57 Reasons not to be Cheerful, one, two, three...

Any large public event is always a balance between freedom of expression and movement, safety, and civil liberty. The “Rile Widding” was no exception. Except it was – it marked a new watershed in the shifting of the balance away from freedom and towards outright repression. I have already remarked that there seems to be a disparity between Brian Haw camping in Parliament Square (not allowed) and thousands of people camping out in The Mall (allowed) and this double standard is indicative of the sneaky, insidious way in which major public events are used to undermine civil liberties. Presumably if Boris Johnson wants to prosecute the people who broke the law on Thursday night in the Mall, he has plenty of CCTV and TV footage to allow him to identify the offenders. I await his next action with interest.

These are the “facts” behind what was “hailed” as a “successful” security operation. I am going to quote this at length from the BBC because it bears some deconstruction. It is a curiously jumbled and un-focused piece that reads as if it is the police official statement merely rehashed and regurgitated.

Scotland Yard has hailed the security operation surrounding the royal wedding as an "amazing success" despite 57 arrests around its security zone. About half the arrests were for breach of the peace and a man was held for an alleged sex assault on a girl, aged 14.

OK, no-one would argue with that. Breach of the peace and a sex assault, it all sounds fairly straightforward.

Ten people carrying climbing gear and anti-monarchy placards were arrested near Charing Cross. Other arrests were for drunk and disorderly, criminal damage, theft and over a suspected environmental protest. Three people were held in the Covent Garden area over the alleged demonstration, police said.

To be frank, I am surprised that the BBC didn’t look into the anti-monarchy and environmental protests more closely. They seem to be accepting of the police lumping these in with drunk and disorderly, criminal damage and theft. In this manner, legitimate protest is subtly criminalised. Were these people charged, and if so, with what?

Anti-terror powers were used to arrest one man who was seen taking suspicious photographs of transport hubs and security personnel in the Charing Cross area.

This is the sort of thing that is an example of the insidious erosion of our civil liberties – and, of course, it will now continue right up to the Olympic Games and beyond, if they can get away with it.

Three others were held over drug offences and four for allegedly carrying an offensive weapon.

OK, we’re back to the straightforward stuff again. But why not make some effort to group the arrests by type? Why mix up protests with criminal activity?

Met Police Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens said the success of the overall policing operation showed that the force could handle security for next year's Olympic Games. She said her 5,000 officers should be "immensely proud" of their role in the "happy and safe" event. She admitted to pre-event "nerves" and defended the decision to carry out a string of pre-event raids as "entirely justified".

“Entirely justified”? Justified to whom, justified by what? Is she saying she has some inside information that she is not telling us? Were the people who were arrested pre-emptively some sort of terrorist threat? Because I have a feeling that this is just the police justifying themselves to themselves, with no scrutiny.

Officers questioned masked anti-monarchy protesters in Soho Square as a huge security operation took place around Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and The Mall.

So who were these masked anti-monarchy protestors? How many of them were there, were they charged with anything? Are they part of the 57 arrests?

Thousands of police officers created a "ring of steel" around the venues. Snipers took to rooftops and undercover officers mingled among the crowds

Sort of gives the lie to the “carefree, joyous celebration”, doesn’t it?

More than 90 people were banned from the area and up to 80 VIPs were granted personal protection.

Again – “banned from the area” – under what pretext, what law, what judicial process has been gone through to be able to ban people from walking through the streets of their own capital city. If we are getting to the state where we are having people “banned” then we need to be sure this is not just something being done on a whim or on a spurious assumption, there needs to be a proper legal process.

Over the past few days police have arrested three people believed to be planning to behead effigies at the wedding. They were detained by police in Brockley, south-east London, on Thursday night.

These people have presumably been detained under the law which says that planning a terrorist act is an offence? Again, the BBC doesn’t seem to have asked any further questions. Were they charged? What with? Or were they merely quietly released again after the wedding? Am I committing an offence if I am planning to burn an effigy on November 5th?

There were also several raids on squats across London, which drew criticism from one Labour backbencher. John McDonnell accused police of "disproportionate" action, saying the raids appeared to be "some form of pre-emptive strike".

