clawsfour

When the music has to stop

In the mid 70s about 50 Saints supporters, me included, were chased up Milton Road by around 500 Manchester United fans. Modern football hooliganism in England was about to reach a peak that would last for nearly a decade.

On the terraces it was a weekly bloodbath. Along with thousands of others I left the game I loved to the thugs. Off the terraces it was a weekly game of who's to blame - football or society. But the game went on. At no time during the decade of despair was a game called off because of the possibility of disorder.

And the hooligans were contained and convicted. Football was regained by supporters from those who came to bury the opposition, not to praise them.

Last night, two cup games were called off because of the possibility of disorder. An international game at Wembley has been called off for the same reason. Not because of a threat from rival crews threatening to take their loathing for the other team to the streets and the terraces with blades and zip guns. But because a few hundred teenage hoodies might be helping themselves to a new mobile from a shop window.

With the Tory government absent without leave (well, on leave actually - that's the problem) and the police seemingly paralysed, trainee hooligans and their older siblings are having a riot. And unfortunately football supporters are missing the opportunity to make a real stand.

Instead, what is claimed to be traditional terrace humour has just been chants to invade Tesco. Idiotic supporters on twitter have repeated the same nonsense. And have cried foul when the police have taken it seriously. The England players - hardly role models - issued a statement condemning the recent thuggery and urging people to turn away from violence. It's time for football fans to finally renounce their hooligan history and be unequivocal and consistent in their condemnation too.

So don't praise Nick Griffin and the racist BNP for 'protecting' the streets just because a few footie scarves are being warn. And don't sing songs that encourage violence, even as a joke.

On the terraces at Southampton the song still reverberates about "shooting the Pompey scum" - deliberately louder and more frequent when we are on TV. It's not funny. It's certainly not clever. It's no different in intent to the sectarian garbage which blights some games north of the border.

There must always be a passion about our game. Saints must always be better than Pompey. It goes without saying. But you can be passionate without encouraging violence, even in jest.

I don't sing about shooting fellow supporters. Never have, never will.

It's time for football fans, once again, to stand up to thuggery. And it's time the music (or at least the violent and sectarian music) stopped once and for all.

Now look under the stone that is Lord Ashcroft's donations

18 months after the Electoral Commission called in the Metropolitan Police to investigate the donation made by David Abrahams to the Labour Party by proxy, the Crown Prosecution Service has delivered its judgement on the investigation. Unfortunately not on their own web-site but let's assume Sky have got it right. It is now - CPS Press Release.

They point out the rules have been broken - constituting a criminal offence - but that the people investigated, including Peter Watt who was forced to resign as Labour General Secretary over the issue, did exercise due diligence.

This issue revolved around the fact that David Abrahams - a permissible donor - gave money to other permissible donors, who then gave money to the Labour party. This was done by Abrahams to protect his identity - failed. There is no doubt that donors must make full disclosure of the fact that they are using third parties to make a donation. David Abrahams did not. However, it was his money. He was a legitimately allowed to make a donation. The people he gave the money to were legitimately able to make a donation.

So having spent an extraordinary amount of tax-payers money to discover that an offence has been committed for which no-one was to blame, perhaps the powers that be could now get on with the investigation into Lord Ashcroft who it is alleged is an impermissible donor using overseas money to find the Tory Party.

As the Daily Mirror first revealed, the Electoral Commission started an investigation into the peer last year.

It followed claims £4.76million had been transferred from the Central American tax haven of Belize to Lord Ashcroft's UK-based company Bearwood Corporate Services.

The firm is one of the biggest donors to the Tory party, giving £4.74million since 2003.

Electoral law says donations can only come from UK-based companies. Tory vice-chairman Lord Ashcroft, said to be worth more than £1billion, has used the money to bankroll Tory candidates in marginal seats.

And no doubt those who accused the thoroughly decent Peter Watt of acting criminally will now be queueing up to apologise. (update - statement form Peter Watt reported here)

Boris bigs up the economy

The London economy continues to show very interesting signs of what can only be described as credit crunch denial in certain important sectors. And it is worth stressing this and getting this across, particularly in view of the newspapers which are providing an unremitting diet of gloom. 
Some parts of our economy really are thriving and I single out obviously the theatres, the tourism sector, but across the board there are amazing pockets of resistance to the problem.

Boris Johnson

Conservative Mayor of London

Looks like Boris has been taking lessons from Ken Livingstone about how to be several paces out of step with his own party.

However it is encouraging, even from this unlikely source, to hear some positive messages about the economy. Governor of the Bank of England - take note.

Hat tip to Paul Waugh for the link.

A blog worth reading

Welcome to the blogosphere Alastair Campbell. Blimey, I wish he was sorting out Labour's message now. We certainly wouldn't have got into the British jobs for British workers mess.

Anyhow, he's just started. You can find him here. 

And here's his latest vlog.

An arresting attitude

It is certainly true that the Metropolitan police could have handled the investigation into the theft (why do we continue to use plumbing jargon? Leak?) of documents and information from the Home Office with a great deal more sensitivity. They may have been able to investigate the issues at hand without arresting a Conservative MP, they may not.

