A loss of faith

Poster seen at the 20 October TUC march.

A few weeks ago, after details were revealed about what really happened at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium in 1989, when 96 Liverpool football fans died, my mother was on the phone.

A St Helens lass herself, she’s no football fan as such, but has always held a soft spot for both Liverpool FC and the city itself.

For pretty much the same length of time, she’s been a staunch C/conservative and believer in the inherent rightness of the Establishment. But the revelations had left her shocked – perhaps more than I’ve ever known before.

“How could they?” she asked, of the police decision to blood-test every victim, including children, to see if they had alcohol in their bodies. “How could they?”

But if she was struggling to come to terms with the enormity of what had been revealed about Hillsborough, then what has been trickling out since the first public allegations about Jimmy Savile must be taking her breath away.

If you’re looking for names in connection with allegations of abuse in North Wales some years ago, you won’t find them here – partly for the obvious legal reasons, but also because, even if not true, such suggestions can particularly severely tarnish the innocent.

And the issue as a whole is (or should be) way beyond the tribalism of partisan politics.

But if it is true that senior government figures were involved in abuse, then it goes further than individual politicians themselves.

It would be difficult to believe that the security forces didn’t know – certainly those on protection duties. The same can be said of the police.

If, as is now clear, many in the mainstream media knew about Savile, did nobody know about any implicated politicians – particularly given that we are now rather more aware of the links between press barons and police and politicians?

The tendrils of corruption seem to spread a long way.

In truth, there was never a total lack of corruption in this country. That is a myth. Read Dickens. Look at Hogarth. It’s there.

But there has been a belief constructed that this was never the case. And perhaps that is part of the problem – that in so doing, abusers have been protected.

It also seems worth questioning whether the culture of the English (male) public school is also an issue.

Some years ago, Channel 4 screen a very lengthy and heavyweight documentary called Sex and the Holy City. One of the issues that it looked at was child abuse by priests.

The point was made that if (as happened) parents threw children into seminaries, having decided, for them, that they would become priests and, therefore, be celibate, it halted their natural “psycho-sexual” development.

This makes a deal of sense – and I do wonder whether the English public school system does something similar.

Take the example of Andrew ‘Plebgate’ Mitchell MP.

It seems that Mitchell, who attended Rugby School, was known as ‘Thrasher’, because of what a disciplinarian he was.

Now this is someone who was a child/adolescent, who had the authority to deal with discipline toward other children/adolescents in the school. That nickname suggests that the discipline was meted out in physical fashion.

What sensible adult hands responsibility for disciplining other children or adolescents to a child or adolescent?

Seriously?

It doesn’t seem irrational to suggest that that would be a situation that is absolutely tailor made for abuse and bullying.

But let’s move on.

Given the way in which the Savile case has been grasped by some on the right as a way of beating up the BBC (calls for it to be dismantled, the licence scrapped etc), David Cameron seemed strangely reluctant to announce any review of Auntie.

It was the correct decision, because it would be naïve to imagine that the abuse of children and young people was unique to one organisation. Indeed, a great deal of what has emerged makes it quite clear that this is not the case.

But calling such an inquiry would have made a lot of sense in terms of pleasing a core of supporters.

And now it has been announced that there will be an inquiry into the Waterhouse inquiry that investigated abuse in North Wales and reported in 2000.

That inquiry decided that alleged abusers could not be identified in public.

It seems suspiciously as though the Prime Minister has been made aware of just what could come out and is desperately engaged in an exercise of attempting to bail water out of a boat that’s shipping a great deal more.

None of what is trickling through should really be any massive surprise to people. The Leveson Inquiry has pretty efficiently shone light on the links between politicians, media tycoons and editors, and the police.

Which is why Leveson is so important.

Elements of the media – the Sun, specifically – were complicit in smearing the victims and survivors of the Hillsborough disaster. The police made up lies about what happened: Rupert Murdoch's paper spread them.

Many in the UK, like my parents, have existed in a cosy bubble of belief in the innate superiority and incorruptibility of these islands.

You could point at the likes of Italy and laugh. But corruption in the UK was, if not unheard of, but a very quiet cry.

My mother’s own faith in the Establishment is such that, back in 1990, she preferred, quiet openly, to believe a Daily Mail report of what happened on the night Islington Council met to set the poll tax to what I saw that night, as a platform steward at the rally outside the town hall.

To précis: there had been no trouble early on. The local police were doing a perfectly good job, refusing to react to the few hecklers at the front of the rally.

The trouble only started when the Met came around the corner on horseback and in full riot gear.

That, at least, is what I saw. I got out of the way quickly after that.

But my mother was convinced that I was so politicised (as opposed to herself) that I could not be trusted: in effect, I would lie to my parents for political effect.

So for the likes of her, what we are seeing now must be particularly shocking.

And it is not going to go away – or get any ‘better’ any time soon.

The North Wales case is being talked of widely. It seems that, at the time, there were rumours of people dying in odd circumstances or disappearing.

Where it will end is impossible to guess.

And there are other cases that are similarly linked to widespread, inter-agency corruption, and which are also refusing to conveniently just go away quietly.

The murder of Daniel Morgan is just one such case. For an introduction to that, here is the first in a series of excellent posts by lawyer David Allen Green.

The Justice for Daniel campaign can be found here.

It’s difficult to avoid the feeling that something is rotten in the state of Britain.

You watch it unfold with a mixture of fascination and horror. But the loss of faith for some will be not be easy.

We know what you did 23 years ago

It seems quite extraordinary, but just a couple of weeks after the facts about the Hillsborough disaster were released, a new one has emerged.

There were not 96 victims, as previously believed, but 97.

That previously unrecognised victim was Kelvin MacKenzie.

Yes: that Kelvin MacKenzie.

