The Other side of the road

We get the politics that we deserve and last night Parliament voted not to consider any form of intervention in the civil war in Syria. Was it a good thing? Did it represent the triumph of reason over impulse or was it the long awaited revenge of democracy for the manipulation and dishonesty that took us into Iraq? Judged by its intentions, Parliament's actions may well represent both of these things. Not intervening in a complex civil war is undoubtedly a rational course of action.

Syria is bloody; it is a mess and in the course of this civil war the differences between right or wrong have been extinguished. But the conflict in Syria has not always been like this. For a long time it was sustained by demonstrators whose only weapons were their courage, their convictions and the beauty of the songs they sang. For a very long time the only blood being spilt in Syria was that of the peaceful and the innocent. In the beginning Syria was not a civil war, it was the ruthless pacification of protests that arose out the aspiration for a better world for the Arab people. When Assad began to machine gun his people the conflict in Syria was not complex, it was wrong. But at that point nobody intervened we simply stood on the other side of the road and passed it by and Assad knew that he machine gun his children with impunity.

Since then the conflict has unquestionably become more complex, an interplay of everyday savagery and global politics. The conduct and tactics of the Free Syrian Army more ruthless, their allies more troubling. Yet throughout Assad has known that he was immune from intervention. When shooting people was not winning the conflict, he knew that he could turn to shelling and bombing and that the international community would not act.  In this he was supported by the conduct of the international community. The Russians and Chinese had decided that the emergence of a post revolutionary Syria was not to their liking and that the ideas and values of the Arab Spring had spread far enough. They needn't have worried of course because the challenge of articulating the principles democracy into predominantly Islamic Cultures was not something that the West would allow to come to fruition. The democratic will of the Arab people is not a voice that the West is actually comfortable with. The victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was not what the West wanted or expected, and it will have surprised nobody in Washington when the Egyptian Army ousted its democratically elected government. For all of its hand wringing over the conflict in Syria the West is as reluctant as Russia to see the emergence of an Arab World responsive to the will of its people.

Yet despite this Barack Obama rightly knew that complete inaction in the face of the Syrian carnage was unacceptable, he had to be seen to be doing something. But how to act without acting, he had no intention of intervening directly, which is why he drew his red line in the sand. It was not the misjudgement that most commentators think it was, it was actually a brutal expression of real politik. The meaning of his statement to Assad was clear - as long as all you do is shoot, bomb, burn, rape, torture and massacre we won't intervene. All of these things would slip beneath the media horizon that had settled above the suffering of the people of Syria. As long as the killing took place in a way that had come to be seen as ordinary, mundane and not news worthy - then the killing could go on.

Unfortunately he underestimated the stupidity of the brutal and the lengths to which they will go to sustain themselves. It is likely that the recent offensives by the Assad regime and Hezbollah had not been able to sustain their initial progress and that recourse to weapons of mass destruction symbolises an act of their military desperation. Regardless of the reason, the line was crossed and the British government sought approval from its Parliament to intervene to prevent further use of chemical weapons.

There was remarkably little spin in what David Cameron sought to do - he wanted to support Barack Obama and he wanted the support of Parliament in order to do so. There was something almost naïve in the way in which he hoped that Ed Miliband and the British people would share his belief that an outrage had been committed, an outrage that could no longer be ignored. With the horror with which he had viewed the footage of the attacks evident in his voice, David Cameron sought to lead us across the road of our indifference to the Syrian people's suffering.

But for a mixture of reasons the British Parliament decided that it was not our place to intervene to prevent the use of chemical weapons and as a result David Cameron  is being pilloried from all directions, portrayed as inept and his authority has undoubtedly been undermined. Whilst Cameron's performance in the House of Commons may not have been the performance of a consummate political operator a la Blair and Obama - it was transparent, principled and ultimately it was the performance of a politician who believed he was doing the right thing.

But all of this is largely irrelevant. Whether intended or not, the actions of Ed Miliband and the British Parliament will have strengthened the hand of the Assad regime. Regardless of what small gesture the US undertakes, the struggle in Syria will worsen and we will cloak our general inaction in the language of reason and national interest. We will believe that intervening in someone else's war will always makes things worse and we will argue that the lessons of the Iraq War justify what is in effect our practical indifference to other people's suffering. But in truth that acceptance of suffering has nothing to do with reason but is invariably underpinned by self interest and racism.





    

     

Julian Assange - the road to Stockholm

The debate and discussion around Julian Assange's extradition is becoming increasingly polarised and destructive for progressives. People, who would normally share a perspective on the importance of Wikileaks and the vital role that it has played in exposing the machinations of the state, are now at each others throats. Supporters of Assange are being labelled misogynists and those who believe that Miss A and Miss W have a right to have their allegations heard are now feminist extremists.

As somebody who believes that Julian Assange's work in setting up Wikileaks has made him one of the most important political figures of his generation, my instinctive response to the Swedish and UK government's respective positions was cynical. Rather than focusing on the extensive political implications of what Wikileaks has disclosed, Assange had become the story. Following the accusations the discussion was no longer the conduct of our troops in Iraq, it was about condoms and consent. The Swedish and UK governments might claim to be acting in the name of justice - but we all know that their interest in justice was being encouraged by the long reach of the US government and its agencies. Then there are the inconsistencies in the way in which the enquiries are being conducted, that have been so effectively outlined by Naomi Wolf. All of this points to a level of political manipulation that perhaps should no longer surprise us. But this affair is not just about Julian Assange and the threat that he poses to disingenuous governments, it is also about two women who have made statements alleging sexual misconduct and their right to have those allegations heard..

As a supporter of the work of Wikileaks this puts me and others in a difficult position, should we show our loyalty to the cause by rejecting the allegations out of hand as politically motivated? The problem is that in doing so we would be judging the women as liars and worse. This is what many of Julian's supporters have already done, in their eyes he is innocent and Miss A and Miss W are players in an elaborate and carefully planned honey trap. What people need to accept, is that it is possible that Miss A and Miss W are telling the truth. The reality of the situation is that none of us know the facts of the case and non of us are in a position to make an informed judgement about what happened. The truth will only ever be found in court - if the Swedish Authorities believe that he has a case to answer, which at the moment is not certain.

The argument against Julian returning to Sweden is that doing so would put him at risk of extradition to the US and the type of persecution that Bradley Manning is currently enduring. It is undoubtedly this fear that was instrumental in his decision to seek asylum with the Ecuadorians and given the vehemence with which he is viewed in the the US you can understand his motivation. Unfortunately it is a strategy that has all the hallmarks of one that was developed in panic and in the long term it is likely to prove ineffective in protecting Julian from the long arm of the US Agencies on whose doorstep he will be living. What seeking asylum in Ecuador will certainly not do is protect his reputation and his legacy, which is being massively damaged by the lack of clarity and closure.

