all the states, Texas is the most trigger-happy, accounting for a third of the executions in the USA since that time.

Ten years on death row, new evidence ignored - it's an all too familiar story.

The European Union marked the milestone with a letter of protest to the governor Rick Perry. Here's what he had to say in his ungracious and morally-bankrupt reply:

"Two hundred and thirty years ago, our forefathers fought a war to throw off the yoke of a European monarch and gain the freedom of self-determination. While we respect our friends in Europe ... Texans are doing just fine governing Texas."

The ignorant redneck Republican fuck-wit doesn't even know his own history. 230 years ago Texans weren't fighting for democracy against King George's redcoats; they were largely speaking Spanish* and part of Mexico - or have you forgotten the Alamo Rick ?

As to governing themselves, well the US record puts it into a super-league of judicial killings with China, Iran, Iraq and Sudan. And as a good redneck like Rick should know, when people can't be trusted to govern themselves it's time for regime change.

* Remember when that previous arsehole-governor of Texas George Bush Jnr opposed hispanic schoolkids being taught in Spanish rather than English? - on the grounds that 'they should learn the bible in the language in which it was written.'

Rock'n'Roll heresy

Heresy. I realise that I am inviting death threats from the army of fanatical fans who are marking the thirtieth anniversary today, but I have to say that when Elvis died on the 16th August 1977 it was not ‘the day the music died.’.

Instead I find myself agreeing with John Lennon that Elvis’s career pretty much died that day in 1957 when he was conscripted into the army.

Before that the day, the early Sun recordings with the three piece band and the clean minimal guitar sound of Scotty Moore, defined the classic rock’n’roll sound. Even so, it would be wrong to say that Elvis created that sound: a previous generation of black artists have the rights on that claim.

Ironically Robert Johnson also died this day in 1938. But I doubt somehow that next year there will be the same fuss about his 50th anniversary, despite his influence on the development of rock music being every bit as significant if not more so than Elvis.

For Elvis it was all downhill after his military service:

There were the Hollywood years of those awful musical movies. And then his return to live performing at Las Vegas in 1968. These were the bloated years that bordered on self parody – the white jump suits, the fake karate dance moves, the deep fried peanut butter and hamburger sandwiches and the bizarre Camelot at Gracelands.

It seems a sad travesty that this is the era that the fans and impersonators want to preserve and not that brief period when Elvis truly set the music world alight for the first time.

60 years on

George Orwell said that you could tell a lot about a country by how their army marched. He contrasted the British stylised walk with the Nazi goose-step. I'm not too sure about the accuracy of his theory but this picture doesn't reflect too well on India or Pakistan. Maybe they are just fans of John Cleese, but generally the goose-step is a universal image of authoritarianism.

This week there are a number of family history programmes on TV to mark the 60th anniversary of Indian / Pakistani independence. Painful and poignant stories of those who came to this country fleeing sectional persecution and displacement. Making these stories understandable in human terms can only be a good thing at a time when suspicion of immigrants and refugees is on the increase.

This history ‘from below’ is great at giving voice to those who are otherwise seen as the chorus-line on the great stage of history. But there is also a danger; such history tends to miss out the big ideas. And when you look at the independence struggle and the partition of India the big idea that stands out is quite how badly the region was fucked over by the twin forces of empire and religion: Partition left 1 million killed in sectarian violence and 12 million made homeless.

We can easily forget that religious bigotry does not become any more palatable because it comes dressed up in exotic oriental garb. The sectarianism of Jinnah’s vision for a Muslim state was as ugly as anything seen in the Balkans or on the streets of Ulster. It created a logic that was the basis for the ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Sikhs - mirrored on the other side by those Hindu nationalists who drove Muslims from Bengal and the Punjab out of ‘their’ India.

A classic policy of divide and rule permitted a tiny British presence to control a huge area; a policy Churchill called "a bulwark of British rule in India". In this they were very sophisticated imperialists. They weren’t interested in settlement as had been done in the American colonies, or in integration and assimilation as the French did in North Africa. The driving motivation was trade and profit and everything else was secondary.Before the mutiny of 1857 British rule was a private venture (an early version of PFI ?)in the hands of the East India Company. The British were generally quite happy to use client states to do their dirty work until these local rulers got either too strong (and bolshie), or too weak (and ineffective).