The same person who, as editor of the Sun at the time, made the decision to plaster the headline ‘THE TRUTH’ over reporter Harry Arnold’s story about what he had been told had occurred.

Arnold says that the story did not assert that it was the unquestionable truth, and he queried the headline with MacKenzie, who just went ahead anyway.

However, the fault for this now appears to lie entirely with the South Yorkshire Police, who fed the claims about Liverpool fans at Hillsborough to a Sheffield news agency, supported by the claims of an MP who wasn’t there, but also now says that he totally believed what the police told him, and was subsequently knighted – presumably not for services to the truth.

It seems that, if the stories hadn’t come from police, MacKenzie would not have felt so sure of their absolute veracity that he would have written that headline.

Now, therefore, he wants an apology from the force in question, for all the years of vilification he has suffered.

Poor lamb.

This is the same MacKenzie who did once apologise – and then recanted. His latest apology therefore means little – and is being taken in precisely that manner.

This is also the same MacKenzie who will be perfectly well aware that the Taylor Report showed up the lies for what they were ages ago – yet he did nothing then.

The first rule of journalism is that you make some effort to check what you’re printing – not least if the stories are as extreme as those that the Sun published about Liverpool fans.

I’m not a Liverpool fan. I wasn’t at that match, but I was watching it on television that day, and I remember the horror as events began to unfold.

Back at work after the weekend, the first person I met was a fellow football supporter – Crystal Palace in her case. We hugged and exchanged the view that was widespread among fans then and remains so now: ‘there but for the grace of god go I’.

There were reasons that Hillsborough happened. There was hooliganism that had attached itself to the sport. But suggestions that the sport was saturated in violence of the threat of it, are nonsense.

However, it suited the political agenda of time – don’t forget that the government, desperate to assault civil liberties in general, wanted to use the reputation of football fans as an excuse to foist ID cards on them, as guinea pigs for the rest of the population.

The Sun, under Rupert Murdoch (who has been strangely silent on the subject of Hillsborough), had relished the opportunity to batter working people – not least those from rebellious Liverpool, where the government was talking of planning a ‘managed decline’ after its own policies had destroyed the city’s major industry.

The paper supported the police utterly – including that same South Yorkshire Police force, which had been allowed to act with impunity at Orgreave.

MacKenzie was entirely happy to be part of the process of the demonisation of working-class people who didn’t tug their forelocks dutifully as the government of the day laid waste to the country’s industrial base.

As an editor, he and he alone made the decision to write and publish the headline that has seen him ‘vilified’.

As a journalist, he had the responsibility to check sources – and to act in a responsible manner.

This is not to remotely excuse what some members of the South Yorkshire Police did, but MacKenzie cannot shed his own responsibility for his own professional decisions.

Whatever his reasoning or his motive at the time, he made a personal decision to all of these responsibilities.

And now, if he had a shred of human decency, MacKenzie would just crawl back under his stone and shut up.

#PornTrial: Masking the real questions

It's been a pretty dismal few weeks for the director of public prosecutions and Crown Prosecution Service. And a remarkably good time for civil liberties and free speech - although it's certainly not safe to take anything for granted.

First up was what became known as the 'Twitter joke trial', where one Paul Chambers had been prosecuted for a tweet about a nearby airport:

"Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

It wasn't the greatest example of Twitter humour, but although it attracted no panic initially, it was handed on upwards, until a subsequent decision was reached to do a spot of belated panicing.

Result? It was decided that the tweet was "a communication of menacing character".

Chambers was arrested at his place of work, marched out in handcuffs. He was charged and, in May 2010 found guilty at Doncaster Magistrates' Court, and fined £1,000. On appeal, it was upheld at Doncaster Crown Court, where he was faced with a further £1,000 costs.

Judge Jacqueline Davis declared: "We are satisfied, on the evidence, that the message in question is menacing in its content and obviously so. It is difficult to imagine anything more clear."

You do wonder what world (some) judges inhabit.

In February, two more judges at the High Court couldn't agree, so it went before a three-judge panel in July. Finally, common sense prevailed and Paul Chambers was acquitted, as the legal trio decided that nothing suggested that the original tweet had contained a real threat.

So, if at some date in the future, I tweet that, 'come the revolution, X, Y and Z will be first up against the wall', there is now a legal precedent in place to understand that this is humour - dry and probably not particularly funny, but nonetheless, not a serious threat either.

But if the CPS got its fingers burned over that idiocy, it was up to its elbows just a few weeks later.

#PornTrial as it became known on Twitter - it was the first case to be live tweeted from the courtroom - took things to a whole new level.

At this stage, I'm going to say that plenty of good articles and blogs have been penned since - but with the bulk of mainstream media ignoring it, the questions need repeating.

And there a few points that I in particular wish to look at.

However, let's start from the beginning. To précis: Simon Walsh is a barrister working on police disciplinary cases (remember this) and a member of the City of London Corporation, and Boris Johnson had appointed him mayor's representative to the London Fire Authority.

An openly gay man, he suddenly found himself at the centre of a police investigation, with some suggestions that they thought he had child porn.

So, first of all, they investigated his computers, at home and work, finding no porn at all.

Then they decided they'd better check his email (Walsh gave them the passwords) - and in doing so, helped to contaminate any evidence.

On a personal Hotmail account, they found 'dodgy' pictures.

One of the pictures was of a man in a gas mask. An 'expert' for the police claimed that this was very, very bad, since a gas mask could cause serious harm to the wearer - even death by asphyxiation.

Which is quite some stretch of the imagination, since the piece of equipment in question was specifically designed to assist breathing.

In a rare display of common sense as far as this case is concerned, charges pertaining to this picture were dropped.

The police quizzed his goddaughters, asking whether he'd abused them.

And they found a small number of pictures Walsh openly said he'd taken, of himself and (adult) male friends enjoying some fun - and an unsolicited email, which they could not prove had been opened, but which included a picture of a young male they claimed was below the age of consent.

