The NSPCC and Enhanced Disclosures

Earlier this year I wrote this post including a submission I had sent to my local MP, Martin Linton, regarding the UK system of 'Enhanced Disclosure Criminal Records Bureau checks' (aka Enhanced CRB checks).

The current system of Enhanced CRB checks, introduced as a direct response to the failings of the police and Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute double murderer Ian Huntley, means that false and disproven allegations can be made by the police against those whom they have investigated, questioned or arrested. This means that, instead of the police gathering evidence and the courts deciding on its veracity and the guilt or innocence of the suspect, the police are allowed to decide by themselves who is guilty and who is not - an acquital becomes merely a technical failing of the case rather than a declaration of innocence.

This means that teachers, nurses, social-workers and anyone else who requires and 'Enhanced CRB Check' to work are condemned as guilty at the point of allegation - or at least at the point at which the police believe that are guilty.

The Government and others claim that this is acceptable in the name of 'child protection' - I for one do not believe that child protection and the rule of law to be mutually exclusive. Quiet the opposite; justice and child protection can and should compliment each other.

While false allegations are blighting the lives of men, women and children who are affected by the current CRB regime, no one, not even the legal pressure group 'Justice', is willing to touch the issue due to its unpalitable and controversional nature. A climate of fear has been stoked up in the UK to the extend that no one, not even professionals, are comfortable with talking about banal miscarriages of justice in relation to 'child protection'.

I recently sent a second copy of the above submission to Martin Linton MP but do not expect any sort of substative response; he and the Government realise that their policy is indefensible on the details and instead hide behind insubtantive soundbites to the popular press.

I have also sent the below email to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), a pressure group that is closely linked with both the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice and who has been one of the principle cheerleaders of condemning innocent people 'on the off chace':

Dear Sir or Madam,

I have recently become aware of a number of cases where people have been arrested but subsequently cleared of criminal charges but where these individuals have later been sacked or de facto barred from work due to the repeating of these false allegations as part of the 'enhanced' CRB check process.

An example would be were a teacher is falsely accused of assaulting a pupil, and the falsity of this is is found in court or even in a complete lack of evidence, but that allegation is then reiterated by the police on subsequent enhanced checks as if the teacher may have been 'guilty' in fact if not in law. Another example would be were an adult is falsely accused of possession of child pornography (the Operation Ore credit card fraud scandal for example), but again the fact of the arrest is revealed to employers as if the individual was probably guilty of a crime - it would appear that the police have been promoted to the role of 'judge and jury' in these matters.

Obviously, we are all concerned with protecting children but it is obviously unacceptable that innocent people should undergo para-judicial trial by employers on the basis of unproven allegations logged (or indeed made by) the police force. I am sure we can also agree that the rule of law is absolute and that the way with dealing with child abusers is through prosecution and conviction, not a formalised system of 'no smoke without fire'!

If the new system is to depart from a presumption of innocence, then should it not be for the courts to decide whether such allegations should be included in a check using the civil law 'balance of probabilities test'?

The current system is clearly inadequate, and probably illegal, since it punishes innocent people as if they were guilty. As a leading insider group in this area, can you outline to me what work you are undertaking to repair the current system to ensure that men, women and families who are innocent of any crime are treated as such by employers?

As the system stands, I would never enter the teaching or caring professions and would strongly advise others to avoid them since the current system is founded on a presumption of guilt - indeed one is condemned at the point of allegation and the police, and the lay employer, have been awared the role of judge and jury (something I was trained to believe was the exclusive preserve of the courts).

I look forward to your response.

Bully Boys in Blue? The Metropolitan Police Territorial Support Group

Writing about this story on BBC News.

In 1979 a 31 year old teacher named Blair Peach was beaten and killed by officers of the Metropolitan Police's notorious 'Territorial Support Group', the same unit that went on to kill Ian Tomlinson in 2009.

John Cass, a senior police officer, wrote a report on the killing at the time but this report has been suppressed by the Met and the British Government.

