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.

The folly of economists and the farce of history.

Two short letters in today's FT (16/03/09) nicely sum up both how the world got into the fine economic mess that its finds itself in and how, in a tragi-comic fashion, it is almost certain to find itself in again in the dim and distant future.

The first points out how 'investors were lazy and did not check the fundamentals of what they were investing in. Auditors failed to report or pick up unreliable data. Everyone seem[ed] to have put blind trust in the rating agencies' and that faith alone wasn't enough to make the market system function effectively. Free market economics, driven by ever-more complex financial instruments marketed at great profit by the banking industry, had become an article of faith for all, from Ivy league graduates through the worker-bees churned out by the lesser universities through to the aspiring would-be entrepreneurs who had been watching too much of TV's 'The Apprentice' and not enough of 'Only Fools and Horses'. As with Communism, it inevitably became a god that failed.

Karl Marx, pilloried during the neo-liberal ascendancy by people who knew little about him or his thought, famously said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. With the current financial crisis the great and the good are scratching their heads, wondering what could possibly have gone wrong, but we have been here before. Over half a century ago Karl Polanyi wrote 'The Great Transformation', a wonderful book chronicling the rise and fall of classical liberalism and its replacement with a more stable and sensible social-democratic compromise; this text wasn't widely read in the City of London.

The second letter looks at how this lethal cocktail of forgetfulness and complacency came about, identifying the rise to ascendancy of economics and the marginalisation of history as key enabling factors. Economics, or econometrics informed by a neo-liberal arrogance, was the 'truth language' of the free-market faith system in much the same way as Latin was the 'truth language' of the equally impenetrable pre-reformation Catholic Church; those who could not speak in its code had not right to speak at all.

Just as the recession and war-scarred post-war generation of politicians were eventually written off as obsolete in their thinking by the likes of Thatcher, Reagan and Blair, the current crop of 'decision-influencers who have been through the current fiasco will remember the lessons for a while, but eventually their memory will fade and it will happen all over again.'

Complacent Assumptions

Photo by John Harris

A colleague at work, an utterly disillusioned member of the Labour party no-less, said that the reason he opposes the extension of the data-base state is because there is no reason to believe that the state is, or will remain, fundamentally benign.

In other words, those who basically believe that 'those who have done nothing wrong have nothing to fear', and therefore are quite happy for the state to keep the entire population's DNA, movements and most intimate personal information on file, at best naive and at worst complacent in their attitude to the state.

In states with a more critical sense of self-awareness, usually as a result of a conscious effort on the part of society to 'never forget' the experience of a previous tyranny, such as with constitutionalism of United States or post-communist Germany, the polity has a more instinctive aversion to going back down the road of a surveillance state.

The police states of the past didn't have the technology that Britain is now employing to track, weigh and measure the movements, actions and thoughts of its own citizenry. If they had, then its possible that those regime would never have been successfully undermined from within and therefore would still be with us.

Supporters of the Government would claim that the British state is benign, and that it only claims these extensive powers in order to protect us from terrorism, or to protect the children etc. It should be remembered that authoritarian, including fascist and communist, regimes of the past have similarly claimed that their exercise of power was for the greater good of the people.

The British state isn't East Germany yet, though its technological and legal capability to monitor the everyday lives of its citizens has already long-since over-taken the capabilities of that pre-internet state. The British state, for those who do not have 'radical' political beliefs (such as being actively anti-war) or do not have offending aspects to their sexualities (an interest in sadomasochism for example), and are otherwise uninterested in voicing opposition to the state through word or deed, are quite safe.

However, the same could be said of the average, a-political, citizenry of even the most oppressive authoritarian regimes - in Saddam Hussein's Iraq or Stalin's Russia, if you kept your head down, then you would probably be left alone. In today's Britain it is a crime to protest within a mile of parliament without a license from the state, while the police maintain a database on political dissidents who dare to attend protests against the actions of the state.

Even before the current, technology and hysteria driven, onslaught against civil liberties, the British Government of the 1980s suspended any recognisable concept of justice or the rule of law and employed the police to beat up and detain striking miners, with the British courts unthinkingly turning striking miners into political prisoners on the basis of trumped-up charges.