That was enough for the Director of Public Prosecutions, who decided to press ahead, using the legislation enacted by the Labour government, known as On possession of extreme pornography.

Now I explained here why that legislation, and the consultation process that preceded it, was deeply flawed.

Everything about this case shows that my analysis at the time - in 2005 - was correct. With knobs added.

Expert witnesses proved, to the satisfaction of the jury (which unanimously acquitted Walsh on all six counts), that the young man in the picture that the prosecution claimed was evidence of child porn, that he was an adult male.

The picture had been unsolicited.

The prosecution could not prove otherwise - or even that Walsh had ever opened the attachment.

What's in your inbox or even your junk mail folder?

That's one aspect of the case. Let's move on.

Simon Walsh and his friends were consenting adults. What they did between themselves is in no way illegal.

You might not fancy the idea yourself - you might even be repulsed by the thought of it. But that does not mean it's illegal - or that anyone has a right to say that someone else should be prosecuted for it.

While certain acts may not themselves be illegal, the question was whether representing them (in pictures or on film) was against the law.

The law centres on whether the activities shown could produce serious injury.

The CPS barrister, Thomas Wilkins, decided to suggest to one expert witness that only people with 'risky' sex lives used sexual health clinics. That was rebutted by the witness, who responded by stating that clinics are used by anyone who takes their sexual health seriously.

Other expert witnesses testified that fisting and sounding (insertion of a tube into the penis - something also done for medical reasons) is unlikely to cause serious injury. Indeed, none of them had ever seen an example in lengthy careers.

Trying desperately to get the jury on his side by illustrating just how awful fisting is, Wilkins then suggested that, if it involved women, it would be "dehumanising".

Perhaps he'll explain that to women who enjoy fisting - whether heterosexual, lesbian or bi. Because the sticky reality is that some women do it, some women have it 'done' to them, and this is because they enjoy it.

It should never, ever be the business of the CPS to go around suggesting what, in effect, is acceptable sexual behaviour for women. And the point of the law should not be to make such moral judgements.

And the very fact that the CPS tried to use ideas of women - and prudish ideas at that - to support a case against a gay man, about a form of gay male sexual behaviour, is bang out of order.

Not that things ended there. In his summing up, Wilkins actually announced to the jury that the defendant had fantasised about orgies.

It's now an indicator of criminal behaviour to fantasise about an orgy? It's not even an indicator of criminal behaviour to take part in one!

And for goodness sake, that's probably a vast proportion of the population you've just effectively criminalised, since it's quite likely that many, many people have, at the least, fantasised about sex in such a situation.

But let's be absolutely clear: on the basis of Wilkins's summing up, even fantasies of perfectly legal acts can be used as evidence against you.

Your fantasy life is no longer yours.

In a case of extraordinarily intrusive behaviour, this little gem says so much.

The CPS has been in trouble before with stupid prosecutions under this legislation.

It prosecuted somebody for having footage of an animated tiger having sex with someone - because it was too dumb to turn up the sound and realise that there was a punchline at the end, and that the tiger was a CGI creation.

There are many questions raised by this case. Lawyer David Allen Green phoned the CPS press office pretty much the moment Wilkins came up with his 'risky sex' suggestion about sexual health clinics. They distanced themselves from that one pretty quickly.

But the performance on BBC's Newsnight, after the trial, of Alison Saunders, the chief Crown Prosecutor for the CPS, was hardly one to inspire confidence.

Saunders denied any connection with Simon Walsh's job - of course - but it remains to be clear as to just what the police had as a basis to even start the investigation.

And she appeared downright uncomfortable, if not embarrassed, to be facing such questions. As she should.

Are the CPS simply idiots - or is there an agenda here; either one of stopping Walsh's work, or a puritanical, controlling agenda, whereby some people at least are seeking to foist their mores on to the rest of the population, and particularly on those whose sexual behaviour they view as abhorrent?

Did the CPS really believe that fisting and sounding is likely to cause injury? Or did they quite deliberately lie to the jury to suggest this, as they needed to do if the images involving these things were to fall within the abysmally-worded legislation?

There is something utterly nasty about the prosecution - and persecution - of Simon Walsh.

And a further matter. Whereas the Twitter joke trial attracted widespread coverage, #PornTrial has seen much of the supposedly serious media rather quiet on the matter.

Are elements in the media simply embarrassed by some of what was discussed in court - or are they secretly disgusted, and possibly homophobic, and have allowed that to cloud their minds to the issues?

The Guardian should be praised for being open and covering the case well. The Independent came late to the table with a rather wishy-washy piece, but that was better than most. Perhaps surprisingly, the Sunday Sun deserves praise for a short opinion piece that was remarkably sound and sane, and not sensationalistic.

The Mail had managed, online at least, to do some smearing by misrepresenting the case early on - challenged by Myles Jackman of the defence team. But then, the Mail has no shortage of form in the area of LGBT issues. It did publish (online at least) a report of the acquittal.

The defence team are due great credit for their work - as is the jury, which took just 90 minutes to reach its conclusion.

But in both these cases - and others - we see some serious and worrying things that have the potential to rear their heads again unless the CPS and the police rethink their cack-handed onslaught on some very basic ideas of privacy and free speech.

The legislation that was so flawed to start with needs to go too, but that's unlikely at present. Let's face it, no mainstream political party is currently going to want to risk the wrath of the Mail by being perceived to 'support' alternative sexual activities and porn.

I'd like to think that this was the end of the war. Unfortunately, I suspect it's but a single battle. And it seems entirely possible that there will be more victims.

And these are not just cases about bad jokes and a few perves.


15/08/12 UPDATE: Interview with Simon Walsh at the London Evening Standard.