And sixty years on, in many ways this seems to remain the same; religion and empire continue to blight this part of the world.

The situation in Kashmir, exists only because at the time of partition the British supported the local native ruler (a Hindu ruling over a Muslim population), in joining India. As a result it is now the focus and symbol of Indian-Pakistani conflict and a tinder-box that could ignite the whole region.

The new imperialism is off-shoring and globalisation as the sub-continent becomes the call centre / sweat shop of the West. And the result of this unprecedented growth is not a ‘trickle-down effect’ that raises the living standards of even the poorest layers of society. Science-parks and business areas so advanced that they would shame anything in this country, co-exist with dirt roads, villages without essential utilities, and beggars forced onto the streets because of a lack of a welfare safety-net.

The consequences of this are not hard to predict: A minority will benefit from economic growth and new elites will look to the West. But there will also be another much larger section who will miss out on this growth and will resent the winners.

In the past these people would have been drawn to the national liberation movements and radical parties. But these movements at the moment are weakened across the world. Instead recent experience shows that those who miss out will assert and defend their traditional culture and values.

And that can only mean more religious fundamentalism and sectional nationalism. And more goose-stepping at the border.

Heathrow protests

Air travel is too cheap.

It is not an inalienable human right to travel to a sunny destination overseas for half the cost of a train ticket to the other end of this country.

And Easyjet and RyanAir are not philanthropic organisations set up with a charter to bring low cost transport to the masses thereby broadening our minds and making us a more civilised society.

In fact they are money grabbing bastards who treat their passengers like cattle and don’t give a flying fuck about the environmental impact of their operations.

And all this is facilitated by the government who, by not taxing aviation fuel allow an absurdly low price of 26p per litre. Lobbying by the aviation industry internationally has ensured that this is protected by Chicago Treaty, which we are told makes it sacrosanct. Strange how the same logic doesn't extend to the Kyoto Agreement isn't it ?

Having myself grown up in the shadow of Heathrow I can clearly remember how lessons in school would be constantly interrupted whilst we waited for planes to pass over and how my mum couldn’t put out washing in the garden without it being blackened by pollution. And that was thirty years ago – I pity the poor sods who have to live at the end of the runaway nowadays.

Which is why I fully support the protesters at Heathrow.

And yes - I do use air travel; in fact I will do so this week. But I expect to pay a reasonable price for it, and for it to be punitively taxed both as a deterrent and to help repair some of the damage it will cause.

M40 Shooting

I didn't go to the Bulldog Bash this year; largely because I really didn't want to see the headline act Status Quo (again).

With an HA member shot dead on his way home from the festival, the news coverage would have you think that the three day event was something like a cross between Sodom and Gomorrah and the gunfight at the OK Coral.

The papers are again full of hysterical stories about imminent gang warfare coming to Britain, and 'background' pieces about back patch clubs. There's even references to Sonny Barger and Altamont.

I've been going to these festivals on and off for years and can vouch for the fact that they are more genuinely laid back and less commercial than anything else on the festival circuit. I still remember the first time I went to the HA's Kent Custom Show - having worked on the Saturday I arrived pretty late at night - the HA on the gate took pity and only charged me half the entrance fee. Try arguing that one at Glastonbury or WOMAD.

And I know it's a cliche that you can leave your tent unlocked and your helmet on your handlebars without fear of theft, but it is also TRUE. And with the HA vetting the price lists of the various food and drink vendors there is not the same shameless rip-off of other festivals either.

I'm not naive. Anyone with any sort of knowledge of the bike scene knows that when the shit comes down with the clubs it will undoubtedly be some very bad shit. What happened yesterday, was I'm sure, in one way or another, a part of that. But that is a matter for the guy's family and his club brothers. To suggest that it is representative of what goes on in the UK biker scene or that we now face an escalating 'biker war' is hysterical bollocks.