In the light of the current impasse the rhetoric on the social networks is becoming increasingly vitriolic. More and more people are confusing loyalty to a cause with loyalty to a man and more and more people are conflating loyalty to their gender with justice. Whilst Julian Assange might believe that claiming political asylum is in his best interests, what would really be in his interest would be clarity and closure. Whether innocent or guilty of what Miss A and Miss W have accused him of, the only way forward for Julian lies in Stockholm, where he can either prove his innocence or ask forgiveness.

UniLad, Lads and a Culture of Rape

As men we know what men are. We know what they talk about, when there are no women around. The language and the borderline, or overtly misogynistic culture that seems endemic in 'all male' environments. So in some ways, the tone and references made in Unilad should not have surprised or shocked me, but they did. They shocked me, because the 'Unilad' community think that talking about women in this way is acceptable to the society in which they live. To be precise, the surprise is that this kind of language is not exceptional and hidden, it has become embedded in the context of their everyday lives - it has become normal and in seeing it as normal they feel able to share it with the wider world. It is this presumption of normality on the part of the men concerned that is perhaps most disturbing.

The Unilad website and Facebook page has angered a great number of people and true to form the usual response to any kind of challenge, is to state that the whole thing was some form of joke and that people or feminists who don't get it should get back in the 'kitchen'. But they are of course missing the point and failing to realise that their views and 'humour' play an important part in sustaining what can only be described as a culture of misogyny and rape. The statistics speak for themselves.

In the 12 months between 2008 and 2009 over 43,000 people went to the police and stated that they had been subject to a serious sexual assault, most of these will have been women. Because of the appallingly low conviction rates for rape (which between 2007-2008 was only 6.7%), the government estimates that up to 95% of serious sexual crime goes unreported. On that basis we can estimate that in 2008-2009 there may have been as many 860000 serious sexual assaults - most of which will have been against women.  So if we accept that the real level of sexual crime could be up to 20 times greater than the reported rate - then a woman is far more likely to be sexually assaulted than involved in personal theft, she is more likely to be sexually assaulted than have her car stolen and she is far more likely to be the victim of serious sexual assault than she is to be burgled. In short, serious sexual assault is something that probably affects a far greater number of women in this country than we realise.

So the rape, sexual assault and denigration of women- is not something that I think that the Lads of UniLad or elswhere should be joking about - because lads - the prevalence of serious sexaul assault in our society means that the victims have every chance of being your sister, your mother and your future wife. But you will never know and they will never feel able to tell you, because deep down they will know what you are - part of the problem.        

Diane Abbott, cultural hegemony and the killing of Stephen Lawrence

The clever thing about so much of what happens in this country is that it happens with subtlety, and the issue of race and cultural identity is an area where some of that subtlety finds its most nuanced expression. We all know that the murderers of Stephen Lawrence are racists. They personify racism in its most crass and brutal form. We know that TV programmes such as Alf Garnett and Bless thy Neighbour were racist and we have learnt that the Metropolitan Police were or are institutionally racist. But are all white people racist as is implied by Diane Abbott's tweet.

The killing of Stephen Lawrence and the events that have followed it, represent many of the essential characteristics of the embedded nature of racism in the UK. The appalling hate expressed in the act and the recordings that the police made during their investigations are its most extreme manifestation. Then there is the overt racism of the police officers involved in the initial enquiry and the institutional racism that defended their practise. But perhaps the most disingenuous aspect, is the way in which Stephen Lawrence has become an icon of our (the white community's) absolution and redemption. By eulogising the work and struggle of Stephen's parents it seems as if we are trying to absolve ourselves of our complicity in sustaining the culture that killed him and that has kept his killers safe for a generation, and for some of them it will be longer. The conviction of two of his murderers is not evidence that Britain has finally become an intrinsically multi-racial and culturally inclusive society, it is evidence that we were ashamed of what had happened and have done our best to make amends for the Lawrences. But what we should never be allowed to believe, is that convicting them deals with the culture that killed him.

Stephen Lawrence was killed by racist thugs, who were protected by their friends and families and racist policemen; who in turn were employed by a racist institution, that was sustained by the racist beliefs of a society that believed that street crime was a problem for the black community. We might want to believe that Stephen Lawrence's murder couldn't happen again or that racially motivated policing doesn't unfairly affect the black community. But it is an expression of our racism that people die, get stopped and are arrested because they are black. It is also an expression of our racism that we still accept that this is acceptable or deny its existence. But our racism doesn't stop there and a much more subtle example of how racism works in this country was demonstrated during the last election.

The interlinking and articulation of the issues of racism and immigration has a long and well documented history. The Duffy Gate, scandal that arguably cost Gordon Brown the election, was a classic example of the extent to which racially ambiguous beliefs have come to be accepted as legitimate.  Gillian Duffy's association of mass immigration and the exploitation the benefit system may or may not make her a bigoted woman but they were views that were based on a racially stereotyped perception of eastern European immigration. What was most revealing about the response to this was not that Gordon Brown had referred to her as a bigoted woman, but rather that there was universal acceptance that there was nothing wrong with anything she had said. And what has been almost as shocking, has been the way in which Gillian Duffy has been feted as a heroin of the working class. It is this acceptance, that is indicative of the extent to which racial stereotyping is a norm that has become acceptable within our society.

And now the media has turned its attention on Diane Abbott  for having the courage to state what is actually obvious. That an essentially white community is embedded within its culture and that is able to maintain its dominance by dividing and stereo-typing its minority communities.We have done it with the Jewish Community, the Irish Community and are still doing it with the Muslim and Black communities. Its nothing new, its recognised in the literature and as Stuart Hall has demonstrated, it is dominated by representations of black people as good or bad or as co-operative and unco-operative. You can all guess which category Diane Abbott falls into.

As a black MP, Diane Abbott has managed to survive in a society that is nowhere near as inclusive as it believes it is. Some things have improved, but the racism that killed Stephen and allows some of his murderers to stay free is sustained by the actions and acceptance of all of us. We all hear racist comments and then pretend we haven't, we all have racists in our families and do not condemn them. All that Diane has done is to speak up for a community that still experiences racism on an everyday basis. She has challenged the complacency of a dominant white community and been slapped down by a party that fails to understand that the struggle against racism has barely begun and that is now far too ready to tolerate racism in its support.

So to return to the implication behind Diane's tweet - that white people maintain their cultural hegemony through division and rule and that as such all white people are racist. Self evidently we are not all the kind of racist thug that kills and nor are we all the kind of racist whose practice would affect the conduct of a police investigation. I personally do not believe that stigmatising immigrants is an effective way of dealing with the debt crisis. However, I have never been stopped and searched and neither has my son, but I know that if I were a black man this would not be the case. But this injustice and the myriad other forms of discrimination that that are an integral characteristic of a multi-faceted black Britain have not stirred my outrage - I have remained a passive beneficiary of my community's cultural dominance. So does my tolerance of this injustice make me a racist? On occasions it probably does because even the passive tolerance of racism allows it to flourish and as it flourishes the community that is an integral part of who I am retains its hegemony.