It's hackneyed, but its true to say, that tyranny comes about bit-by-bit. One day they may come for you, or yours.

Rage

The overpowering surge of feeling that I experienced just a few minutes ago was rage. It wasn't the first time that I have experienced it.

I was at work, in my comfortable and well paid 9-5 office job, when it came over me like a wave breaking on a beach. The trigger was reading an email that related to a piece of work I had done yesterday, but the underlying cause was more seismic in nature: a grating rumble that welled and rippled from the deep until it broke out of my visage and crashed into the environment around me.

The result wasn't spectacular in any objective sense. I screwed up the email and threw it across the desk. I then stewed for a few moments, feeling the hate and anger swell in my stomach, then my chest and then my face. My senses sharpened and my muscles tensed and I little part of my snapped; I had to get out.

I grabbed my computer card, my pass and my bag and walked. I walked out of the building, up the road and into a small local coffee shop, which is where I am now. I will have to go back soon, before I am missed.

Rage in the movies:

A good example of rage, the sort of rage I can identify with, is exemplified in a scene from the 1999 film 'Fight Club', directed by David Fincher (buy it here).

The film is about an underground club where men from all walks of modern life come together to fight each other, not out of hate but out of a need to be men. As with boxing or rugby, the violence is a release more than anything else and members are friends when not fighting.

Edward Norton's character, a founding member of the Fight Club, fights an young blond man, brutally beating him around the face until he is dragged away by onlookers. Norton's alter ego, played by Brad Pitt, casually asks 'what got into you, psycho?' As Norton storms out of the scene, the rage only just beginning to dissipate, he replies 'I wanted to destroy something beautiful'.

That isn't to say that rage is always about wishing to destroy something beautiful, more often than not it is about wishing to destroy something ugly, but it does reflect the irrational will to destruction that is rage. As the film develops we come to see that, at heart, the rage of Edward Norton's character is ultimately a rage within, and directed against, himself.

Innocent Presumed Guilty?

I wrote and sent the below submission to my local MP, Martin Linton, regarding the scandal of innocent people who have had their lives wrecked by changes to the Criminal Record Bureau checking system.

Basically, since around 2005, people who have been acquitted or who are otherwise not guilty of any crime can nonetheless have their lives and careers blighted by false and slanderous allegations that can be repeated by police on Enhanced Disclosure CRB checks.

This is a consequence of change to the law that was brought in as a knee jerk reaction to a high profile murder case. It was badly thought out and has been even more badly executed by the police. The Government is not currently being effectively pressed to change the law as too few people are aware of it or are willing to speak out (other than its victims, of course!):

‘Enhanced Disclosure’ CRB checks and affects on innocent people

Issue:

Enhanced Disclosure Criminal Record Bureau checks were introduced following the Soham murders to address the perceived failure of Government agencies to coordinate intelligence.

Enhanced Disclosure means that unproven ‘intelligence’ against an individual can be disclosed by police to a prospective employer, regardless of whether there is any evidence to substantiate the claim in law.

This has resulted in single, unproven,allegations being disclosed to potential employers and people who are innocent of any crime are being deprived of their livelihoods and their dignity.

Government dismisses criticism by saying that ‘child protection is paramount’. While no-one could argue with child protection being paramount, this need not be at the expense of destroying innocent people.

Child protection should be complementary to, not be mutually exclusive with, a free society governed by the rule of law.

The Enhanced CRB system is unjust in its current form and requires urgent Parliamentary scrutiny and reform.

1. Background:
   

1. Ian Huntley had previously been investigated in relation to one allegation of indecent assault, four allegations of underage sex, three allegations of rape and one charge of burglary. Only the latter reached Court and subsequently appeared on the Police National Computer at the specific order of the trial Judge.