With all due respect; this does't deserve respect

I believe that unquestionably the best way to challenge stupid things is to take the piss out of them. Which is why I also believe that their should be no blasphemy laws. As one of the more fundamentally stupid things that people can believe, religion is the last thing that should be off-limits.

And don’t talk about ‘respect ‘, any belief system that condemns those who don’t share it are pretty fucking disrespectful themselves and so forfeit the right to protection. Which is why Pat Condell, atheist comedian has some genius insights – check out his website.

As enjoyable as Pat is, some of the comments there from mentalist religious types are even better. And close after religion, one of the other stupidest belief systems is nationalism. Also ripe for ridicule.

Which is why comedian Dave Jones is currently being hounded for this superb one-liner aimed at some Israeli’s in the front row at a recent Comedy Store gig:

‘Are you the Israeli students? - I’ve just been in the box office and there’s a group of ten Palestinians who say you’re occupying their seats.’

Crap Christian driving & stupid symbols

Infuriated to be stuck behind an appalling driver this morning with one of those Christian fish symbols that people stick on the back of their vehicles.

What is the idea of these symbols ? Does he not have to worry about his driving because Jesus is looking after him - and if so what about me as a potential victim of his dangerous incompetence - as a non-believer presumably I don't get the benefit of Jesus' protection and have to look out for myself.

When I was young one of my more devout relatives gave me a St Christopher (patron saint of travelers) key-ring, I think it was for my first communion or possibly confirmation, but either way some time before I was driving or riding.

Even at my young age this key-ring posed some interesting theological questions. Was it the medallion of St Christopher that protected me or was it actually St Christopher; and if so why did I have to carry it all the time ? If I left it at home would St Christopher get the hump and withdraw his protection ? There was an egg-timer type buzzer built in to the key-ring which you could set to remind yourself to return to your parking meter. This posed fresh questions; why was a mechanical device necessary ? Were parking meters too trivial for St Christopher to bother with himself; if so where did you draw the line ? A puncture, broken fan belt, minor scrape or a multi-vehicle pile up ?

Apologies to any Protestants reading this who might interpret this as idolatrous and polytheistic mumbo-jumbo. They would be absolutely right.

As an historical aside the prat of a driver with a fish on his bumper was at least being historically accurate in choosing that particular symbol rather than a cross. The fish was used by the early church as a symbol, and when the emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion he used the Greek initials of Christ's name, the 'chi-roi' to decorate official insignia. The later adoption of the cross seems a curious choice; the heretic Cathars hated the symbol seeing it as a celebration of Christ's suffering. Of course they were predictably persecuted and wiped out for their logic.

Bill Hicks put it nicely when he asked Christians what the idea was with the cross - 'if Jesus comes back that's going to be like the last thing he wants to see - you guys are really missing the point'. I don't care what symbol a crap driver sticks on their car - the cheery 'Smile Jesus loves you' or the more melodramatic ' I am covered in the blood of Jesus'. He could have the entire fucking Sistine chapel ceiling sprayed on his car; I'd rather he put less faith in divine intervention, kept his eyes on the road and tried not to kill any innocent bystanders on their way to work.

History by the winners.

History as we know is written by the winners.

Which is why nobody is making much noise about an anniversary today that marks the start of the modern age:

The first dropping of an atomic bomb - on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

In the immediate aftermath of the dropping of the bomb 70,000 largely civilian Japanese were killed. Estimates vary, but up to double this number were casualties by December of 1945. And within days, a similar bomb was also dropped on Nagasaki. Apparently there were plans for a third bomb that were cut short by the Japanese surrender.

And this is the great lie that is propagated to justify the bombing as a necessary evil to shorten the war and thereby halt the casualties that would otherwise have followed the Japanese refusal to surrender. (Notice how Churchill's refusal to surrender in 1940 was heroic determination but Japan's refusal in 1945 was oriental fanaticism ?)

But at the time this rationale was not universally accepted within the US military. Eisenhower. McArthur and even the US Strategic Bombing Survey were all of the opinion that the Japanese war machine was on its last legs and that actually surrender was likely within months, even without an invasion. In fact in the tentative communications before the bombs were dropped, the main obstacle to surrender was that the Japanese emperor be able to retain his title. This of course was something that the US readily agreed to after the bomb had been dropped.