         

The Problem with Politicians and the Equalities Act 2010

The problem with politicians - is that they have convinced themselves, that being voted into government gives them the right to take a wrecking ball to the society in which we live and to the rights and privileges that we have grown rather fond of. It is probably a characteristic of most new governments all of which are hungry for power and change when they come into office, but there is probably no better example of radical wrecking ball politics than this government. Whether you are talking about the revolution that is being imposed upon the Health Service, the Welfare Reform Bill or the proposals to change the way in which we support disabled children; all of these represent policy changes that involve a significant restructuring of the way in which services are delivered. You might argue that this is a government's right or even obligation - that if it was in their manifesto (however, vaguely) they are simply exercising their mandate. Perhaps - but actually I'm not so sure.

For a while it has  been accepted that many of the services that are provided by government, play an important role in enabling equality of opportunity across society and that without that intervention significant numbers of people would have difficulty in playing a full or even a partial role as citizens. The experiences of people from a the vast number of minority groups supports this belief. Moreover, the expectation that government has a role to play in promoting equality of opportunity was acknowledged in law in the Equalities Act 2010, which fully recognises the role that government plays in tackling discrimination and promoting equality of opportunity.

One of the slightly more technical provisions of the Act lies in the responsibility that public authorities have to assess the impact of any changes that they are making on people with protected characteristics.  So in this way if a local authority was intending to change the way in which they allocate funding to children with additional needs they would have to assess the likely impact of its funding strategy and ensure that the changes that it proposes are unlikely to discriminate against a person with a protected characteristic, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations.

Which is all well and good but what does such an impact assessment entail? According  to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, the Equalities Act 2010 does not state specifically how an equalities impact assessment should be carried out, however it does state that previous equalities and human rights case law suggests that it is preferable that the assessment of a policy's impact should be carried out before that policy is implemented. The presumption being that if you don't do it before you put a policy in place, that policy is unlikely to be able to take full account of the needs of the whole population.

Central to being able to carry out any effective equalities impact assessment, is the existence of an evidence base which can then be used to predict the likely impact of a policy. This is where it gets problematic for governments that want to revolutionise the way that things are done -where is the evidence base against which they can assess the likely equalities impact of the changes that they are proposing.

Lets take for example the changes that the government is proposing to the way in which Children with Special Educational Needs are supported. Its Green Paper Support and Aspiration (DofE,2011) suggests a number of ways in which support for children and young people with SEN might be re-organised. Some of these suggestions such as the development of a local offer of information about services are well established and researched proposals, for which a significant evidence base can be identified. In this way an equalities impact assessment (which currently is not available on the DofE website) would be able to assess the potential impact of  such a Local Offer and can legitimately test ways in which it might be implemented. However, where a policy initiative is not based upon an evidence base then any attempt to test that policy initiative during a pathfinder has to be defined as the generation of new knowledge. Which is how the National Research Ethics Service defines research.  An example of this would be the Green Papers proposal to pilot a combined assessment and do away with the Statutory Assessment Process, a combination of measures for which only a partial evidence base exists. The evidence for this can be found in the Pathfinder Specification for Support and Aspiration  which identifies a significant number of objectives amongst which are:

• Exploring how one planning process could be used for children and young people from birth to 25, and how this would work in particular at key transition points;
• Exploring ways in which the three main areas of support (education, social care and health) could be joined together in a single plan that focuses on achieving better outcomes, for example improved health, for children and young people;
• Identifying the professionals and experts that need to be involved in the planning process to secure the best support and establishing the lead professional who is accountable for the delivery of that support;
• Exploring ways in which the single plan could be linked to the commissioning process, to bring about an improved match between available services, and children and young people’s identified needs, anticipating their arrival at different points in the system and ensuring that support and provision is in place when children and young people need it;
• Exploring how the new health reform structures can be used to improve services for children and young people, for example exploring the opportunity for the Health and Wellbeing Board to promote strategic coordination or identifying the expertise required by clinical commissioning groups;
• Aligning resources, such as through pooled budgets, between agencies and services to improve delivery of support services for children and young people;
• Exploring how the support in the single plan could be transferable across local authority boundaries when families move home (i.e education, health and social care);
• Exploring how mediation could improve parents’ and carers’ experience of the system when they don’t feel the support they are being offered is the right support;
• Exploring how to achieve value for money and efficiencies in the new system; and

http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/s/single%20plan%20and%20assessment%20pathfinder%20itt.pdf

 

The extensive use of the word 'explore' is the give away because in every instance the use of the word 'research' would have made more sense.

So why does it matter that the evidence base required for an equalities impact assessment is research?  The answer lies in the range of protections for participants and clinicians that are built into a research project. Participants have to be fully informed about what is involved, they have to protected from harm and the project has to be put together in a way that it meets a range of rigorous quality standards and requirements as  outlined in the Health and Social Care Research Governance Framework (2005). In short it has to be done properly and it has to have ethics approval from properly constituted Research Ethics Committee.    

So what I am arguing is that because of the requirements of the Equalities Act 2010, government reforms must either have an evidence base with which to support the changes they are proposing or they must test their proposals through properly constituted and ethically approved research projects - otherwise the Pathfinders in which they are generating new knowledge are effectively conducting illegal research. It is my belief that many of the Pathfinder Projects currently being used to test new policy across government are in effect carrying out illegal research and that both the National Research Ethics Service  and the Equalities Commission should investigate the way in which the governments more radical reforms are being piloted and implemented.

What the implications of this are for governments who want to inflict radical change on us I'm not yet sure, but if it means that policy has to be properly researched and assessed before it can be inflicted on us then that would be not bad thing.

    

Bradley Manning and Barack Obama - a struggle for the soul of America

In the Cairo Speech that he made shortly after coming into office President Obama said:

And finally, just as America can never tolerate violence by extremists, we must never alter our principles. 9/11 was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course. I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.


So America will defend itself respectful of the sovereignty of nations and the rule of law. And we will do so in partnership with Muslim communities which are also threatened. The sooner the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities, the sooner we will all be safer.

Barack Obama is a President who was elected on the back of a campaign that drew heavily on the ideals and principles that he refers to, principles that form the cornerstone of much of what is good in the world, and principles that are embedded in the American Constitution and Declaration of Independence. But the ongoing conduct of the Obama Presidency shows that they are ideals that are difficult to sustain and defend. This has particularly been the case with regard to his conduct and behaviour in the pursuit of the war on Terror and in the wars in Iraq and Aghanistan, where he has failed to live up to the standards that were set out by his nations founding fathers and the aspirations of his Cairo speech.

For example the extra-judicial killing of Osama bin Laden and of numerous other leading Al Queda figures, might appear justiiable   if  Al Queda is viewed as enemy combatants rather than terrorists. But if that is the case it is likely that the killing of the unarmed and surrendered Bin Laden was an act that failed to live up to the rule of law that Obama refers to in his Cairo Speech, never mind the treatment of prisoners required Geneva Convention and the International Court in The Hague.