These are presumably the pre-emptive arrests of which Teresa May spoke in her advance trail of the measures she was “considering” after the Black Bloc’s window-breaking protests on 26 March. The people arrested in the squats were arrested for electricity abstraction – bypassing the meter. They have probably been doing it for months, if not years. They could have been arrested at any time for it, but coincidentally, police swooped the day before the Rile Widding. Coincidence? You decide.

As I said at the start, any large public event carries with it inevitable issues of public safety and security, even on the basic level of making sure no one gets trampled in the rush. And yes, I accept that – given that we’ve annoyed every hothead east of the Euphrates and a good many nearer home – there might be some people who want to use such an event to cover terrorist outrages. It’s all very lamentable. And in any large gathering of people, statistically there are going to be a few lags, perverts and ne’erdowells. So yes, policing is necessary. Up to a point. But when it gets to the stage where we’re stifling legitimate protest, we have to say, I think, that it’s time to take a good long hard look at where this is going.

Personally, I would let the protestors protest. In the case of the more zany fringe groups, it would show some of them up for the unsupported talentless loonies that they really are. If the whole world can see that there are only twelve members of “Muslims against Crusades”, that shows the world exactly what you are dealing with here. I would have stuck them in some obscure corner of Horse Guards Parade, suitably policed, and let them get on with it. Because the freedom not to be part of this, the freedom to hold contrarian views, however far they are off the bus route, is still one of the things that makes us the good guys.

And personally, I can’t see how you can describe any event where it has to be stage managed to stifle those who disagree with it, and pushed through at gunpoint by the presence of snipers on rooftops, as in any way “happy”.

Good luck, if you want to pretend that the whole country rose up as one great spontaneous street party and boogied long into the night. It didn’t, but feel free to delude yourself. For my part, the Royal Family is only useful for one thing. As a constitutional wedge to stop the bastard politicians taking over forever and issuing a written list of everything you are allowed to do, and everything else is verboten.

So if we have to have the occasional Rile Widding to keep the unwritten constitution intact, so be it. But don’t use it as an excuse to stifle legitimate protest, and don’t expect me to enjoy it. Just pull my vest down when you’ve finished.

The Streets of London

I touched on this in an earlier post, but I am definitely seeing signs of a concerted effort to "clean up" London in the run up to the 2012 Olympics. I don't mean sweeping up the rubbish, I mean a concerted effort to crack down on various freedoms and protests, and a further targeting of the disadvantaged, all as part of the process of packaging London for the (increasingly desperate, given Osborne's mishandling of the economy) sales, business, and tourism boom which is what the Olympics is all about these days.

Westminster Council is trying to banish the homeless by banning people from feeding them.

Boris Johnson (aided and abetted again by Westminster Council) is going through the courts to try and get rid of Brian Haw and his anti-war protest in Parliament Square.

There have been various reports on Indymedia about eastern European vagrants in the East End being rounded up and deported back to their country of origin. The UK is allowed to do this to homeless foreign nationals provided they are going back to a hostel or similar in their own country, and apparently the deportation often happens, but the hostel at the other end doesn't.

Finally, of course, following those dickheads from Black Bloc smashing bank windows on Saturday, Theresa May must have been chortling into her Horlicks that night as she seamlessly began the process of tightening up the policing of demos, talking about barring "known troublemakers" (ie anyone who disagrees with Cameron) from the right to protest. Well done, Black Bloc. Home Secretary 1 (black bloc, o.g.) Black Bloc 0. The pretext currently being used for this is the upcoming Royal Wedding, but given that the Olympics is following on in relatively short order behind this, I doubt anything brought in for the Royal Wedding is going to be repealed before the Olympics (or after it, come to that!)

We know already of course, that finding massive numbers of police from the secret deep freeze underneath Scotland Yard where they keep them in cryogenic suspension until there is a foreign tyrant who wants his goon squad to be able to run through London with the Olympic flag, or there's a miners' strike or something, is never a problem for the government. It's only when you are being robbed, mugged or raped that there is rarely a bobby on the beat.

I could be wrong. Maybe it is too early to discern a pattern emerging. But I will be watching this.