Bread. And circuses

Yesterday, I picked up a wholemeal loaf in our local Percy Ingle. It was £1.67 which, if memory serves me completely correctly, is a rise of around 15-20p in less than a year.

In today's Observer Food Monthly, John Vidal examines the global issue of rising food prices.

This isn't something that most of us don't know, but it seems that food prices are rising particularly fast in the UK.

According to one Paul Donovan, who's the deputy head of global economics at UBS, the biggest Swiss bank, this is because Britain's supermarkets dominate the grocery market with an 80% share, and rely on commodity prices and a general expectation of inflation to get away with it.

Indeed, this was detailed in a UBS report earlier this year.

The supermarkets' representatives, it should be said, deny that they're handing on more of the rise in basic ingredients that they need to to the customer. Of course not. But it does make you wonder how those grocers on the Continent and even in the US manage without hiking prices to the same extent.

Not that we should simply knock the supermarkets. As "middle class lefties" were warned in a rather snooty recent article here, Tesco and the rest provide "decent, affordable food", which is "an old socialist goal" that is "to be applauded, not opposed".

Which clearly helps to prove the claim, mentioned earlier, that the supermarkets are not using grain shortages, commodity prices and inflation expectation to ratchet up prices more than they need to cover their costs. Supermarkets provide "affordable" food. And it's "decent" too.

A lot of the time, it's neither.

To be fair, those responding to the article take the anonymous author to task, but it reeks of the very worst snobbery of New Labour: 'let the plebs eat processed, over-priced junk'.

Not that New Labour were unique in something close to contempt for what used to be known as 'the working class'. It's simply that, since that is precisely who the Labour Party was founded to represent, it is somewhat more irritatingly hypocritical.

There's a fair old amount of snobbery around at present about the News of the World hacking affair, with some liking to finger point about how it's only the same plebs who need Tesco who read such trash. This is totally untrue – as various surveys for all the red tops have shown. Which is why some quite prestigious companies advertise in them.

That in turn creates a delightful circle where some begin to see it as a badge of identity to eat junk and read junk: their aspirations to try anything better bucking under the snobbery of those who wouldn't dream of shopping in Tesco, who only ever hid their News of the World in the pages of the something worthier and who only watch trashy 'reality' TV so that they can stand around the water cooler in the office the following day and condemn.

In the meantime, however, we see the continuing unravelling of affairs News International, with Rupert Murdoch and son James to appear before a Commons committee on Tuesday. The fragrant Rebekah Brooks, who finally was pushed – sorry, fell – on her sword late last week has been excused this ordeal by today's opportune arrest, leaving some to ponder whether this was deliberate.

I hate conspiracy theories – Occam's Razor for me every time – but given all the talk of evidence being shredded, of calls to data storage centres in India to ask for evidence to be dumped, one is entitled to a certain cynicism, methinks, with the police seemingly up to their necks in matters – or certainly facing a raft of questions over their links to News International.

It is a tangled web some people weave.

The hacking affair has become fascinating and far wider in its reach than many had probably seriously imagined. But it remains odd, in that the anger seems to be about the method and not the final product.

In other words, invasions of privacy were entirely acceptable – unless they're achieved by illegal methods. Nobody objected when the NOTW printed stories that it could only have got from Milly Dowler's phone – which they could only have got via illegal means – at the time. So it's not even just celebrities that people want to read detail about.

Some in the media squeal about 'freedom of the press' and 'freedom of speech', without ever explaining why nobody has a right to privacy.

But the reality is that some people's privacy is protected. When did you really hear stories about Murdoch and his family? Or about other press barons? Or bankers and financiers? Or the head of vast corporations?

Even in the immediate aftermath of the financial crash of 2008, you didn't get such personal detail about those responsible. And barely six months later, it was the same press that such remarkable self control there, which helped create the myth that public sector workers and their 'gold-plated pensions' were to blame.

Elements of the media provide a very useful service in feeding a voracious public with titillation. It seems particularly effective when it's celebrities and footballers – people who have done well for themselves. Many people – including those who don't personally read the tabloids – seem to think that, when you earn a certain amount of money by being in the public eye, you 'deserve' no privacy.

This is utterly illogical. How much money – or how much fame – do you have to have before your private life becomes public property? And how much of that private life at what income level?

Earning £X means that Jo and Joanna Public have the right to know whether you wank? A pay packet of £XXX means that they have the right to know which hand you wank with and who you're thinking about when you do?

Why? Why is this remotely in 'the public interest'? It's simple. It isn't.

But given the rise of inequality in the last 30 years in the UK, it could perhaps be argued that these make nice sacrificial victims for those who I mentioned earlier: those who remain hidden, but who control increasing amounts of our lives; who are not elected and are not accountable to the general public, but who have enjoyed a vast amount of influence over politicians of both major parties for over 30 years.

It's chicken and egg when you start discussing scandal in the press, but as the last 30 years have passed, everything has become increasingly commoditised. Part of the problem is that news itself has become a commodity. So has private life – and mostly, of course, the private lives of others. Which is rather wryly amusing really, given what most people would claim they thought of the Stasi and similar police organisations.

But let's go back to food for a minute. One of the other reasons for shortages is the increasing amount of land that is given over to growing bio-fuels. Why not start by tackling the over-reliance on cars etc? Or would that involve taking on the motor industry?

We see something similar with the energy companies, which are pushing prices for domestic customers through the roof. Privatisation has worked so well for the British public. Many in the press – and Murdoch's media has always pushed this line – claim that 'private is best'.

You need the press when you're going to do something that they might not really think was for the best, from privatisation to going to war.

Indeed, given the competition for circulation, advertising and sales, links between the likes of News International and supermarkets are hardly surprising.

Reports that Tony Blair tried to warn off Tom Watson MP from pursuing the issue of News of the World raise questions – not least of how much that was a direct response to Murdoch's support for Iraq.