But perhaps Obama's greatest betrayal of the principles and values that constitute the idea of America has been his willingness to tolerate the killing of innocents. The undeclared war on parts of Pakistan and the people who live there has taken little account of the lives of the families who live in Waziristan. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism between 391 and 780 Civilians have been killed in what they describe as the Drone Wars, a total that includes 175 children. The CIA's response and justification of these killings is that they are far fewer in number and an unavoidable consequence of the need to prosecute the war on terror. Whilst the Brookings Institute put the ratio between civilians killed to combatants killed was as high as 10 to 1 and the probable total, far in excess of that suggested by either.

Irrespective of the truth, the conduct of the war in this way, is dependent upon a conception of the lives of the people of Waziristan that see's them as less entitled to human rights than US citizens and to the notion that the killing of a terrorist may need to be bought with the blood of innocents. It is an approach to justice that has paralells in history to which no nation should aspire.


The consequence is that rather than making the US and her allies safer, the way in which the war on Terror has been conducted has succeeded,as Byman predicted, in making an enemy of Pakistan and in recruiting another generation of young men to violent extremism.  For all the billions of dollars that have been spent and for all of the lives that have been lost. The way in which the war against Terror has been conducted has meant that the US has failed to be 'respectful of sovereignty and  the rule of law' and has failed to live up to the standards and morals that define it as a nation .

It is in this light that the actions of Bradley Manning and Wikileaks need to be viewed. The disclosure of the actions of the state has laid bare some things of significance and some that are not. It has brought down on them the full might of the US State and its more partisan media, which now portrays both as traitors to the nation. But Bradley Manning and Julian Assange should not be seen as enemies of America but rather as champions of the ideas and principles that are central to its identity. It is equally the case that in acting as they have done they have not betrayed the American People but committed themselves to a struggle for the soul of the nation because America is not a government or even an army - it is an idea.

Giving back the poppy

I won't be wearing a poppy this year. It is not that I am unsympathetic to the sacrifices of our soldiers. Its not that I don't understand, that the freedom I express in writing this, has been bought with their blood. It is not that I am not grateful. But symbols are very precious things, their meaning is never fixed; it is nuanced, balanced and delicate. The poppy above all symbols is a fragile representation of what they gave, of the place and fields in which they fought, of the blood that they shed, the numbers in which they fell and finally and hopefully, in the flowers and blossom of their rebirth and growth.

Its not because of them that I shall not wear a poppy this year, it is because of us and what we are letting it  become. Somehow the meaning of the poppy is shifting. It is no longer simply a symbol of what they gave in the name of freedom . Its hard to define but you can see it in the change in the culture of the poppy and they way in which it is being used. There is the debate around whether or not the England football team could wear a poppy in a friendly match against Spain. It became a matter for parliament, a struggle against the intransigence of FIFA. When in truth, FIFA's policy on the wearing of symbols and icons has been instrumental in depoliticising football. What do FIFA do now when the Serbians and the Croats want to remember their war dead the next time they play?

Then there is the sartorial fascism of the BBC and other major media outlets who have effectively made it compulsory for people to wear poppy's if they are taking part in interviews. This might seem trivial, but when used  in this way, the poppy is not an icon of freedom, it is a badge of conformity and coercion. There is something in that sense of compulsion and obligation that reminds me of the people who used to go around handing out feathers to young men who hadn't volunteered. It reminds me of the difference between the soldier and the jingoist, the people who pay the price for war and the culture and politics that sends them there. The people of Britain have always been mobilised in the name of freedom and most of the time freedom expresses itself in the little things we do and the choices we make in the context of our everyday lives, such as what we might choose to wear.

But perhaps the greatest threat to the delicate symbolism of the poppy comes from our government and its institutions. The announcement yesterday that the government was banning 'Muslims against Crusades' might seem to be a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Their, 'Hell for Heroes' campaign is offensive and their plan to burn poppies on Armistice Day equally so. Yet should burning poppies and challenging the justification of western military intervention in other parts of the world necessarily make them a proscribed organisation? Perhaps and perhaps not, but by announcing their decision on November 10th and by linking the proscription to the burning of poppies, the government made it almost impossible for human rights groups to challenge the decision. The symbolic power of the poppy as the preferred icon of the jingoist made the decision untouchable. And today the appropriation of the poppy seems all the more complete when we read the following tweet from the Metropolitan Police:

 ' Individuals seeking to disrupt the 2 minute silence will be dealt with robustly '

Somehow you can't help but feel that its time to remember what they fought for and give the poppy back

'...Poppies whose roots are in man's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping,
But mine in my ear is safe---
Just a little white with the dust.'
Isaac Rosenberg

Watson's mafia jibe, the Murdochs and the British State

James Murdoch may have got off relatively lightly the other day, and there are some who think that it is thanks in part to Tom Watson. Whilst Tom and other members of the committee adopted an aggressive stance toward Murdoch, ultimately their attacks failed to land on the issues that really mattered. By comparing News International to the Mafia, Watson may well have created news head lines but they were headlines and comparisons that some believe are a distraction . At this point in time, the real issue and the area where Murdoch seems most vulnerable, centre's on the matter and possibility of wilful blindness.

Murdoch's argument in relation to this issue, has been that the size and structure of the organisation has made it impossible for him to have oversight of everything going on in relation to this issue. At a certain level this seems perfectly plausible but in the context of this case it means that by seperating themselves in this way the Murdoch's have been able to operate a strategy of plausible deniability. Such a strategy would repeatedly allow James Murdoch to plead innocence or ignorance. Of course at this point in time we do not know that this was the case and Murdoch's ignorance may be an inevitable consequence of a management style and structure that is inefficient, but it could also be deliberate and have the advantage of leaving the more unsavoury aspects of running  British tabloids to the likes of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulsen. What is probable, is that when things started to go wrong the involvement of the News Corporation executives will have been very carefully managed and particular care will have been taken to control the audit trail. People may have presumed that James Murdoch was fully in the know, but as he carefully pointed out in his evidence, that presumption has been based on supposition and perception not documentary evidence. 

A strategy of wilful blindness would also have been helped by the cosy nature of the News International's relationship with the British political elite and the Metropolitan Police and it is this that should probably concern us the most. Time and again in his evidence Murdoch cleverly acknowledged that they should have looked at themselves harder and sooner - but didn't do so because they had placed too great a dependence on the Met to bring wrong doing to their attention. At the moment we can only presume why police officers decided that the original hacking investigation was an isolated incident, when now the evidence for systemic hacking would seem to be overwhelming. The sad truth of the matter is that the hacking scandal is not simply a product of the actions of an over mighty news organisation; It is as much a scandal of British politics and of policing. Without their privileged position within the British political and policing establishment, News International would never have been in a position to contain the original crime and prevent rigorous examination of their activities.  News International was and is not the Mafia - but there are profound questions about its relationship with the British state that were not asked, and issues of patronage, privilege and protection that are yet to be explored. Calling James Murdoch a mafia boss may well have been a distraction - but in the longer term it is a comparison that may yet come home to roost. 

So whilst Tom and the committee may have failed to secure the outright evidence that they sought, you can't help but feel that the Murdoch's and a number of as yet unnamed figures have been backed a little further into a cul de sac, from which there is no way out.   