Jack Straw, the current Justice Secretary, was a backbench MP at the time of the killing who attempted to force the Government to publish the report. He now as the opportunity to do so but probably will not because his Department, and that of the Home Office, has become a virtual facade for the shadowy 'Association of Chief Police Officers' - a trade union that has usurped the powers of a Government department:

I wrote the below letter to Justice Secretary Jack Straw - I urge you to do the same.

Dear Mr. Straw,

I am writing to you in your capacity as a Parliamentarian in reference to Inquest's call for the publication of the 'Cass Report' on the death of Blair Peach in 1979. I understand that you called for a public inquiry at the time, but that the request was rejected by the then Tory government.

The Met claims that they cannot publish the report as they cannot 'act in a manner that could cause distress'. Since when did the Met care about causing distress? Causing distress seems to be their standard operating procedure when dealing with people they are prejudiced against such as striking miners, protesters or those who they have accused of crime, regardless if there is any evidence of such a crime (something you have condoned in law with Enhanced CRB checks!).

Publish the report; why should the police benefit from protections that innocent members of the public have been denied? If the police have done nothing wrong then surely they have nothing to fear?

BNP victory - what does this say about British politics?

There are a number of reasons why the British National Party, an overtly neo-nazi organisation, won its first parliamentary seats in the 2009 Euro elections: the collapse of Labour amplified its vote; the populist, reactionary rhetoric of the mainstream parties on immigration and crime have legitimised such bigoted views rather than tackled them and; the deletion of social class from the mainstream political vocabulary has left working-class white communities wide open to exploitation by the likes of the BNP.

Democracy is in crisis because the majority of the people (the polity) have literally become idiots; they decline to take responsibility for the management of the state - this is an epic crisis that threatens Western civilisation.

More immediately, the mainstream political parties should have the courage not to be ashamed of their relative education and wisdom to lead the people rather than to follow them. This includes saying 'no' to populist knee-jerk politics and explaining to them why such things as the rule of law, free trade and liberty have been and should continue to be so important to our country.

Sadly, the current tactic of the main parties is to attempt to poach support from the likes of the BNP by borrowing some of its more moderate rhetoric on immigration and crime and thus hoping to make it surplus to requirements by co-opting rather than converting those ignorant enough to hold such views.

The above are difficult, since they require the rebuilding of a nation that perhaps cannot be rebuilt by politicians alone, but the third point is actually relatively simple and redressable if the political parties had the courage to recognise the importance of class.

Currently, much of the Government's social agenda is perceived as being geared toward redressing inequalities based on race and gender rather than on class. If we look at the concrete realities of disadvantage as experienced on the street, the above categories are primarily (although not entirely) proxies for class disadvantage and deprivation, but proxies that exclude the majority of disadvantaged people in the UK today.

Issues of racial and gender identity are not irrelevant in our society - there are working class specific and wider issues where race and gender are key, but they should not be used as expedient proxies for addressing social disadvantage that is really about class. To do so is to foster a sense of alienation amongst already marginalised members of disadvantaged communities and leave them open to exploitation and co option by the BNP. To claim that these people are simply wrong in their perception and to leave it at that is to bury ones head in the sand while the tide comes in.

Tony Soprano

I can identify with Tony Soprano of the long running Mafia soap 'The Sopranos'. This isn't really all that surprising, since he has been written so that a sizable chunk of the media-consuming public can identify with him, hence the popularity and longevity of the programme.

I relate to Tony partly because The Sopranos is such a post-modern text. Before you yawn, let me explain what I mean by this:

Modernist texts contain clear fault lines, for example between good and evil. Even when a 'good guy' does something 'bad', this is rationalised or excused. John Wayne movies are, to an extent, classic examples of such modern texts - goodies and baddies on the big screen. In terms of TV drama, the smaltz-fest 'Band of Brothers' is an outstanding example of an updated version of modernist text - yeah there is more gore, but the Americans are the good guys and the Germans the baddies.

Postmodernism is about recognising that such simplistic ways of looking at the world are not only inadequate, they are childlike, tiresome and even dangerous. Postmodernism is Western society in its twilight years; mature but cynical and tired.

So, the Sopranos is postmodern because it contains likeable characters who have some fine qualities but are also very bad people, living in a world where there is some meaning, some love, but is also systemically cruel and injust.