According to the article linked to at the top of this post, "government has argued strongly that it expects food prices to remain low and that cheap imports and the global trading system will best serve people's needs."

This is clearly nonsense. We need to have policies for our food security that involve seriously thinking about our own food growth, for the sake of our food security – not whether the supermarkets can exploit some developing world farmer to grown asparagus for even less than they'd pay over here (see Joanna Blythman's Shopped: the shocking power of Britain's supermarkets and The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman).

The Murdoch debacle has raised the issue in some minds of monopolies and the damage that they can do. Let's please go further and start to look at the damage that other monopolies and near monopolies exact, and stop being blinded by bread and circuses.

And the trophy goes to …

Since I’ve just got back from spending a week in Manchester, working at the UNISON local government and national delegate conferences, it seemed like a good idea to put together a brief list of my ‘bests’ for the past seven days.

Some are serious, some are silly and some are just downright fun – and they are all entirely personal.

So, let's get going!


Most gobsmacking story of the week

Bad stories abounded, but this was left until today and the debate on what’s happening to police staff. That’s the forensics officers, the call centre staff and many, many more civilian workers.

All of whom form a vital part of the police service as a whole.

But it seems that some senior police officers think that the best way to make the cuts that the government is demanding is to sack such staff – and then replace them with police officers who, for whatever reason, cannot do the ‘beat’ stuff anymore.

But it gets better, since these replacement staff are paid, on average, double the rate for the job that the sacked staff got.

Bonkers, bonkers and downright wrong.

Full story here


Costume of the week

Well, setting aside Julian’s Manchester City FA Cup winners socks, it has to be Maureen and her partner at the president’s ‘wild west’ social on Sunday.

Nobody, but nobody else had made even close to such an effort.

Neigh and thrice neigh!!!









Quote of the week

UNISON general secretary “Dave Prentis is not King Kong.

“We do not expect him to climb the Empire State Building and pluck planes out of the sky.

“Dave Prentis is our leader. Dave Prentis is our general and you are our captains.”

I keep trying to put this right out of my mind – but then find myself musing over who would be Dave’s Fay Wray …


Expression of the week













No further comment required – Julie’s face says it all.


Most moving moments of the week

Seeing Kenny and Anne. Both of then are dealing with cancer, but both of then are still concentrating their energies on what they believe – helping others to fight for fairness and justice.

Even if you don't agree with their respective politics, they are heroic human beings.

I wonder if I could be as brave as they are?


Meal of the week

No apologies – it was last Saturday’s visit to Michael Caines @ Abode.

Under executive chef Mark Rossi, this is not cheap, but offers really super food.

I took The Other Half this time and, after a complimentary baby leek terrine, I had almond crusted veal sweetbreads with
poached quail's eggs, gribiche sauce
 and a green bean salad.

The sweetbreads were a first for me – and were lovely. Light and with a slightly gamey taste.

To follow, wild brill with 
crab crushed new potatoes,
baby fennel and sauce vierge.

And for dessert, ‘Tasting of peach’, which meant a lovely dish with a
peach parfait, soup, a peach mousse, elderflower sorbet, glazed peach and roasted almond foam.

I am also delighted to report that, after heavily recommending it and insisting we went, The Other Half enjoyed his meal too.


Best service of the week

Even I make the mistake of forgetting sometimes just how friendly the north is – particularly when compared to London.

Service pretty much everywhere was with a smile and real warmth.

But my own award for service this past week goes to Raymond, the top-hatted doorman at the Midland Hotel, for always being helpful, but also going beyond the call of duty in presenting a down-to-Earth, humorous and warm face to a legendary hotel where one Mr Rolls and Mr Royce put pen to paper on founding a little company.

I rang the hotel a short while ago to thank them and commend him in particular, and was stunned to learn he’s only been in the job two weeks.

I hope the hotel’s management realises just what a gem they have.


Funniest moment

Our conference office was in the hotel and, while we were there, a small but perfectly formed group of ladies from Estée Lauder were also having a conference.

One morning, they were lining either side of a corridor as I walked through, chatting about something or other.

I wished them all a good day – and was tickled pink to see their faces.

Am I really that scary – or was it simply that I wasn’t wearing the right make up?


Best bit of the whole week

In a staggering coincidence, my beloved Manchester City were holding a charity do in the same hotel that we were staying in on Thursday night.

Now the players and coaching staff are still all on their hols, but the FA Cup was brought in to display at the event, and all the staff (including security) were brilliant about letting hotel residents who weren’t attending the event go and gawp at it and photograph it.

For those who don’t know, the FA Cup is the oldest domestic club competition in the football world. And every year, millions tune in around the globe to watch the final.

I was not the only one to get emotional and excited – and indeed, took pictures for a number of other people.

But as a happy coincidence, one of our conference photographers was walking past as I was whispering sweet nothings to this iconic piece of silverware – and took up my camera to picture me with it. So thanks to Steve.

To those who are not football fans – I know it sounds bonkers. But I’m still glowing with the pleasure of that, and I know I’m not alone.

Bloooo Mooon ... You saw me standing alone ...

There IS an alternative

In London yesterday, at least half a million people marched to protest not simply against something (the cuts), but to say that they were not inevitable – that there is an alternative.

I’m taking the half a million figure from the Daily Mail of all publications – but since it can hardly be accused of being a bastion of ‘loony lefties’, one can assume that it’s at least a genuine minimum of the numbers present.

The picture you’ve already seen is of Ghurka veterans who marched – so hardly ‘the usual suspects’. But that was always going to be the real story. (The one below is of an elderly supporter of the Robin Hood Tax).

Personally, I’d put it closer to a million, after standing in the middle of the march for over two hours – and then finding later that they kept on coming for at least another two hours after that.