Occupy and St Pauls

The media is doing what the media does so well, reducing something complex to a set of reductionist statements and headlines. The occupation at St Pauls is being portrayed as a crisis within the church when in reality it is no more than an expression of a tension that is inherent or even essential to its existence. The Church, indeed any Church, is both a set of ideas and values, and an institutional and organisational presence. The arguments that have taken place within the Church of England this week are a reflection of that reality and of the commitment of the Church to maintain both its values and its institutions.

The protesters have convincingly argued that the values of their campaign are in keeping with many of the  underlying values and principles of the Church. Social justice, equality and human rights are all integral to the values of both. The difficulty for the Church is that as an institution its is deeply embedded within the cultural constraints of the society in which we live. Whilst Occupy can and should adopt a more radical approach to the issue of social injustice the Church can realistically only adopt an approach that is at best progressive. The Church of England is what it says on the tin - an institution that is integral part of this country and of the values which are central to it. Whereas Occupy is an expression of the anger that many of us have toward the exploitation of the people. These are not groups that are in opposition but allies in a common struggle.

Occupy St Pauls came about because the Movement and the Church share a commitment to social justice. The resignations are regretable, especially for the individuals concerned, but do not represent a crisis in the Church. The resignations are far more a reflection of its internal diversity and the commitment of its people to uphold to its values and its organisational sustainability, they are also a reflection of the decency of the Dean and his colleagues. As for the media thats totally missing the point... whats new.         

Occupy - a different kind of politics

Its becoming a bit repetitive now,  the constant refrain of the media, that the Occupy Movement doesn't have a vision of what it wants and what it stands for. The Occupy Movement stands for a great many things but foremost and self evidently it stands for a different kind of politics. This is a kind of politics where finance and privilege aren't the only means to power; a politics where discussion and debate are used to explore issues in the kind of detail that the complexity of a decision demands. You could argue that it stands for a somewhat naive approach to the media, as time and again the protesters struggle to express their message when confronted by the reductionist constraints of the sound bite. Whilst it is a naivety that might allow their opponents to attack them, it is a naivety that lies at the heart of who they are. That naivety is also a statement about the kind of media that we want. Do we want a media that misrepresents and exaggerates? Do we want a media that is carefully managed and manipulated by the powerful. As the News International scandal begins to fade into memory we need to contrast the sincerity of the occupiers with the actions of those who where embroiled in the triangle of disinformation that included News International, our politicians and our police.


So, far from standing for nothing, Occupy represents a new approach to politics and the demand for a media that sees the people as their vested interest - and therein lies the essence of what Occupy is really about - the people. It is not for no reason that the Occupy Movement has taken root in the USA, a country that has unparalleled wealth juxtaposed with levels of poverty and social inequality akin to that of Turkey. Whilst the US political and media establishment presents a vision of a nation with opportunity for all, the current financial crisis has made it clear that opportunity is no longer the preserve of all Americans and it is this realisation that has begun to mobilise America. As is the case in the UK and across much of Europe, it is the poor, the young  and the lower middle classes that are paying the price of the global financial crisis. It is the people whose homes were repossessed, the people whose jobs have disappeared and the people whose benefits are being removed. Whilst at the same time banks and businesses return to profits and bonuses, that have been part funded by the very people who have lost everything. It is this sense of injustice that underpins the emergence of the Occupy Movement.


If Occupy is about the iniquity of the West's internal response to its financial crisis, it is also about a re-awakening of what has been long understood: that we are One World and that present levels of  poverty  and conflict are indefensible. So the Occupy movement is about peace, fairness and global justice. Its about western governments supporting human rights in a way that is consistent and supported by agreed international standards and organisations. So for example rather than NATO intervening in Libya to protect the people of Benghazi from genocide (and only incidentally put in place a government they approve of in order to have better access to Libyan oil)  - they mandate, resource and equip the United Nations to do so on behalf of the global community. In this way the conflict might have found a more inclusive resolution at an earlier stage and it might not have ended with the appalling spectacle of Qaddafi's violation and murder.

Occupy is not about smashing the state or world revolution, it is about the people and their interests being placed at the centre of how the world works. It is about ' the people' reclaiming and re-occupying the world's institutions and processes.  So that it is not the trade in obtuse financial derivatives that motivates a bank to speculate and lend - but a business's need to invest in the things they make or the things they do. We are approaching a time when the world's economic institutions will have to come to terms with the reality that in a world of finite resources, growth and profit at all costs cannot be sustained indefinitely, and that one day we will have to choose between the freedom to speculate and the freedom to live and the freedom to work.

The solutions to these problems will not come through the extravagent claims of media savvy politicians who promise much but consistently fail to deliver but from the actions and activism of the people. What the politicians, the media and institutions that mock the Occupy Movement fail to understand, is that what we are seeing is the begining of a movement that will one day reclaim our economy, our politcs and our futures.   

The riot as consumption

It is violence, it is destructive, it is tragic but it is also meaningful. It hasn't happened without reason. It is the social action of our children. When part of a community revolts, the act of revolt is invariably a search for freedom in the context of a perceived oppression. In rebelling against the authority of the police and against authority in general, the young people of this country who riot, are looking to liberate themselves from some form of oppression. But what kind of rebellion or oppression is it? This may be an experience of oppression that is grounded in everyday experiences of stop and search, or the oppression of a childhood that is charachterised by neglect, alcohol and drugs. But actually these riots probably weren't so much about the police or the rage of a psychologically abused underclass, although for some this may have played a part.  This was a completely different kind of rebellion, it was a rebellion against everyday life, an everyday life characterised by relative poverty in a consumer society, and the psychological oppression of social inequality.

In many ways we define ourselves by what we consume and the high street or shopping centre is not only the place where we shop, it is also the place where we express the creativity of our self through our consumption. This might not be an idea that many of us are that comfortable with but it is a powerful theme in the work of Bourdieu and Baudrillard and it has important implications for our ability to interpret this summer's riots. Seen in this way the high street or shopping centre  is not only the place where we realise much of who it is that we are, it is also the place where we come face to face with who it is that we aspire to be. For most of the people commenting on the riots of the summer of 2011, the experience of walking through a shopping centre brings with it a taken for granted assumption that if they want to buy something they often can. Or that if they don't buy something they want, it is because they are saving for something else. It is a place where ideas and plans for our homes, our lives and for the way in which we represent ourselves can be made real.

But if you have never lived for long periods of time without money, you will not know that for somebody living in poverty, the shopping centre is something else. It is not a place of self fulfilment, it is the place where they come face to face with what it is they cannot have and what it is that they cannot be. So in seeing thousands of young people smashing up and looting High Streets across London, what we are seeing is not so much political rebellion, as riot as an act of consumption. Of course not everybody who is poor riots; the great majority work hard to get by and to do the right thing for their children and for their families. But more often than not a person's struggle with poverty is fuelled not only with a need to survive, but also by a spark of hope; the belief that if you work hard enough for long enough, you can obtain the things you want and change the life you have. The coherence of an unequal society can only be sustained by the existence of that hope or where it is missing by the sanction and oppressive action of the state. The existence of this hope is a political responsibility and it is in this that the essential difference between Labour and the Conservatives has to lie.