2. In the wake of the Huntley trial the Government decided to amend the Criminal Records Bureau checks system so as to allow ‘non-conviction data’, i.e. information relating to not-guilty verdicts and unfounded allegations, to be shared with potential employers.
3. The change was intended to allow Chief Constables to share information where a ‘pattern’ of intelligence had emerged that, while each allegation might fall short
   of the requirements of criminal proof, the overall pattern could be reasonably taken into consideration before allowing a person to work with children or vulnerable adults.
4. However, the law was broadly drafted and left a great deal of discretion to civil servants drafting guidance and to the police force. This has resulted in sloppy guidance
   and arbitrary implementation with the disclosure of single, unproven,
   serious allegations against individuals.
5. The current system effectively allows the police and employers to act as judge, jury and executioner on criminal charges relating to child protection. The Courts, and the rule of law, have been done away with.
6. This produces an abhorrent situation where people who have been acquitted in a Court of Law, or had allegations against them dropped because of the absence of evidence, are being de facto summarily convicted on the basis of a single serious allegation.
7. The most obvious example of this is where a false allegation is made against a teacher and that teacher’s career is ruined because any future employer will be
   informed of the allegation on the CRB check; there isn’t even a formal appeals procedure against the disclosure of hear-say (see Annex 2).
8. However, there are other examples;
   hundreds of people who were wrongly accused of child pornography
   offences in the ‘Operation Ore’, while being innocent of any
   crime, are effectively barred from working with children or vulnerable
   adults because these false allegations will be disclosed to a prospective
   employer on an Enhanced Disclosure check (see Annex 4).
9. Due to the UK system of Parliamentary Sovereignty, the Courts are not in a position to amend or otherwise ‘fix’ the underlying problems in the CRB system as it stands (see Annex 3).
10. When challenged, the Government would seem to argue that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ should take second place to ‘child protection’. This emotive argument does not stand-up to scrutiny since the two concepts are not incompatible; prosecute and convict the guilty but do not accept gossip as evidence and respect the acquittal of the innocent.
    

2. Action requested of Martin Linton MP:

1. As a private citizen I have no voice at all; if I were to write direct to a Minister I would be summarily dismissed with a standard letter from junior officials who wouldn’t even bother to take the time to read what I had said.


2. Questioning any policy that hides behind ‘will somebody think of the children!’ is not popular, but it is sometimes the right thing to do.


3. I am therefore asking you to look into this matter personally and to raise my concerns with the relevant Ministers. I am happy for you to pass this letter on to Ministerial
   colleagues.
   

3. Key points to make:
   

1. We are dealing with fundamental principles of a Just society governed by rule of law. We must not allow the UK to travel any further down the road of a Police State.
2. Child protection and the rule of law are not mutually exclusive. In the specific instance of the Huntley case, the failing was that of the police and Crown Prosecution Service,
   who failed to bring Huntley to justice earlier despite ample opportunity.
3. The original intent of the Enhanced Disclosure system was to allow patterns of intelligence to be taken into account. In practice the change has resulted in single
   unproven allegations being used to damage innocent people.
4. ‘Innocent until proven guilty’ should be a non-negotiable fundamental of our society.
   It should not be trimmed for the sake of expedience.
5. The burden of proof should lie with the accuser, not the accused. It is not for the accused to prove their innocence to a potential employer but for the accuser to prove the guilt of the accused in a Court of Law.
6. Hear-say and unfounded allegation are no substitutes for proven evidence.
7. The police service is an enforcement and investigation agency, not part of the judiciary. It is not for the police to decide guilt or innocence; this is for the courts.
8. Innocent people are having their careers and lives wrecked by unfounded allegations. This could happen to anyone and it is not acceptable in a free society governed by laws.
9. The Government should remember that children can be falsely accused of crimes, and that children grow into adult citizens with families of their own who, under the current
   arrangements, can have their lives at that of their families wrecked by unproven allegations.
10. This intolerable situation is being tolerated because criticism is being shouted down by a shrill cry of ‘will somebody think of the children!’ Speaking out against
    such injustice has almost become a taboo in itself.

Undies by Post?

No, not a post about the burgeoning and semi-illicit trade in used underwear via ebay but about an ingenious response on the part of liberal Indians to the oppressive actions of a group of religious puritans (click here for original BBC story)!

There are many clichés to be spouted about India, but one that is definitely worth repeating is that it is a place of extreme diversity and contrast.

As a Westerner, it’s easy to think of India as having at the least the semblance of a homogenous identity; this would suit Hindu nationalists, who are trying to reconstruct India’s past, present and future as a socially conservative, Hindi speaking Hindu state. Unfortunately for Hindu nationalists, this simply isn’t the case.