I know people who were directed all the way to Fleet Street to join the back of the march as people walked some way to even begin the route proper from Hungerford Bridge.

For me it was a work day, armed only with my camera and a brief of snapping as many UNISON regional and branch banners as possible (with as many members with them!) and also a few odds and sods for the staff magazine.

After actually managing to get myself organised enough to eat a breakfast at home – I went to work on two soft boiled eggs, as per Fay Weldon’s advertising famous jingle – it was down to Hackney Road and a 26 bus to Waterloo Bridge, leaving a short hop along the Strand and down to the Embankment alongside the Savoy Theatre.

Which was rather funny, in a coincidental sort of way, since I’m just reading a biography of the great chef Escoffier, and the story has just reached the beginning of his time at the Savoy, working with Cèsar Ritz for Richard D’Oyly Carte.

This, of course, is the same D’Oyly Carte who gave the world Gilbert & Sullivan and whose own opera company in his Savoy Theatre, staged their operas (hence G&S followers often being called ‘Savoyards’).

The theatre itself was the first building in the world to be completely lit by electricity – a fact I was reminded of when I walked down the narrow passageway down to the gardens at the front of the hotel and spotted a plaque on the wall of the theatre to this effect.

Personally, my love of G&S is one of few things that my parents gave me. So there was an added piquancy to that walk.

In the gardens I spotted a bust of Sir Arthur Sullivan. Wonderful! But where was the comparable one to WS Gilbert?

However, moving on, I hit the Embankment at around 9.30am, to find colleagues who had been there for around two hours, unloading and preparing all the materials they’d worked to prepare. I felt like a dilettante by comparison.

It was a cool morning, but with the sun showing signs of burning through. I started taking my pictures.

The march was scheduled to start at 11am. Now that was never going to happen – it was around 45 minutes later.

Bur what an atmosphere!

Seriously good humoured – the police were fantastic.

Indeed, I hear from UNISON colleagues that, as UNISON police staff branches went past (these involve scene of crime staff, photographers, call centre staff – in other words, ‘frontline’ staff) they were close to applauding.

Personally, I chatted with officers and had to work with them professionally during the day (to get on Hungerford Bridge for photographs, for instance) and they were relaxed and we had a great atmosphere going.

So here’s a good chance to thank my police colleagues too. You do a thankless job, guys and gals, but a very important one. Thank you.

Indeed, a Parliamentary committee, on Friday, had applauded how well the TUC and Metropolitan Police had worked together to plan the day’s events. Nobody with an ounce of sense wanted this to be anything other than a safe and positive day.

As the march began, I was in a traffic island just before Hungerford Bridge. The atmosphere was electric – the noise form the UNISON delegation at the front, with vuvuzelas and whistles, was just stunning.

Goosebumps ran up and down my spine; tears pricked my eyes. It was utterly incredible. It was a privilege to be there.

They eventually set off. I snapped away, but with an ever-increasing sense of awe as it became clear just how many people were there.

My editor gave me chocolate to keep me going – thank you, Diana!

Eventually, I dipped into my rucksack to pull out a can of V (one of those caffeine drinks, but I prefer it to Red Bull). In fear of not being able to find a loo for hours, it was my first liquid of the day.

And still they came. There was one young man, dressed in a tail coat and with a lovely tray with tea pot and cup and saucer, who was carrying a small, hand-made placard that said: ‘Teapots against kettling’. The photo will go up later!

There was wit and humour everywhere. There was no aggression and no threat – well, apart from the toy town anarchists who slouched past at one point, faces covered.

It makes me feel old to say it, but some of them were really SO small that I felt that I wanted to ask them: ‘Do you mother and father really know where you are and what you’re doing?’

They gave off the only ‘attitude’ of the day. But I found myself worrying that some of them were too young t really make educated choices about what they were doing; that they had been suckered into whatever was being planned, and that they might seriously suffer for it.

UNISON member Mary Locke, who is a hospital housekeeper in Birmingham, had hoped to see me – indeed, had promised to bring me lunch (it’s not easy carrying a picnic when you’ve got a camera around your neck), but the march was so vast we ended up with no chance of spotting each other.

I’m sure Mary would agree that that was the better outcome – although I’ve had one of Mary’s wonderful cobs, full of lovely, moist cheese and coleslaw, before, so I did regret not getting one this time!

At another point, UNISON member Tracey Lambert darted out of the mass to tell me that she loved my blog. Wow! That makes me feel really humble and very happy. Thank you, Tracey.

And eventually, when I broke away and managed to get back toward the Embankment gardens, I bumped into Sue and Alan, who coaxed me out of being too hyped and gave me Pepsi and the encouragement to sit down for a fag and chat – and they’d been on the road since the early hours trying to get down in time!

I then hopped a cab to get back to the office as quickly as possible (400-odd pictures to go through, process and upload to the interwebby!).

After bidding farewell to Sue and Alan at Charing Cross, I hopped a cab and was approaching Centre Point, down a small street, when it was suddenly gridlocked by toy town anarchists.

My cabby was bemused – not least because at least two of them were pushing big bins down the road.

‘What are they doing with those?’ he asked. I responded that they were probably heading to Oxford Street to bring down the nasty capitalist state by smashing a few shop windows with said bins or using them as barricades.

Then one – a woman who really cannot have been much younger than me, but at least she wasn't covering her face – decided that, as she had a camera, she would make a big thing of photographing the number plate of the cab I was in.

Wow! Photographing the number plate of a stationary black cab! I bet that's going to advance the cause, big time.

As it happened, I hadn't packed my own camera away at that stage – it was still around my neck – so as she then walked past my car door window, I picked it up and snapped her.

Cue hysteria – fortunately the cabbie himself was in hysterics by this point – and me giving her the finger in the most insouciant way I could.