The years of the Labour government may not have achieved as much as they sought to achieve, but it was charachterised by a commitment to the struggle against inequality and poverty, and to the belief that it is a struggle that can be shared and that can be overcome. Whilst Labour may have failed to defeat social inequality they where at least able to convince us that they were engaged in that struggle. In contrast to this, for this ideologically Conservative government, the struggle against poverty has been replaced by the language of division and the symbolic and actual oppression of minority groups as economically unproductive. Immigrants who take jobs, disabled people who exploit the benefit system and young people who are expected to take on 30 to £50,000 in debt if they want to get a degree and improve their lives.

Because of the divisive nature of this government; for significant numbers of young people, the idea that poverty and inequality can be overcome all of a sudden seems far less achievable. The hope that is the essential component of democracy in an unequal society no longer exists. The belief in a better life seems unreal, what people are left with, is a sense of themselves as excluded; as inevitably unable to define themselves through the creativity of their consumption. Without that hope, however tentative it may be, poverty becomes oppressive and the search for a constructive sense of self all the more problematic. Some may turn to faith, some may turn too crime and the relative security of the street gang. But where a nation's poor no longer believe that they can make things better for themselves, then it should come as no surprise that some will resort to rioting as consumption. And whilst it is unquestionably a crime, it is as much a failure of political leadership as it is of parenting or policing.

Contagion, debt and the economics of extortion

Its funny how some words get used in ways that we understand and in other ways that we don't. For example the word contagion is increasingly being used to describe the process by which confidence in a national economy dissipates. There are no specific rules outlining exactly when it is that an economy becomes infected with the contagion, but at some point in time they are and at that point everything becomes more expensive and a nation becomes economically unviable. The recent problems in the US are just the latest example of this.

The interesting thing is that, many of the economies that are now in trouble, are in trouble because banks and rating agencies have decreed that current levels of debt are unsustainable and because of that are raising interest rates. Of course there is no mention or consideration of the fact that much of that indebtedness arises out the steps that countries took to protect the savings of their countries investors. Or that the act of increasing interest rates makes the possibility of default all the more likely. The association of a national economy with the notion of contagion is enough of an excuse to heap overtly political pressure on government's to reduce their spending.

The ironic thing is that the uncertainty within the global economy did not start because people had concerns about levels of government debt. It started because banks exposed themselves to speculative investments and in the end had to be bailed out by the governments that they are now manipulating for additional and exploitative rates of interest. The paradox heaping misery on irony, is that for some countries the bank bail outs represent a significant proportion of the national debt that is being to justify the extortion that they are experiencing.

But as the example of the US makes clear, contagion is not just about debt. Contagion is about the scope and scale of the state and the things that the state can be responsible for. In the US the scope of the state and its responsibility is not seen as a political priority. It may well have been acceptable to rescue the banking system; it may be seen as a priority to spend an enormous proportion of their GDP on the ability to invade other countries.  But the well being of the poor and the disadvantaged is not seen as something that is in anyway the responsibility of the country's government nor of its rich and its middle classes.

So when Republicans, the T.E.A. Party and our own George Osborne use the idea of contagion to argue for a shrinking of the state.  The contagion they really fear is the contagion of care and mutual dependency. They fear having to accept that the poverty of their fellow citizens is not the responsibility of an individual's indolence but rather the product of their own ideology. An ideology rooted in the narrowness with which they conceptualise humanity and of their own need to be indifferent to the suffering of their fellow citizens.

The current economic crisis is not about debt; its about people, its about a financial system that is yet again being allowed to exploit the gullible and its about right wing politicians who would rather spend a government's money on the state's power than on it responsibilities. 

David Cameron and the employment of Andy Coulson

Its becoming increasingly clear that David Cameron’s decision to employ Andy Coulson was not just a matter of questionable judgement.  Why would an incoming Prime Minister employ somebody in a senior position within No 10, knowing that they bring with them significant amounts of political baggage? The answer does not lie in the skills and expertise of Andy Coulson, but elsewhere in the form of the company that he keeps. 

David Cameron’s links with senior figures within News International are well established, and have been described in the Daily Telegraph:

It was called the Chipping Norton set, an incestuous collection of louche, affluent, power-hungry and amoral Londoners, located in and around the Prime Minister’s Oxfordshire constituency. Brooks and her husband, the former racing trainer Charlie Brooks, live in a house scarcely a mile from David and Samantha Cameron’s constituency home. The two couples meet frequently, and have continued to do so long after the phone hacking scandal became well known.

PR fixer Matthew Freud, married to Mr Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, is another member of this Chipping Norton set. When Mr Cameron bumped into Freud at Rebekah Brooks’s wedding two years ago, he and Mr Freud greeted each other with exuberant high-fives to signal their exclusive friendship.

Daily Telegraph

The question we have to ask is whether David Cameron chose his friends because he thought they would be of use to him, or whether his friends within the Chipping Norton Set chose him because he could be useful to them? Who was using who? The question is rhetorical. We know how it works. It’s probable, that no explicit decisions where ever made, each is likely to have seen the benefit of implied and unspoken understandings. People who are intelligent and ambitious don’t need to state the obvious they just know how relationships can work for the benefit of all concerned.  

So in the context of this set of relationships, the employment of Andy Coulson is not simply the employment of a random media relations expert who deserved a second chance following a mis-judgement of indeterminate magnitude. Andy Coulson was a Deputy Editor of the News of the World whilst Rebekah Wade/Brooks was its Editor, when she left he was promoted Editor.  So when David Cameron appointed Andy Coulson to be Director of Communications to the Conservative Party in 2007, just months after he left the News of the World, he was not only appointing an ex-Editor who had resigned under a cloud, he was appointing an ex-subordinate of a very powerful and influential friend.

With this in mind and to return to the question posed above: why might the leader of the party that was then in opposition decide to appoint Andy Coulson as its Head of Communication? David Cameron would only have employed him if he were not viewed as damaged goods by his previous employer. Without good relations with News International the employment of Andy Coulson would simply not have made sense. Given David Cameron’s relationship with Brooks, he would have known that Coulson hadn’t blotted his copy book with News International, despite having failed to deal with the embryonic stage of the Phone Hacking Scandal. There were obviously no off the record conversations between Cameron and Brooks as to his unsuitability or rank incompetence. So we can presume that David Cameron and Brooks either never spoke to each other about the appointment of Andy Coulson, which is possible but unlikely, or that she only had good things to say about her former colleague.

But if Coulson was guilty of incompetence why would Brooks support his employment with the Conservative Party? The cynical amongst us might think that his appointment may have been encouraged by members of the Chipping Norton Set as a means of strengthening News Internationals influence on government and that Cameron might have viewed the relationship in a similar yet inverse fashion. Whilst there may not be any direct evidence for this having been expressed explicitly, the closeness of David Cameron to the News International aristocracy makes it difficult not to come to the conclusion that each will have seen his appointment as mutually beneficial.