A Mess of "Potage"

I stood amazed, during the week, at the proposal by Westminster Council to ban the “soup run” to homeless people in their area. Of course, on one level, we should not be surprised at a bunch of self-serving, fat burghers and Pharisees have concocted such an idea. They have “form” in that respect, after all. Was it not Westminster Council that banned the run in their hallowed precincts at Christmas the other year? Unbelievably, on that occasion, it was supported by the editor of “The Big Issue” and I wrote to him and told him he was an idiot. He never replied. Perhaps he already knew.

To the councillors of Westminster, it would seem that the homeless are a sort of wilful and tiresome irritation, so obsessed with the taste of Campbell’s Condensed Tomato that they are willing to leave their homes and their jobs, hitch-hike to London, and sleep rough in a doorway in Covent Garden just for a sniff of the stuff. It is an indicator of just how far those set in authority over us take us for mugs, that this kind of bollocks is actually served up as some sort of justification for the ban.

The truth, I suspect, lies nearer to the fact that rich people who live in Westminster don’t like seeing poor and homeless people as they go about their daily social round. It grates on the residual node of what used to be their shame gene, before they had it surgically removed. It reminds them of the fundamental injustice of their continued existence, compared to the people in our society who are really struggling. Johann Hari, writing tellingly about this in The Independent, points to the distant view of Canary Wharf and all its glittering towers, from the perspective of the homeless who “live” – or rather, exist – in Covent Garden.

Anyway, I have written to the Worshipful the Lord Mayor of Westminster asking her what she intends to do about the homeless, because you can’t ban them from existing. Now that no one will feed them, will they be left, in some cases no doubt, to starve in the gutter? I await the reply (if any) with interest. Because, as it says in my Bible, if they cared to look, “the poor are always with us”.

And if you could make horrible nasty things vanish just by banning them, someone would have banned Westminster Council a long time ago.

One Laws For Them

The State Opening of Parliament is one of those traditional events, full of pomp and ceremony, flummery, ancient language, Heralds in tabards walking backwards, and men in tights, that we British do oh, so well. The majesty of the Lords and Commons, all gathered together, under the Lion and the Unicorn. It is all too easy to poke fun at it, as many have done in the past, and will no doubt continue to do so.

But behind all the pomp and circumstance, behind the processing and Black Rod banging on doors, we shouldn’t forget that Parliament does stand for something. It stands for the Law of the Land, it stands, ultimately, for Freedom. It stands for the unwritten, fudged, but nevertheless durable covenant of compromise between the Sovereign and the State, the people, and those whom we elect to govern us. So much so, that these days, of course, Mr Speaker is only ceremonially dragged to his throne, a distant reminder of those far-off days when his reluctance to end up potentially in either the Tower of London, and/or with his head and his body in two different geographic locations, was all too genuine!

It stands, in short, for Liberty. And this year, this first Queen’s Speech of the new Parliament, was, for once, strong on libertarian ideals. Presumably this is as a result of the brave new world of Liberalism, a package of concessions wrung out of David Cameron by the Literal Dimwits in their gaderene rush for power, which he was quite happy to grant them as part of the greater process, which they don’t seem to have realised yet, towards becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Cameron-Ashcroft empire.

We were promised a veritable Great Reform Bill, no less. Sweeping away many of the anti-libertarian measures, post-9/11. ID cards would go (well, actually, to their miserable credit, even Labour had eventually got it through their ignorant skulls that ID cards were a bad idea, and had already decided to rein them in, but hey, who’s counting) less CCTV coverage, - again a good idea in principle. Though it is sometimes a provider of useful evidence after the fact, CCTV does not prevent crime, it just exports it to other, usually less fortunate, areas, where there is no CCTV.

Things such as control orders and the “thought crime” offences of “acts preparatory to terrorism” still remain, of course. But one of the measures proposed was a restoration of the right to protest, which can only be good news. All good stuff, and surely even a curmudgeonly old commie like me should welcome it?

Except that nobody seems to have told Boris Johnson about the last bit. With masterful comic timing, coinciding with the Queen’s Speech and the announcement of all these measures, Boris Johnson and Westminster Council sent in the plod to arrest Brian Haw for obstruction, and disband the democracy peace camp which has sprung up alongside his one man anti Iraq war protest in Parliament Square. Haw, who has maintained a lone, and famous, vigil in the square in protest about the Iraq war, was charged with obstruction. Quite what, or whom, he is supposed to have obstructed is unclear, especially as you have to take your life in your hands and cross four lanes of traffic to even get near him.