They're pathetic. In some ways, they make me even more angry than I am with this government. After all – with them around, the government doesn’t need agents provocateurs, it’s got perfect propaganda material made for it, which detracts beautifully from at least a quarter of a million people marching peacefully!

It makes the ‘infantile disorder’ of Trotskyism look politically mature by comparison.

But it was an amazing day. I feel remarkably privileged to have been a part of it in the way I was.

However, let’s diversify a little.

It never ceases to amaze me how some people currently assert that complaints about the bankers are a result of jealousy.

Let’s be clear: I consider myself very lucky at this point in my life. I work for a very good employer, with (by and large) wonderful people and certainly FOR wonderful people (see above).

Would I like more money? Well don’t be stupid – of course I would! But not mega millions. Just enough to make me feel safe and give me the chance to explore some things. I don’t need to take over countries or anything like that.

But in the last year or so, I have increasingly heard the response from some people that those who object to what this government is doing are ‘jealous’.

And herein lies the true tragedy.

When did it become ‘jealousy’ to care about anyone other than yourself and your immediate family?

When did it become ‘jealousy’ to care about your community – the ‘big society’, surely?

When did it become ‘jealousy’ to work in a role that was not just about how much money you could make, but about how much good you could do?

When did it become ‘jealousy’ to have X amount of income – and still care?

I hate labels. I spent the years from just before I was 40 adopting labels (and manifestos) instead of actually attempting to think through things for myself.

So you might (or might not!) forgive me if I now say that I don’t happily give myself any label, even when I essentially agree with whatever we’re talking about.

But in many conversations, I still get accused of being a ‘champagne socialist’.

What a daft soubriquet. Where is the ‘socialist’ teaching that socialists shouldn’t have the best in life? Simple. It doesn’t exist.

Indeed, a socialist would almost certainly stress that ‘nothing is too good for the workers’. Including champagne, no doubt.

Maybe – just maybe – once we learn ALL these things, we can move forward.

Last night, after I’d finished work, The Other Half (who’d been slogging it out in the office all day) and I went down to Waitrose and picked up dab fillets for £1.98 for two. They’re small but tasty. I did them with new potatoes from Majorca and a bit of salad and an orange butter that I concocted quickly.

My world is not about jealousy: my world view is based on a real, serious knowledge of how utterly shitty it is trying to live on nothing – and a real belief that everyone should have the chance to have a real life.

But finally, thank you to everyone who took part in the real demo. And to the stewards and police and everyone else. Screw the toy town anarchists – we rock. They're a bunch of infantile twerps!

Another utterly stupid waste of life

You probably haven't heard of Agnes Sina-Inakoju. To be fair, very few, outside her immediate family and friends and acquaintances had. But last Wednesday night, the 16-year-old was standing in a chicken and pizza takeaway in Hoxton, Hackney, with a friend, when two young men cycled past and one shot her in the neck.

According to various reports, a passing doctor gave first aid. When the ambulance arrived, the medical team had to try to operate on the floor of the takeaway. They gave her 30 pints of blood – which simply flowed out of her body again, spreading across the floor where she lay.

On Friday morning, Agnes died in hospital.

The takeaway in question is near where I live; probably no more than a mile away – possibly less; nearer than that to where I used to live. With the road no longer cordoned off, the local bus went past it yesterday. A mountain of flowers was growing against the metal shutters. The school she attended is a five-minute walk from my home.

According to further reports, local people have said that a gang turf war has been getting increasingly tense in recent weeks. In mid-March, we got home one evening to find our own road cordoned off after there had been a multiple stabbing – an incident that had started between a group of young men in a flat and spilled out into the street. You won't find many people around who wouldn't have thought that that was probably gang-related, so it seems quite possible that the situation has been worsening.

Police say that they have no indication at all that Agnes herself was in any way connected to gangs – or that she was the intended target. If possible, that simply heightens the awfulness of this tragedy.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Such a awful waste. Not just of Agnes's life. But also of those who, for whatever reason, murdered her. In the insane seconds that it took one of them to pull the trigger and shoot a young woman whose back was turned to him, he wrote off his own life (or much of it).

Because it's so 'my patch', if you will, I've been thinking about it since hearing the news for the first time on Thursday morning. The Other Half and I had passed the end of the road where it happened, around two hours after she was shot. There were police and emergency vehicles everywhere and the road was taped off. We said to each other then that it looked bad. Thinking about it now, it's quite possible she was still lying there as they fought to save her.

We've got a general election coming up in the UK on 6 May. So all the politicians are at their posturing best at present. Their jobs are on the line, after all.

And of course, crime comes up time and time again. This case even got a mention from an audience member on a programme about the election last night.

And people, inevitably and understandably, seek solutions. But what are the solutions? There's no evidence that even if anyone is convicted and sent down for this, it would dissuade others. Looking at the experience of states in the US that have re-introduced capital punishment, they seem to have subsequently seen increases in murder.

The culture in the UK is that politicians talk tough (they need to keep the tabloids happy) and promise ever 'stronger' remedies – 'boot camps' for young offenders were promised by the previous Conservative government. If they ever actually got underway, they seem to have been dropped pretty quickly and very quietly – which doesn't actually suggest a great deal for their success rate.

It seems that, in this sort of case, the real root of the issue is why people get involved with gangs. It equally seems logical that we – not just the politicians or the police, but society as a whole – need to think about that question and then work out how to deal with it: ultimately, how to create a situation where young (primarily but not exclusively) men do not feel any need to join gangs.

Personally, I also believe that that we need to discuss what 'justice' means: to realise that an effective justice system isn't just about revenge, but has to involve restitution, the protection of the public and rehabilitation.

All we seem to do at present – and all the politicians seem to offer – is to imprison more and more people; to levels that are already way and above most of the rest of Europe. And yet still so many talk as if punishment is all that the judicial system is about – and as if it were the solution.