If Tony and his crew caren't be written off as 'bad', then can anyone in the programme be characterised as 'good'? Well, there is no shortage of victims in the Sopranos, but you would be hard pressed to see the FBI as being 'good'. Agent Harris is pretty likeable, but this is despite his being an FBI agent rather than because of it; he has a stoic humanism about him in that he works to take Tony Soprano down but at the same time likes him and behaves in a decent way that some of the other cold, faceless, FBI agents don't.

So, why do I relate to Tony? Firstly, the show is about Tony Soprano, so we know him better than any of the other characters; we literally get inside his head. Secondly, I think that many of us can relate to being in a relatively comfortable position in life but being both insecure and disatisfied. More personally, I can intimately relate to Tony's eruptions of otherwise contained rage, and perhaps his ability to recognise and feel ambivilant about that rage on reflection; I can see myself in Tony as he rages about the world to Dr. Melfi.

As someone who recognises himself as at least a partly failed person, and who works to try to mitigate this reality while accepting that it will always be the case, I suppose I like Tony because I see something of myself in extremisis in this volatile, flawed man. Perhaps its also because he has a soft spot for ducks and animals in general!

You can now buy the complete box-set of all 6 seasons of The Sopranos here at Amazon.co.uk

Nokia 5800 v iPhone 3G v Nokia e71

For me, weighing up all the variables, out of the Nokia 5800, Nokia E71 and Apple iPhone the clear loser is the Nokia 5800. The clear winner is less clear.

Dealing with the Nokia 5800 first, it loses hands down on build quality alone. I couldn't believe that the live product I had in my hand is a Nokia flagship - it felt plastic, cheap and just generally pretty crap - the back cover presses on and pulls off through brute force, which is quite easy since the whole thing is so flimsy.

The touchscreen interface of the 5800 is a relatively late, and belated, departure for Nokia but if it's a touchscreen phone you are after then the 5800 just isn't it - the screen's aesthetics or functionality doesn't come close to the iPhone although it does give the impression of being an poor impersonation of it.

Sticking to the point about build quality, both the iPhone and the Nokia e71 feel like serious pieces of kit. The iPhone is well known in this regard so I won't say anymore than, aesthetically, it is worth the hype.

With the Nokia e71, a lesser known business handset currently being pushed hard on the consumer market by Hutchinson's UK '3' network, the handset oozes quality in the same league as the iPhone. Its casing is mostly built from precision tooled metal and at £20 a month all in, it's also a lot cheaper than the iPhone, currently retailing solely with 02 at £99 up front and £35 a month thereafter (a saving of £369 for the e71, or around half the net price of the iPhone).

The e71 does everything that the iPhone does other than be an iPod, which I don't see as much of a problem since itunes is a rip off compared to Napster or Spotify. If you do want to use the phone as a music devive then the SD memory slot on the side means that you can store as much music on the e71 as you like, although its 2.5mm mini headphone jack is a pain in the arse.

However, whereas the iPhone is a consumer gadget that has branched out into business, the e71 is a business phone that one operator is pushing as a consumer item.

While the e71 does all the fun and interesting things that the iPhone does (gmail, maps, various applications etc), it just doesn't do it as well as the iPhone does, primarily because it is a qwerty keyboard device with a relatively small screen.

On the other hand, the qwerty keyboard is essential for typing any length of email and the phone works really well with email and mobile internet browsing.

So, as a consumer who doesn't intend to do much typing but consumes a lot of online media, the iPhone is aesthetically better despite annoyances such as not having a replaceable battery and generally being a pretty shit phone as opposed to a swish pocket computer. But how much are you willing to pay for that aesthetic edge?

I went for the e71 in the end and, while I sometimes regret it, overall I think I did the right thing; the £350 odd quid that I have saved, at zero loss of utility, can be better spent than lining the pockets of Steve Jobbs (Apple's smug CEO). As for the 5800, just don't bother - it's a poor man's iPhone and a pretty shit one at that.