The latest I hear is that he may be charged with trespass. I thought that Parliament Square was a public place, so presumably if Mr Haw is guilty of trespassing on it, we all are. Similarly, they can’t – as I understand it – just do one person for trespass. Anyway, other, finer legal brains than mine will no doubt look into it.

Westminster Council are also complaining about Mr Haw’s rag tag followers, who had put up some tents, brought in a chemical toilet, protested against homelessness, amongst other things, and planted an oak sapling. (How very dare they, how dare they plant our national tree on an otherwise neglected and unused patch of grass in the middle of a roundabout a stone’s throw away from our national Parliament. The cads and bounders!)

This is the same Westminster Council, lest we forget, that demonstrated its own concern for the homeless one recent Christmas, by cancelling the Christmas soup run, so that rich bastards living in Westminster wouldn’t have to look at homeless people on Christmas day. So kind.

So there you have it. It remains to be seen how many of those lofty ideals actually make it into law. I get the impression that Cameron may already be regretting letting Nick Clegg stay up beyond his normal bedtime and have one too many hobnobs and a glass of tartrazine. We shall see. But hey, they are going to restore the right to protest, and if you believe that, how do you feel about the tooth fairy?

At more or less the same time, Laws of a different sort have been dominating the news. David Laws, to be precise, who stands accused of taking 41 large ones out of the public purse and giving them to his partner in the form of rent, from 2001 to 2009. Leaving aside the obvious comment about “rent boys” - I do have some standards, you know – I have to say there is something distinctly homo-erotic about the cast of this coalition overall. Watching the Knave and Dick show, when they did their joint love-in in the rose garden at Number 10, I found myself thinking that all over the country, owners of Christian B & Bs would be pursing their lips, narrowing their eyes, and slowly shaking their heads as they watched it on TV.
Personally, I don’t care if David Laws’ partner is gay, straight, or a one legged Hottentot transsexual on a unicycle. What I do care about is “what part of don’t rip us off” are these muppets struggling with, precisely? In this case, as well, it’s not as if Mr Laws couldn’t have funded his own place in London from his not inconsiderable personal wealth. Maybe even build a hotel on Mayfair.

The schadenfreude, the glorious irony of it all, is not lost on me. Far from it. Resisting the temptation to punch the air and shout “Yes!” I refrained from such vulgar triumphalism and just contented myself with humming “Oh Happy Day” under my breath as I went about my daily round. The Tory lickspittle, the cats-paw, the patsy who they had got lined up to deliver the death of 1000 cuts, policies that mean already that people on marginal incomes are worrying about whether or not they can afford to keep a cat, for God’s sake, has, himself, allegedly, had a hand in the till. Even if it turns out that his “interpretation” of the rules about partners is right, did it never occur to him to check it out at any time? What a staggering combination of hubris and stupidity.

Further proof, if proof were needed, that this sort of thing, which all the main party leaders threatened to stamp out, is still rampant. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

As with the right to protest, so with the issue of expenses. One “Laws” for them, and one law for the rest of us.

Salt of the Earth

There's been a lot of blether, woffle and guff in the media last week about Local Authorities running out of salt. One bit of snow and the country grinds to a halt, it wasn't like this in the old days when we had to pay the mill owner for permission to go to work, etc etc children today they don't know they're born, schools closing because of Health and Safety gorn mad, bimey guv'nor and so on...and so on.

I've waited in vain for anyone to mention how difficult this snowy and icy weather must be for homeless people. And waited. And waited, so it looks like I'll have to do it.

One of the problems of course is the differing definitions of "homeless". The Department of Communities, under the control of feisty Krankie-lookalike Hazel Blears, claims that there were only 483 people "sleeping rough" in the UK in June 2008.

Even if that were true, it is still 483 too many, and you can bet your sweet palookah that the figure will have gone up dramatically since that time, with jobs being axed left right and centre because of the credit crunch.

Shelter, the homeless charity, has a multiple definition of homelessness that also includes people living in overcrowded accommodation, people at risk of domestic violence etc., as you would expect.