If that sounds like a particularly bleak picture, I actually believe that the reality is far less so. In my lifetime, we as a society – including but far from limited to the police – have actually started to take seriously a number of issues: bullying, domestic violence and child abuse.

Bullying used to be a situation of telling the victim that they should deal with it – not the perpetrator.

With domestic violence, there was a culture of 'you've made your bed', combined with police ignoring 'a domestic'.

With child abuse, it was swept under the carpet. Children were not believed – there was nowhere for them to go.

And we – society as a whole and the judicial system – take rape more seriously now too (it might not be perfect, but it's not the way it was 30 years ago).

So there are many things that are better – and many things that prove that the people who claim that we care more about criminals than about victims are deluded.

But technology perhaps hinders all that in some ways. Thirty, 40 years ago, would we have heard much about what happened in a village 500 miles away? Never mind half way around the globe?

Indeed, would most of you have heard of Agnes Sina-Inakoju were it not for this, your perhaps rather quirky link to life in an east London borough, via the interwebby?

I love technology – but I suspect you can see where I'm coming from: it's not all positives. Does it help us all to know all these things – or does it subvert our picture of the world into an unhelpful negative?

Look at it from another angle: 24-hour news media means that there's an awful lot of airtime and internet pages to be filled. Mobile phones mean that people can submit stories and pictures from remote areas. This is The Global Village. And good news rarely makes for sensational copy.

Does all this help us – or hinder us?

I don't know. And do I know the solutions? Not remotely.

Personally, for what it's worth, I hope that the police find Agnes Sina-Inakoju's killers. And I hope that they have a fair trial and, if found guilty, are sentenced according to our laws.

But more than that, I'd like to think – but I'm perhaps being overly optimistic here – that we might actually learn something from this dreadful, dreadful waste; and find something out of it to help stop such an awful thing happening again.

And again.

And again.



* A few hours before writing, police announced that two young men have been arrested in connection with the crime.

Those ever-so-dangerous photographers

It was a glorious day again in London: clear blue skies and bright sunshine. As such, I decided that the time was ripe to take my new lens for a workout.

And given that it's such a specific lens – an aspherical ultra-wide angle – I thought that the best way to put it through its paces would be to go back to one of my favourite photographic haunts and see how it coped with some of my favourite architectural subjects. In other words, the City of London, with particular visits to the 'Gherkin' and Lloyd's.

I haven't done much photography in London for a while. There are a number of reasons, but the behaviour of the police toward photographers has been in the back of my mind. An increasing number of photographers – amateur and professional – have been stopped in recent months by over-zealous police who don't actually understand the law that they frequently claim to be using – Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 – and who don't seem capable of using anything approaching common sense.

Last month, a photographer, standing on a public pavement, was harrassed by police for taking photographs of a Christopher Wren church. Another photographer was approached because he was snapping away at St Paul's Cathedral.

And it gets 'better'. Another case recently came to light, which saw an artist, painting near City of London airport, twice stopped because "no one paints factories", as he was told by one clearly very well educated copper. The artist, Liam O'Farrell, mentioned LS Lowry. But this didn't appear to go down too well.

Truly terrifying stuff.

Police are, it seems, convinced that people taking photographs of landmarks that have been pictured millions of times already are doing so for the purposes of terrorism – or that terrorists will get some sort of information from these new pictures that they can't already find on Flickr and God alone knows how many other picture hosting sites and from who knows how many other sources.

Photographing the 'Gherkin' can get you stopped too – well, obviously there are no pictures available already of that iconic building for al-Qaida to check out what it looks like, so they need someone to take some. And then they send in TV crews from a major national broadcaster, so they have to be stopped too.

I have no particular desire to find myself confronted by braindead idiots in uniform who seem incapable of understanding that a camera is not a bomb – or even of understanding and inwardly digesting the instructions of their own senior officers, who seem to be getting just the teeniest bit embarrassed by all this idiocy, so this was the first time I've headed that way in a while.

I had no problem with the police today – you do wonder if they 'think' that they can stop every single individual who carries a camera. In one of the biggest cities in the world. Full of tourists as well as residents. Yet on the radio this afternoon I even caught word of a story about some suggestion that everyone taking pictures in London should have a permit. How the hell would that work with over 30m tourists visiting the city every year? Will mobile phones – most of which now have cameras in them as standard – be included? Did anyone even consider switching their brain on before coming up with such patent nonsense?

Then, of course, there are the little tin-pot dictators who race out from 'their' buildings to tell you that you can't photograph there because the owner doesn't like it. Durr ... when you build a bloody big, horizon-altering structure, expect it to get photographed. When you build a monstrosity of a shopping centre (the external sort that someone can wander around, outside) expect it to be pictured. Or perhaps such things are simply excuses for inadequates in uniform to get a power kick?

I was photographing at Broadgate Tower this afternoon – the exterior concourse flows straight onto the pavement; other people were wandering around too – when a jobsworth got up from his desk inside the main tower and headed for the door just as I set up a shot. I turned and sauntered away, having already got a couple of decent pictures and in no mood for some sort of a scene.

Anyway – nothing else untoward occurred. But it's ludicrous that people actually stop doing something as perfectly innocent as photography because of something like this. And it's ludicrous that, when I go out with a camera, I feel the need to be aware of my rights and of what the police are and are not allowed to ask or order me to do, because some of them cannot be trusted to know.

Was the piece of legislation in question deliberately intended to attack civil liberties? Or was it just the sloppy actions of a government that panics in the face of terrorism and then does some of the terrorists' work for them? Looking at the current government, I'm not sure.

But it is absurd – and deeply worrying in terms of its ramifications – when taking a photograph evolves into feeling like some sort of political act of defiance.

* I'm a photographer, not a terrorist is a campaign that has been set up to defend photographers and campaign against the current attitude and behaviour of some within the police force.