The Race is Run

The previous England captain to be charged with a criminal offence was Bobby Moore (left) in 1970. It was an obvious stitch up to make old Mooro look like a shoplifter in some jewelry store in Bogota and was meant to disrupt the team's preparation of defending the World Cup.
A more honest leader of England you could not find. Bobby Moore stood as a model of professionalism and integrity.
Not so the current holder of the post, the somewhat less respected John Terry. Putting to one side some of his family's criminal behaviour and his infidelity with a team mate's wife, Terry has defiled the post by his being charged wth racially abusing QPR defender Anton Ferdinand. He has pleaded 'not guilty' to the charges and his trial is now set for July 9 having got dispensation from the court to lead England in the European Championship this summer.
Why has he not been suspended? Is there no moral dimension to the national game any longer? Reading the columnists this morning it is hard to find a supporter for Terry. But nothing has changed in essence since November when he was first charged. He should have been dropped from the team then and if Chelsea had any honour he should be dropped from his club too.
It is hard to see him resigning and Capello (to his discredit) hasn't commented so it is up to the FA to be decisive. Because, as Liverpool FC have found, if you don't condemn racism unequivocally, you just encourage it.

Less for the Least

There is scene in Alan Bleasdale’s ‘Boys from the Blackstuff’ when a world-weary DHSS manager (Jean Boht) advises an aggressive colleague from pursuing a prosecution against two unemployed builders, “We’d just be taking from people who have got nothing.”


The same could be said of the current Government plans to set charges on single parents for using the Child Support Agency. They would have to forego 12 per cent of their money; most are paid less than £20 a week.

The House of Lords inflicted a miserable defeat on the Government of 270 to 128 and so sent the unequivocal message that it would have to be amended. But then came brutally terse response from DWP, “We are disappointed the Lords seem content to leave in place a system which has consistently failed children...we will seek to overturn this in the Commons.”

Such defiance in the face of a decisive Parliamentary vote looked like pointless arrogant posturing. The rebels were led by former Tory ministers Lords Mackay and Newton. Even Brian Mawhinney voted against which should suggest a tactical retreat is called for. The Government’s position was to compel couples to seek voluntary agreements. The Child Support Agency was established because voluntary agreements we not workable. To charge the poorest of the poor for a dismal service amounts to a new low in the Victorian patriarchy of the DWP led by IDS and Chris Grayling (pictured).

The substantial defeat was simply ignored by invoking the little used "financial privilege" which was established in 1911 to prevent the peers rejecting Budgets. It can be used on a wider basis, subject to Speaker's agrement, but is a 'nuclear option' necessarily undermining the authority of the upper House. Clearly they don't care.

Don't Call me Brother

Perhaps the recent criticism of Ed Milliband's leadership has been unfair. At times the media acts collectively to pour poison into the public's ear about some party leader, think of Michael Foot, Hague and IDS.
But just when the neutrals were forming a negative opinion, Ed then decides to estrange his entire core support.
It was bad enough conceding to Tory policy on freezing public sector pay for five years and presenting the false capitalist choice of decent pay or jobs. But then he conceded the entire deficit reduction plan.
So what is Labour for now it supports wholesale decimation of public services and soaring unemployment and poverty? By capitulating to the Coalition Government's pernicious policies, Ed has given up the game before it has barely started. His gauche imploring with empty hand gestures wasn't working with the public before - now he has handed over the only weapons he had. No sign of KBO here.
The party rules on selecting a new leader support the incumbency. I would not favour a defenestration usually becuase division leads inexorably to election defeat but I would support any new candidate who set out his opposition to cuts in benefit for the disabled, to sky-high tuition fees and an obsolete nuclear deterrent. And I suspect I am not the only one.

Sweating It

I thought politics was the "art of the possible" (Bismark). Have the English politicians learnt nothing of the Scots over 300 years to know edicts from Wesminster invariably cause an equally opposite reaction?
Cameron, Clegg and Osbourne's artless attempts to force the Scottish people to accept their version of a referendum is doomed to fail. And Alec Salmond is riding that wave of antipathy to the 'auld enemy' with consummate ease.
The two main conditions they wish to impose is on timing - by end next year - and the format - a simple yes/no without an option to extend Holyrood's powers.
In neither case can they point to some grander democratic principle other than "we think we can fix it so you don't leave."
I am a fierce advocate of the union, I am very much British before I am English, But we have to recognise the Scots have every right to self-determination and if that is what they wish to vote for it can only be antagonistic to try and dissuade them with baseless fears of economic meltdown.
The main tactic deployd appears to be to change the question; it would looks likely they would vote for Devo-Max which has no similar scare story to independence. So Cameron and gang talk as if Devo-Max doesn't exist as an option.
I am not convincd the timing, to co-incide with the 700 anniversay of Bannockburn, will sway it for the SNP. But Robert the Bruce's (pictured) story is quite extra-ordinary and he did re-establish independence. But it is Westminster's superior manner over the troublesome Celts will certainly stiffen the resolve of the die-hards and force the hand of many neutrals.