Crisis, the charity that tries to help London's homeless, has a report which examines these issues as well, and comes to the conclusion that:

We suggest a range for the overall number of single homeless people of between 310,000 and 380,000.

This is a big jump from 483 rough sleepers, even allowing for the fact that one would expect this Government routinely to massage downwards any statistics that are likely to a) embarrass them and b) lead to them actually having to do something.

Maybe the true figure is somewhere in between.

I know I bang on a lot about treating the disease and not the symptoms - over a wide range of issues - because I see it everywhere I look. But in this case, if there is anyone sleeping rough these cold winter nights, we really do need to do both.

It is a scandal even if there are only 483 people sleeping rough this winter and we must do something to rescue them.

The long term issues of homelessness have their roots deep in the very fabric of how society is organised, in the loss of community responsibility, the break up of the family, and the failure of the authorities to ensure a continued and commensurate supply of affordable housing to cope with the demand.

I would like to see more use made of the large amounts of derelict land in the UK. If necessary, central government should “nationalise” or requisition brown field sites that meet certain criteria. They could acquire the land for a fair price to both sides.

They could then parcel it out into “settlements”. Each settlement is a cluster of a set number of eco-friendly, prefabricated, timber-framed kit buildings set around a central source of services, e.g. a small CHP plant, green space, etc, planned along the lines of those designed by the Walter Segal Trust.

The inhabitants of each settlement would then sign a covenant to stay for five years. The government provides the infrastructure and then the settlers provide the labour, as a co-operative, to build their own houses on the site. The houses are identikit, prefabricated. We built lots of "prefabs" after World War Two to repair the housing stock which had been destroyed by Nazi bombing raids, we need a similar effort now. There's nothing wrong with prefabs. I was born in one, but these would be eco-friendly "Uberprefabs" fit for the 21st century.

They then have a choice.

§ If they stay five years paying rent, they have the option to buy (?) but first the cost of the house itself gets charged to their account. But the rent they have paid to date counts as back-dated mortgage.

§ Or they can continue to rent until they decide to buy – at any time after five years.

If they buy, and later decide to sell, there are restrictive covenants on the kinds of people they can sell to, e.g. locals, young families, starters on the housing ladder, key workers, etc.

OK - even though it's now official Bolshy Party Policy (because I say so!) it's still a sketchy plan, and easy to pick holes in. It needs a lot of work. But I haven't seen anything better coming from the people whose job it actually is to sort this stuff out, and who seem to be claiming a lot of salary and expenses for so doing.

With the construction industry in the doldrums, and the government looking around for something to throw money at, now is the time to galvanise the affordable housing situation by starting on schemes such as this. OK, it's not perfect. But which would you rather have? - a patch of derelict land with a ragged collection of homeless rough sleepers huddled round a makeshift fire, desperately trying to keep warm, or the same patch of derelict ground with a small number of eco-friendly social housing units on it, adding to the general stock of affordable housing and providing worthwhile jobs in their construction.

In the meantime, get writing to anyone who you think will listen to ask them what they are doing about giving homeless people shelter during this vile weather.

And keep the salt, and the newspapers that bang on about it, for your fish and chips.

Mean Streets

Following on from Rusty Lane, West Bromwich, and while I have still got a bee in my bonnet about things which should not be allowed to exist in Great Britain in the 21st century, here is another one - homelessness.

Last Christmas, Westminster Council stopped the soup run to homeless people in Westminster on Christmas day. Ostensibly, this was because they wanted to encourage people to seek professional help and also because they said that some people from hostels had been turning up and claiming soup to which they were not entitled.

Of all the miserable parsimonious penny-pinching bastard scrooges.

The real reason of course is that rich people in Westminster don't like to be reminded that there are poor and homeless people, often on their very doorstep.

I feel really, truly, sorry for anyone sleeping rough these bitter nights, in the frost and snow we're having at the moment. I've spent some pretty cold and uncomfortable nights in our oldcamper van, when we've been out and about, but even that is luxury compared to sleeping on cold concrete in a cheap nylon sleeping-bag with only a cardboard box between you and the damp. Or sometimes, just the cardboard.

Anyway, Westminster Council, I am watching you, this year. More on this will follow. In the meantime, how do we get to the point where no-one is homeless in Great Britain in the 21st Century?