In terms of its human geography India is at least as diverse as Europe. While the Indian states might not have quite the same sort of Westphalian heritage as their European counterparts (i.e. established histories as sovereign nation states), they are not lacking in their own languages or strong historical identities. In fact the present Republic of India, established in 1947 following the collapse of the British Empire, is the first time that all the states of the Eurasian subcontinent have been joined in a single sovereign state.

The diversity between India’s states is fairly easy to get to grips with. A cursory look at India’s post-war history reveals the fissures of language, religion and identity that have frayed and occasionally ripped the fabric of the political map of India; the partition of India and Pakistan and the two states’ proxy wars over Bangladesh and disputed Kashmir.

However, diversity and conflict run much deeper than relatively simple geographical fissures. India has never undergone the same sort of sustained and comprehensive transition to modernity endured by the West, though it has often been subject to this experience via the proxy of Western imperialism.

The European experience of the transition to modernity was as marked by the 100 years war as much as the renaissance, or by the gas chambers of Auschwitz or the ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe by the Red Army as the foundation of the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

One product of the successive bloodbaths and bouts of persecution in Europe has been the creation of a system relatively homogenous, mature nation-states. These states have, by necessity, educated and developed their population en masse and have subsequently worked through resulting social conflicts and tensions between illiberal reactionaries and progressive forces who use past liberal developments to lever greater spaces for personal freedom.

India, on the other hand, has imported European modernity but in doing so the effects have been more greatly differentiated than in the West, where the phenomena took place organically. The educated urban young are part of a global post-modernity where sovereignty stems from the individual and not the collective, whereas the poorly educated, rural communities and the old are often trapped by pre-modern conceptions of what society should be (e.g. Islamic fundamentalist or conservative Hindu nationalist). The space between these post-modern and almost pre-modern groups is comparable to the more easily grasped space between Europe and India overall.

This particular story, about young women being attacked on camera for drinking in a pub provides a simultaneously amusing and alarming illustration of this diversity and conflict within an India that has been developing along different tracks and at markedly different speeds.

Alarmingly, the conduct of the Hindu nationalists in question, members of the Sri Ram Sena Hindu nationalist group, cannot be simply written off as ‘extreme’. Even within the literate and relatively empowered Indian online community, opinion on their actions relative to that of the ‘loose morals’ of young women in bars will probably be shockingly mixed to the liberal Western observer; in the wake of the murder of Scarlett Keeling, a 15 year old British girl, in Goa, international discussion on the British Daily Mail website was over-flowing with disgust, indignation and blame levelled at the deceased girl and her mother for having such low morals as to be somehow responsible for the crime itself!

Amusingly, liberal elements in India have responded to the bar attacks in a manner that should be an inspiration for liberals in the West who are besieged by authoritarian bigotry within and without of their governments; using Facebook to marshal a campaign to deliver large quantities of pink underwear to the doors of the Sri Ram Sena headquarters! Perhaps campaigners in the UK should adopt such direct tactics, but then I expect that would fall foul of some ‘Anti Terrorism’ law?

At the outset of writing this article I was thinking that the gap between progressive liberals and reactionary conservatives in India is much greater than that in the West. However, after reading the Daily Mail's article on the Scarlett Keeling murder, and the comments of Daily Mail readers, I'm no longer so sure. The difference in India is more marked, due to the differences in traditional versus modern dress, or because religion features more prominently across the divide, but in terms of narrow minded bigots versus open minded liberals, there isn't really all that much difference.

Petition to Amend s63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act

You can view and sign my petition right now by clicking here!

My earlier explanatory note for this petition mysteriously disappeared from TheThirdRepublic, so I'm going to replace it with this shorter, holding, note.

Basically, the Government has recently brought into force a law that is badly written and could be used by the police to criminalise consenting adults for looking at other consenting adults doing things that are perfectly legal! For example, the legislation specifically criminalises the viewing of parts of mainstream Hollywood films outside of an approved context (careful with that remote!).