Of course Rebekah Brooks would only ever have wanted this if her relationship with Coulson was still strong and her relationship with Coulson would only still be strong if he was not incompetent and if he was not incompetent what was he?  It is probable that he was very loyal to his mentor and to the organisation for whom they both worked.

Which begs the question, was it really David Cameron who appointed Andy Coulsen?

Frankie Boyle, The Comedy Unit, Channel 4 and the importance of Tramadol Nights

Its interesting how much credit the 'team' gets when things are going well. And Frankie Boyle must be more than a little annoyed that he is the only person getting abuse for Tramadol Nights. Channel 4 have had a little, but there is no campaign within the community to boycott them and there isn't likely to be. I guess the truth of the matter is that disabled people don't matter and Frankie Boyle revels in the infamy and in the not too distant future will find some way of benefiting from that fame.

But Frankie Boyle isn't the only person who is benefiting from the verbal abuse of more than one disabled child, The production company that produced Tramadol Nights was the Comedy Unit, based in Glasgow which made the decision to work with Boyle knowing he had form in this area. They would appear by and large to be ordinary people and if you look at their website they don't look like people who want to profit from such abuse. However, like most weak people they failed to see that even humour has some boundaries and that the vilification of vulnerable children is one of those boundaries. They allowed their organisation to produce something that they thought was edgy and somehow clever, and their judgement did not allow them to see that what they were doing was akin to the rankest homophobia and the vilest forms of racism.  None of the things that Boyle said should have made it through any form of quality assurance and production control, but the abuse of a disabled child wasn't deemed to be beyond the pale, it was just something that would generate attention and ultimately pave the way for more edgy clever success.

It was undoubtedly this strategy that appealed to Channel 4 when they commissioned this edgy and supposedly clever piece of television and then allowed it to be transmitted. Shocking people creates interest, it appeals to our baser instincts and just occasionally it says something important. I guess in a way Tramadol Nights did this too, it said something profoundly important about Frankie Boyle, The Comedy Unit,Channel 4 and about the people who today are still mocking Harvey. 

Frankie Boyle doesn't care what its says about him and neither do the people who overtly support him. Together they occupy a place in the world that they are welcome to, a place where being smug and cruel about a disabled child gives rise to a smile or a laugh. Tramadol Nights was important because it taught us that this is an unpleasantly large community, but if I were a shareholder of The Comedy Unit or Channel 4, I wouldn't be feeling too pleased about being seen to be a part of it.

Afghanistan, politics and the lives of British soldiers.

Just in case you weren't sure about why it is that British soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, you should have worked it out by now. If like me you occasionally felt able to convince yourself that they were dying so that girls could go to school and farmers could grow something other than poppies, then Obama's announcement on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan would have put paid to that delusion. In his press conference this week Barak Obama made it perfectly clear that for him the mission in Afghanistan is entering its endphase and his objective now is to get his troops home as quickly as possible.

For the US the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were never about anything other than revenge and for one or two, oil and money. George Bush took them into war with two 'muslim' nations, in revenge for the attack on the Twin Towers and for a decade the people of Afghanistan and Iraq have paid in blood for the crimes of the Salafi jihadist. American soldiers have been prepared to die in Afghanistan and Iraq because the muslim world was perceived to have committed an attack on their nation and retribution was required.

For us it was different, any original desire to hit back following 9/11 was replaced by two paralell and often contrasting discourses of nation building and fighting terror. The latter in particular has been the cornerstone of the UK government's justification for the loss of their soldiers lives. Yet the intelligence does little to support this position, for a long time now Afghanistan has been superseded by Pakistan, the Yemen and of course the UK, as potential sources of terror. Whilst, Tony Blair's belief, that war could make the world a better place and that the rights and lives of the people of Afghanistan could be improved at the point of a gun, was to prove nothing more than an aspiration and a delusion.

For differing reason's and having travelled along different paths, the UK and US governments have reached the same crossroads in Afghanistan. Each government knows that they no longer have a reason or desire to be in Afghanistan, each wants out and each will do what it must to bring their troops home without losing face. Paradoxically it will be easier for Obama, with the death of Osama bin Laden, the American people may well have laid to rest at least some of the ghosts of 9/11 and the political gaze of the nation and its leader will inevitably turn inward. As he approaches the end of this presidency Barak Obama has come to realise that he doesn't want to make the world a better place, he wants to make the USA a better place.

For the UK, Afghanistan should have been a watershed, it should have been the place where we came to terms with the reality of our place in the world, but it wasn't. Our leaders still continue to believe that we have some ill defined obligation to punch above our weight in world affairs, that we have a right and a duty to export the benefits of British influence. But the good in a future world order, will not come from the helicopter gunship diplomacy of the West, it will come from the refusal of individuals to be oppressed by their governments and in the long term the empowerment of the United Nations.

But in the meantime because of the delusions of their leaders, British soldiers will continue to die in pursuit of the confused motivations of their politicians and generals; who time and again will send them to war without a mandate from the people who will be doing the dying. There is a common perception that the British soldier is one of the best in the world  and that may well be true - but as the example of British involvement in Afghanistan makes clear, that could never be said of the people who lead them.

Learning Difficulty Week and the Cow Sign at Rickney

Its the end of Learning Difficulty Week and I was surprised that it came so soon after Carer's Week and if I had the time, I might wonder who plans these things, who decides that this week is for people with learning difficulties. For my son and I it was just another week. It was another week in which he was defined by his difference. By his humming loudly to himself, and jumping up and down, excited and animated by the excellence of an idea that had crossed his mind. It was another week in which we went to photograph the cow sign at Rickney for the thousandth time and again I learn't that each time we return, its a little different.

It was another week in which his wicked father made him go to school - despite his insistence that he shouldn't. It was another week in which a trip to a supermarket became an unspoken war of stares, where the rude gaze of shoppers was returned in silence by a glowering father, threatening, brooding  making it very clear that use of the word would not be met by reasoned argument or the indignance of the politically correct but by the rage of a man who is no longer willing to tolerate the personal, institutional and cultural oppression of a community and of a son.

It was also a week of relative silence. There were more blogs last week, more articles about the importance of carers and remarkable statistics about how much we save the government. But this week there have been few and those were mainly about the casual abuse of learning disabled people by those who don't understand that the way that we think about a person can hurt and sometimes kill them. So, in memory of all the people with learning difficulties who have died when they didn't need to; from Gerhard Kretschmer to Fiona Pilkington and an awful lot of others whose early deaths were not from hate but from indifference. For all the people whose voice remains unheard and whose community is still institutionally oppressed - happy learning difficulty week- we're off to take a photograph of a cow sign at Rickney.

Philip Davies and the Conservative Brand

The thing about what Philip Davies said, was not so much what he said, but that in so many circles it was treated seriously and that he felt able to repeat it again and again. He obviously believed that he had the approval of his supporters, despite the fact that his rationale was evidently discriminatory from the outset and as such he was arguing for something that at the moment would be against the European Convention on Human Rights. In taking a stance against the convention he may well be right to believe that he has the support of the Conservative grass roots.