There are probably questions to be asked about why the Mayor of London was told of the decision to arrest and not the Home Secretary.

What is not in any doubt are two things. Firstly we are not living in a police state as claimed by the increasingly swivel-eyed Tony Benn.

Secondly the stomach churning hypocrisy of the Tory Party. The outrage that the police have arrested a Tory in the conduct of their investigations does not sit well with their attitude to arrest of Labour politicians and members of staff during the cash for honours investigation. This was summed up quite neatly at the time by Conservative MP Nigel Evans who said the arrests were a "seismic" development, adding: "It is important, we have to realise that the allegations are very serious indeed.

"Nobody is above the law, not the prime minister and not Lord Levy either, and this is something I think that we all have to learn."

Pity the Tories didn't learn it, then. Or, maybe nearer the truth, they didn't learn it because they still don't care. The age old truth of the Conservative Party is that it one rule for the common man and no rule for them. And that is the absolute dividing line when it come to the next general election. Recession or no, the Tories are, and always will be, in it for themselves alone. The class war, unfortunately, is still alive and well, but it's the Tories who keep breathing life into it.

Sound economics is always sound economics

Another quote for you. Gordon Brown? Alistair Darling? Some lefty economist after the Pre-Budget report?

Now what really gets me is this, that it is very ironic that those who are most critical of the extra tax are those who were most vociferous in demanding the extra expenditure. And what gets me even more is that having demanded that extra expenditure they are not prepared to face the consequences of their own action and stand by the necessity to get some of the tax to pay for it.

Actually, Margaret Thatcher being very old Labour in 1981, defending her budget (against the even more right wing or her Conservative Party) to the Guardian Young Businessman of the Year Award Ceremony. 

Labour can win

And if it's in the Torygraph it must be true.

Although to be fair, as they say in the best football commentaries, it was written by Douglas Alexander - sometimes in charge of Labour's election campaigns. Sometimes not. Even when he is.

Anyhow, I don't often read the Torygraph. And for those of the rest of the world who don't either here is what DA had to say.

Let's be honest, neither David Cameron nor Gordon Brown are instantly recognisable as a British Barack Obama. There haven't been goat herders in Surrey or Fife for a long time. Yet last week's victory was not simply a victory for an extraordinary individual; it was also a victory for a body of ideas. As the Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman observes: "This year's presidential election was a clear referendum on political philosophies - and the progressive philosophy won."
At the core of Obama's campaign was a belief that only progressive politics had the answers to the challenges of the time. Relentlessly, he made the case for government action in responding to the problems faced in the economy, in energy and environment policy, in education and in healthcare.

BBC off target again

The Today magazine programme (for it is surely no longer worthy of being part of the world respected News team) on the BBC has plumbed even more banal depths this morning.

A baby, Baby P, died 15 months ago whilst the baby boy and his home life were under the inspection of a local Social Services Department. The Today magazine programme, instead of dealing with the important issues surrounding this case - whether social care can ever take responsibility for the well-being of every person in the country - kept coming back to the same question "Who was responsible for the child's death?"

In a pointless interview with the head of the body which regulates individual social workers, about correspondence which he hadn't seen, from someone he didn't know, to people unidentified, the interviewer returned time and again to question of responsibility. The clear agenda was that someone, preferably a Government Department, or - even better - a government minister - should be responsible for the death of the child.

Clearly the Today magazine hadn't been watching the BBC's news broadcasts over the past few days of they would know that the boys mother, father and their lodger were found not only responsible but guilty in a court of law, convicted of "causing or allowing the death of a child or vulnerable person". They will be sentenced soon.

Of course, the inquiries that the government have established will identify whether there were any errors of systems or by individuals in the particular case. The BBC would do well to wait for those inquiries to report before rushing to comment.

In the meantime, perhaps a better question for them to peruse would be, "How many children are still alive thanks to the intervention of social services?"

No going back

The Labour Party needs to urgently fill the vacuum of not having a Labour candidate for Mayor of London.  

That vacuum is being, not filled, but highlighted by the launch of Livingstone's ludicrous campaign to be reselected. Having almost single-handedly lost the last election he now wants to ensure Boris has the easiest ride to a second term. 

Livingstone would do better to heed the tone and message of the defeated US candidate John McCain. If he doesn't stand aside gracefully to allow the considered selection of a new candidate, the Labour Party should once again sweep him aside and start the process now of selecting the best woman or man to take on Boris (and the bitteratti).

Cardinal sin

Another reason why religion should be kept to consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7696505.stm

I have nothing personally against people who have religious beliefs. I have friends who believe in the most extraordinary nonsense and that doesn't bother me. I don't feel the need to disinfect myself after visiting their homes. But they do at least keep their faith to themselves and don't presume to use it to prescribe and proscribe the actions of others.

God, I hate God. Even Tony Blair - enthusiastic believer - had the good sense to recognise that politicians 'don't do God' (or, at least Ali Campbell had the good sense for him). It's a pity that preachers don't recognise that God doesn't do politics.