Elegy for Dunkirk

The 2007 film 'Atonement', directed by Joe Wright and based on a novel by Ian McEwan, follows three individuals as their lives are impacted by each others actions and the broader context of society in which they lived around the time of the second world war.

Robbie (James McAlvoy) is the working class son of a gardener on an aristocratic country estate in the late 1930s. Cecilia (Kiera Knightly) is the daughter of the estate's owner and Briony is her younger sister. A powerful sexual frisson exists between Robbie and Cecilia, a connection that is sensed but not fully understood by the 13 year old Briony, who believes that she is in love with Robbie.

Robbie is accused of a crime he didn't commit. He is convicted, partly because of the false evidence police elicit from the jealous and imaginative Briony, but equally because of the class and sexual prejudices of British society; despite his posh accent and Oxford education, he is little more than the aristocrats' pet dog and receives a similar standard of rough justice from his master.

Robbie is released from prison to serve as cannon fodder in the war time British Army. By pure chance, Robbie runs into Cecilia, who is now a nurse, in London. They rekindle their relationship and confirm their love for each other, just in time before Robbie is sent to France as part of the doomed British Expeditionary Force, tasked with repelling Germany's invading armies.

The British army is routed and we join a mortally wounded Robbie and two fellow enlisted soldiers as they struggle to make it to the evacuation point on the coast, Robbie desperate to return to the brief peace he found in the form of Cecilia's love. The ensuing scene of the evacuation on the beaches of Dunkirk, a reality vividly conveyed through the fevered perception of the dying Robbie, is the most powerful of the film.

The Dunkirk beach scene uses a continuous steady-cam (a stablished handheld camera) to follow the three soldiers around a surreal, horrific, scene of death, destruction and desperate hedonism. This scene intersects Robbie's personal tragedy at the hands of pre-war British order with the chaotic collapse of that order on the beaches of Dunkirk; the Battle of Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of Eton, but by the same token the second world war was very nearly lost there too.

This scene is beautifully written, orchestrated and shot and accompanied by one of the most moving pieces of film music I have heard for a while; Elegy for Dunkirk, written by Dario Marianelli and performed by the Prague City Philharmonic Orchestra, blends classical swelling string instruments with a male choir rendition of John Greenleaf Whittier's Dear Lord and Father of Mankind (1872). The film is worth watching for this scene alone.

When leaving the cinema, I heard one latter middleaged party comment that they liked the film but that they didn't approve of the Dunkirk scene; I have a theory why:

The British relationship with the second world war, and to Dunkirk, is often revisited but almost never revised, to the extent that the war experience has become mythic in quality. Basically, modern Britain has come to accept its own wartime propoganda as 'truth' in a way that perhaps even the wise of the time, who could remember the first world war and the depression, never did.

If we peel away the love story and focus on the context of Atonement - the critical picture of the disintegration of a less than glorious Imperial Britain - then the film challenges this myth machine. Sadly, the film was probably a success despite, rather than because, of this context.

Public finances explained

Writing about 'Crisis batters UK public sector revenues' in the Financial Times:

The Government gets its money from tax. So, when companies are making lots of money and when everyone has a job and is spending lots in the shops, the Government gets lots of money is corporate tax, income tax and VAT; it takes this money and spends it on public services from education through welfare to defense to name just a few.

When companies are doing badly, and when people are losing their jobs and not spending money in the shops, the Government collects less money in tax.

Current spending plans (i.e. what the Government has planned to spend its money on), were based on the belief that the economy would continue to be good. It has not.

This means that Government can no longer afford to buy the things it wanted to buy. This doesn't just mean that services may be cut to the individual citizen, it also means that, if the Government tries to make savings by sacking people who work in the public sector, then consumer confidence will further weaken and the economy will become even weaker - a vicious circle.

One way of avoiding this vicious circle is to borrow; the Government can borrow money to maintain public spending in the bad times and pay off this debt in the good times.

The problem we are now facing is that the sheer scale of the recession, and the level of borrowing that the Government has already engaged in to bale out failed banks, means that we can't borrow our way through the recession and that there is no guarantee that the economy will be recover to be anywhere near as strong as it has been for many, many years to come.