With the benefit of forty years hindsight we now know that dropping the bomb didn't mark the end of one war so much as the start of a new one; the Cold War. It sent a very un-ambiguous message to the Soviets who having defeated the Nazis in Eastern Europe were poised to invade Japanese Manchuria and were now asserting themselves as a superpower.

So the last word should go to Einstein, grand-father of the bomb who was appalled at his progeny:

"Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?"

NOT just a tragic accident

If you squint hard enough, there is possibly a vague similarity between these two men. The one on the right is Osman Hussain, the bloke that the police had identified as a suspected terrorist, and the bloke on the left is, of course, Charles de Menezes, the bloke they actually shot.

To be fair, the CCTV operator who had been staking out the block of flats were both men lived did ask for verification of the identity from his superiors before they decided to follow the man on the left. There was a delay though because the officer in question had stepped out to take a piss. As a result the authorization was given anyway. And of course this led to a chain of events that culminated in the wrong man being shot dead when he was followed onto a crowded tube.

On the basis of this narrative, I would be willing to concede that the affair was a tragic accident. I would also be loathe to criticize the guys who actually pulled the trigger (albeit seven times); whether they were armed police, SAS , SRR or whoever else. Never having personally confronted someone who I had been told was a suicide bomber, I wouldn't presume to know what constitutes an acceptable level of force.

But none of that is really the issue.

The inquiry has made it clear that within minutes of killing Charles de Menezes the police realised that they had got the wrong bloke.

And then lied systematically about it.

• They said that he was dressed in bulky clothing (possibly concealing a bomb) - inappropriate for a hot July day.

• They said that he was running.

• They said that he vaulted the ticket barrier.

• They said that they identified themselves as armed police and that he ignored their warning.

All of which it now appears according to the inquiry, was total bollocks.

The correct outcome of this revelation should be very straight-forward. Every police officer who colluded with this deceit should be removed from their post and prosecuted . And the eye-witnesses who appeared on the TV news to confirm the police lies should be traced and prosecuted.

Quite simply nothing less is adequate in a democracy; if authority is entrusted with the power of life and death it must be subjected to the strictest scrutiny. After this scrutiny it might be accepted that operatives on the ground made an honest but tragic mistake. But a conspiracy to conceal the truth from the public can never be accepted.

If it is, we are taking a step towards a police-state (an over-used phrase but the only one appropriate).

And finally:

It is utterly unbelievable that Commissioner Ian Blair was not aware that his own organisation was lying. According to the inquiry within hours of the shooting there was gossip around Scotland Yard to this effect. A competent manager in touch with his organisation would have picked up on this gossip and investigated it; so if he didn't Ian Blair is at very least a pretty poor leader for the Metropolitan Police. One way or another he facilitated a calculated piece of arse-covering, and now is dishonourably trying to duck out of his responsibility.

Stuck-up NIMBY snobs

Residents of Ashtead in the Surrey stock broker belt have being trying to oppose planning permission for a hostel in their area.

What is it that have got these Not-In-My-Back-Yard bigots up in arms ? A half-way house for released sex offenders, somewhere for recovering addicts, or emergency housing for asylum seekers ? No - it's a hostel for the families of injured servicemen who are patients at a local military hospital / rehabilitation centre.

Ashtead is the sort of area where you get a funny look if you're not wearing a poppy in November and old gits in blazers pontificate in saloon bars about the merits of national service. I would also imagine that support for the war in Iraq is also probably higher than average as well.

No doubt if it had been any other sort of hostel the residents would be reaching for their hoods, getting out the old fiery cross and preparing a lynch party.

These people are small minded NIMBY scum whose greatest concern in life is the level of house prices.

And before anyone asks - yes, actually we do ourselves live opposite a hostel for people with mental health problems. In all honesty I would rather it was something else but, contrary to the great Thatcher lie - there IS such a thing as society and I AM my brother's keeper, so I wouldn't dream of opposing it.

And if you don't feel the same way, frankly you should just fuck off and live on your desert island somewhere.