Nevertheless, in arguing against a minimum wage that is inclusive of all communities Philip Davies is arguing against equality and fairness for all of the people who live in this country. He is arguing that some people are worth less than others and that the contribution of somebody with a learning disability is less valuable to the society in which we live. The problem with his rather simplistic rationale is the difficulty that we have in measuring the value of people, irrespective of whether or not it is morally defensible to do so.

It might well be that a business that only employed one sector of the community might be able make more bits of this or that. But for businesses and other kinds of organisation adding value isn't just about the cheapest way of doing things. For example its cheaper to use child labour but we don't do it and we could exploit children and people with learning difficulties to do things that are dangerous, but any company that did so, would go out of business because it would be seen as abhorrent.

In contrast to this, a company that is perceived to work inclusively with its whole community is a company that is likely to receive the support of that community and in the long term make more money. Adding value to an organisation and to a brand is much more complex than Philip Davies and his supporters would seem to believe.  And the reason that people with learning difficulties have problems in getting work is because not enough businesses understand this.  

Philip Davies is having a couple of days of fame at the expense of people who are vulnerable and easily exploited. Far from being clever and adding value to the Conservative Brand he has done it a great dis-service, because this version of the politics of spite is not so easy to hide and in the end the people will remember and the Conservatives will be seen again for what they are.

In a perfect world

Its on days like to today, a couple of days after the coalition government voted its Welfare Reform Bill through the Commons that you realise just how little you can trust politicians. In his speech to Carers last night, David Cameron did what he does so well; he thanked Carers for what they do, he shared a little of his own personal experiences, espoused the virtues of personalisation and pointed out for good measure that it wasn't all about what government could do. Which is probably a good thing because in comparison to what carers do the Government really doesn't do that much. David Cameron knows this:

 "if you stopped doing what you're doing, the consequences for the country would be disastrous"

and its on days like today, when you realise that George and David aren't in it with you, that you get tempted. You start to wonder how it would be if the government couldn't take the commitment and the unpaid work of Carers for granted. What would happen if one day we did stop what we were doing and let that government grasp the extent of what it is that they are not doing.

Of course we would never do it, which is why this most conservative of Prime Ministers felt able to say what he did, because he knew that this country's army of  unpaid carers would never actually call his bluff. We would never withdraw our labour from the people we love and nor should we.

But it would be such fun to see their faces, if they woke up one day and realised that they couldn't really afford to build a new generation of nuclear submarines because they had to pay for Carers. Then of course they wouldn't be able to invade Afghanistan, bail out banks and  pay extortionate amounts to speculators to finance the illusion of growth in the economy. In a perfect world we would have politicians who understood what really matters and what doesn't- but unfortunatley we've got David and George neither of whom even live in our world never mind a perfect one.

Ed Miliband in search of...

I'm coming to the conclusion that in the media complex world in which we live political leaders work better in pairs. Margaret Thatcher had Nigel Lawson, John Major had Ken Clarke, Tony Blair had Gordon Brown and David Cameron has got a choice of two depending on whether or not he wants to apportion blame or praise.

Ed Milibands problem is that he stands in isolation. We all know that Ed Balls is and was Gordon's man and there is no way that Ed will be able to convince us that him and Ed ... well need I say more, its just too confusing. The reality is that Ed  and Ed aren't the double act that is going to take Labour into victory in the next election. Much as I like Ed Balls, if Labour are going to win the next election his role will be Prescottian (!) as a bastion of Labour tradition and as a unifier of Labour's broad Church.

The problem is that Ed Miliband is not Tony Blair so Labour isn't looking for a taciturn strategist to run the economy whilst the media friendly leader charms the electorate. Ed Milibands leadership partner has to present a more balanced set of strengths than the either or contrast of Blair and Brown. He or she has to be a little bit more media friendly and perceived as not quite as intelligent and perhaps a little more empathetic.

The problem is that a politician of such quality would inevitably represent a long term threat to Ed Miliband's own leadership. So Ed has to go into the next election knowing that the partner on whom he is dependent upon for success will inevitably become his nemesis. But that is the true quality of leadership and all of  a sudden I'm not thinking quite so badly of Tony Blair.

And who should it be  - now that would be telling.         

Support and Desperation

The green paper Support and aspiration: A new approach to special educational needs and disability ends its consultation period on June 30th. What has surprised me most is the relative silence that has accompanied its presentation given the long term implications of what is being proposed. But then given the skill with which this government  has managed to present its reforms and cuts as a battle against wasting money on the undeserving, it really shouldn't surprise us.

Support and Aspiration is no different and indeed has been particularly successful because it has been able to draw on the support of a great number of families with disabled children. As Ian Birrel ponted out in his Guardian article  "the core aims of Michael Gove's green paper have been broadly welcomed ". They key to that support has been the committment to replace the current plethora of assessments with a single Education, Health and Care Plan.

Under our proposal, by 2014, all children who would currently have a statement of SEN or learning difficulty assessment would be entitled to a new single assessment process and ‘Education, Health and Care Plan’ to identify their support needs.  Support and Aspiration p. 36

This looks fine because by making the Education, Health and Care Plan available to everybody who currently receives a statement of SEN, they will theoretically be making a broader range of support available to families whose child currently has a statement but at the moment is not eligible for additional social care support. On the surface this looks like motherhood and apple pie, but it doesn't add up.

Currently 4.9 disabled children per 1000 children are in receipt of social care services (2008 figures) of one form or another, so 0.49% of all children. This compares with the current number of children with statements of SEN which stands at a national average of 2.7% of all children. Now if we were to presume that the number of statements is going to stay the same the current proposals represent a 500+% growth in the number of children eligible to be assessed to receive social care services as a result of a combined Education, Health and Care Plan. This is self evidently not going to happen.

What is far more likely is that if the green paper is budget neutral the number of children eligible to receive social care services will actually remain the same. For those families this Education, Health and Care Plan will represent a significant improvement in  the co-ordination of the support that they receive. For the other (approx 4/5ths) children who currently have a statement they will not only not receive an EHC Plan but we can assume that they will not receive a statement, given that they won't exist. What they are likely to be left with is " A new single early years setting- and school based category of SEN" and no ability to have their child's educational provision guaranteed by a statement. So for some the green paper will offer improved support, others will be faced with uncertainty and desperation. 

That shouldn't surprise us - like much of what this government does it justifies its reforms by stigmatising those who are least able to defend themselves. Whilst  the proposals are imbued with a sensitive and in-depth understanding of the needs of severely disabled children and their families, that will have its roots in the experiences of David and Samantha Cameron, it funds that sensitivity by removing the support of children and young people whose needs are less complex, less visible and may on occasion, erroneously be attributed to the parenting skills of those who are not middle class. 

We do not know how effective the new system of school based SEN will be in including children without the additional support and protection of a statement, but when viewed in conjunction with reduced protection against expulsion that are a part of Michael Gove's other initiatives, the implications aren't great.