In short the Government has produced a 'thought crime', pure and simple. It came about because David Blunkett, the then Home Secretary, decided to adopt a piece of knee jerk populist legislation in response to a high profile murder. The legislation was pushed under the public radar by dishonest MPs lying to the media about what the law actually is; Martin Salter, the law's backbench champion, persists in claiming that the law is about 'snuff' movies (films of real people being killed) whereas the law is expressly about a much wider range of images where no one was actually injured and full consent is present (i.e. acting!).

Ironically, my proposed amendment would change the law so that it is actually consistent with the rhetoric of Martin Salter MP as it would change the law to ensure that this legislation can only be used to target people who actually seek out and collect images of real abuse - i.e. images of (a) real serious violence and / or (b) images where there really is no consent.

Similar amendments had been proposed by Baroness Miller in the House of Lords, but rejected out of hand by the Government, which was concerned that the need to prove real culpability could make it hard for them to convict people!

Make up your own mind on the evidence! You can view and sign my petition here.

You can find more information about why I oppose this law on the Backlash site here. You can also get involved in protecting the sexual freedoms of consenting adults through the Consenting Adult Action Network.

Shortage of Social Workers? What a surprise!

Writing about this article on BBC online.

I find it amazing that the media and Government can stand their scratching their proverbial heads over a crisis that they have been so instrumental in fueling.

As with occasional crocodile tears over the lack of men in nursery and primary education, the lack of applicants willing to undergo the lengthy education and training that its takes to become a social worker is hardly surprising.

Media and Government both shore up their flagging ratings by taking great pleasure in witch hunts and public burnings. While both are impotent to address underlying social and economic shifts in society, whether that's the decline of commercial print and broadcast media or the undermining of Western economies by emerging economic super-powers, they can both stomp their little feet and raise the blood of the mob over a terrible crime - the papers crying out for justice and the Government more than happy to appear to be able to satisfy the mob's blood lust and thus shore up its creaking credibility!

This situation is unlikely to change. For a mass-circulation model newspaper or TV news operation to survive in a world of declining print media circulation and flagging advertising revenues, they can't afford to take anything but the most populist line if they wish to survive. It is no accident that the Daily Mail is the most popular newspaper amongst those who can vaguely read, or that the Sun is the most popular amongst those who cannot. If a newspaper tries to go against this flow of easy, hatefully ignorant, populism then it is going to, at best limp along with a niche readership (The FT or the more champagne-left populist Guardian) go to the wall.

TV news is perhaps even harder up, competing with such instant and banal entertainment as the X-Factor, Big Brother and I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. stories must be dramatic, simple to understand and above all have good images. No one has time to really discuss or get to grips with the arguments before leaping to an impassioned opinion; even Newsnight has been dumbed down to reach a 'wider', more gleefully ignorant, audience. Radio 4 is perhaps the last bastion of half decent news and current affairs coverage, and that is almost as patchy as it ever was.

Politicians are the same. The man on the street will happily revel in his contempt for the political class, complaining about how they spin and lie, but that same man in the street would choke on his corn flakes if it ever actually came down to voting for a politician that told the truth, who failed to point out easy fixes and had the audacity to expect said-man-in-the-street to take some real responsibility even for the state of the country rather than blame someone else (preferably someone weaker - foreigners, gays, goths, weirdos - anything sufficiently different to be comfortably disliked).

So, ultimately, we can't blame the sad fools trying to justify their existence in Westminster village or the slightly more glitzy world of the media. Ultimately we only have ourselves to blame for failing to take responsibility and insisting on being spoken to by both media and Government as if we were children; it's hardly surprising that Government and media therefore seek to control us by conjuring up images of the bogey man.

Letter to the Guardian

Writing about this article in the Guardian.

Sir,

I was disappointed to read Rachel William's one sided reporting of the Government's commencement of the so-called violent pornography ban in Monday's Guardian (26/01/09).

This report failed to acknowledge the opposing arguments from those who feel that the law, as drafted, goes far beyond targeting sexual abuse and could harm consenting adults whose sexualities do not conform with that of Labour Ministers or some womens groups. The article also failed to mention that this law deliberately criminalises images of consensual acts, including the possession of scenes from mainstream film.