Let it all Hang Out

Blair did it. And Brown tried to do it. Cameron seems a natural. I mean writing entirely pointless OpEd pieces “full of sound and fury...signifying nothing.”

Cameron’s target in yesterday’s Evening Standard was the illusory Health and Safety culture, largely the invention of tabloids, “which has become an albatross around the neck of British businesses.”
He even referred to pupils wearing eye protectors to play conkers when it has long been exposed as a stunt by a Headteacher. The article was full of empty rhetoric such as seeking “the real pioneering, risk-taking spirit” and making it “the time our country really goes for it”. It read like a master imploring his boys in the school magazine to really get stuck into helping out at the next Arts and Crafts show.
Except this is the Prime Minister’s growth theory. This level of laissez faire is unheard of even when Keith 'Mad Monk; Joseph (pictured) and Geoffrey Howe sat in the Cabinet wishing Liverpool would just fall into the sea.
The piece was written with barely any examples, figures or supporting quotes. Presumably the word of the PM should be enough to be convincing.
He showed he had a laughable expectation about the outcome of his dreary visionary zeal. “I want 2012 to go down in history not just as Olympics year or Diamond Jubilee year, but the year we banished a lot of this pointless time-wasting from the economy and British life once and for all.” Has a PM uttered anything so silly since Blair wanted to march vandals to the cash-point?
He referred to Lord Young’s investigation into the compensation culture “an expert in his field”. However the noble Lord found, “The problem of the compensation culture prevalent in society today is, however, one of perception rather than reality.... fuelled by media stories.”
The Health and Safety Executive was established to allow individuals protection from unscrupulous and negligent employers. The sub-plot of Cameron’s text is the ‘Employer is King’ and the individual, a nuisance.
It was interesting that on the same page of the Evening Standard was a warning about a potentially dangerous baby’s high chair which had failed Health and Safety Regulations and caused several injuries. Cameron may find it annoying for businesses to abide by these pesky burdensome rules but I think manufacturers should be compelled to ensure their product doesn’t allow babies to fall on their heads.

You Don't Know What You're Doing

I am quite staggered by the crassness of the once fine club, Liverpool FC, in the Suarez/Evra race affair.

By his own admission Suarez used the word ‘negro’ to Evra and so breached the FA code of using a word agressively to another player specific to his skin colour. We usually call that racism.
For Liverpool to whinge and carp about it’s all being “subjective” is patent nonsense. The FA clearly expected this infantile and angry response and so deployed sufficient resource to draw up a bomb-proof account of the testimony and its judgement. An eight match ban was about right.
Suarez himself hardly helped his defence by flicking a finger at the Fulham crowd last week, thereby underlining his petulance and crudeness.
It is of no significance whatever if racism in Uruguay has been tackled to such a pitiful degree that ‘negro’ can be used in a “commonplace” manner. This is not Uruguay and our rules on racism stand for this country.
But it is also extremely arrogant for the club to mount its self-defeating defence of this boorish behaviour on the day the country was focussing on a court case of the long awaited justice from racism.

The Banality of Evil

Some years ago, I heard a girl at a party say she was from Eltham - I immediately thought of the Stephen Lawrence case.

I had recently worked in an official capacity at Eltham police station when the Macpherson report was first published. But I thought, maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it as the chances she had any connection were pretty slim. When I mentioned the murder, she said, “Actually, I went to school with Gary Dobson...I can’t imagine him getting involved in anything like that.”
“Well I bloody can, “ I replied angrily. “He didn’t come out of that surveillance video too well did he?”
The moment clouded the whole evening and I remember thinking the discomfort and awkwardness was all for the good. In the 80s such a line may have just passed because of the intractable embarrassed fear around British racism. To challenge a racist comment in a pub was as good as an open invitation to violence. But finally, years after the death of Stephen Lawrence, we have become able to confront it and so diminish it.
The Home Secretary at the time, Jack Straw, can take some credit for the transformation of dealing with race issues, particularly in institutions such as the Home Office and Met Police. It required leadership to tell the police their partiality on grounds of race amounted to being unprofessional and Straw had the political courage to do it.
I was recruited by his private office to work in a team of Government Liaison Officers at Eltham nick. There was not much to do but observe the coppers, drink tea and read the whole Macpherson report. I was pretty surprised the language of the officers was peppered with words I had only heard on the Sweeney, such as slags (criminals), Toms (prostitutes), nonce (sex offender) and blag (robbery). The canteen culture was clearly very strong, even the WPCs effected a pretty nauseating macho outlook.
But the other disturbing aspect was the area of Eltham itself. There was an overt, menacing atmosphere. The examples of hate mail sent to schools, shopkeepers and individuals was intrinsically violent in the extreme. It felt alien to me as part of London, like somewhere locked in the early 70s. It was shameful and despicable.
That won’t have changed a great deal and I am sure there are many households across the capital and the country where the convictions of Dobson and Norris will have been derided in the foulest terms. And with their kids listening.