The government conspincuously failed to engage with those who feel that they are being unfairly demonised by the legislation; men and women whose sexual orientation leans toward bondage, discipline or sado-masochism (BDSM).

The official consultation on the violent porn ban illicited 143 responses in favour of a new law and 241 against, including a sceptical submission from the Police Superintendants Association. While the Government made much of submissions from some 'Women's Groups', it completely ignored Feminists Against Censorship while dimissing the individual rights of women who are interested in BDSM.

Having been weakened by a rounded rebuke in the consultation, the Goverment commissioned a 'Rapid Evidence Assessment' from carefully selected anti-pornography campaigners; basically a biased literature review rubber stamped by the authors' own students! Over forty respected academics in the field wrote to the Government debunking this so-called 'evidence', but this was completely ignored.

Ms. Williams also failed to acknowlege the criticisms of Baroness Miller, the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson in the House of Lords, or her attempted amendment to the Bill to ensure that this legislation targeted abusers rather than the merely kinky; Lord Hunt, speaking for the Government, explicitly rejected this amendment on the grounds that it would make conviction difficult!.

Finally, the Consenting Adult Action Network organised a protest outside of Parliament on the eve of the ban to highlight the need for key amendments to the law as it stands, ensuring that the law targets real abuse rather than consenting adult fantasy. This protest was attended by men and women who might not easily fit into the Government's categorisation of 'monsters', though it would seem that the Goverment is determined to try.

Further information can be found on the human rights website backlash-uk.org.

Daily Mail's typically manipulative, one sided, coverage of the Dangerous Pictures Act

Writing about this article in the Daily Mail

"
Protesters say it's their right to watch sadistic porn. Tell that to the mother of the girl murdered by a man addicted to it...", or so says Lorraine Fisher in the Daily [Hate] Mail!

This is a cleverly written, and highly manipulative, article. It is constructed in such a way that the casual reader cannot help but find herself on the side of this new law, since how could anyone choose otherwise when faced with a 'motley group' of protesters who want to watch images of people being strangled versus a 'quiet, dignified' old lady and her murdered daughter?

Sadly, the reality of the situation is a lot more complicated than the cynically manipulative author would have us believe.

Firstly, the Dangerous Pictures Act is not simply about images of strangulation. It is much, much broader than that and could easily capture images of bondage, discipline and sadomasochism that in no way revolve around a 'snuff' theme, staged or otherwise.

Secondly, those who protest against this law have are not riled simply because Liz Longhurst is quiet and determined. They are riled because the understandable grief of an old lady has been hijacked and abused by a group of puritans in government and on the right-wing pseudo-feminists who are using this as an opportunity to persecute men and women whose sexuality does not conform with their own.

This law may have been cobbled together on the back of the Longhurst case, and hard cases often make bad law, but a criminal statue can never be about a single incident and we need to look at this law objectively. If you are going to dwell on photographs of Jane Longhurst, I hope you also publish family photographs of the otherwise upstanding citizens that this law will destroy over the coming years.

There are teachers, police officers, doctors and nurses, indeed the full range of professions across the public and private sector, who are afraid of the consequence of the law for themselves and their families. Not because they are secret abusers who like to rape or otherwise abuse women, but because their sexuality includes consensual role-plays with like-minded adults. Strangulation is at the extreme end of this, but this law goes an awful lot further, including images of staged 'damsel in distress' scenes.

The author of this article, indeed many people, may find the whole idea of adult fantasies distasteful, especially if they involve restraint, punishment or pain, but these sort of fantasies are common place amongst men and women and are not dangerous providing they remain just that: fantasies.

Criminalising fantasy actually weakens the crucial distinction between fantasy and reality, just as it criminalises and oppresses thousands of men and women who understand this distinction and have come to terms with it rather than seeking to repress themselves.

Coutts had stated that believed he might strangle a women long before the internet even existed. Criminalising thousands on the basis that this man committed a serious criminal offense is the equivalent of criminalising the possession of violent action films (Pirates of the Caribbean perhaps?) because they are invariably owned by people who go on to attack people with swords in the high street.

Is it really too much to ask of the Mail to offer some genuinely balanced coverage of this important issue, an issue where many men and women have offered serious and considered opposition to the law?