At last..the juggernaut of state control is halted!

I am delighted to report that a request from one of Britain's top police officers to have everyone recorded on a DNA database has been ruled out as 'impractical' by the Government. Furthermore there is a challenge pending in the European Court of Human Rights to the existing legislation which allows police to keep DNA on the register even when an arrested person has been subsequently released without charge - and I sincerely hope the appeal to the European Court succeeds.



Oh I know there will be whines going up from the police that murderers might not be caught or that policing would be easier if they had a comprehensive data base on all of us. Oh I'm sure it would - but I'm willing to trade that for the right to live within my country untouched by the forces of the establishment unless and until I have done something to warrant their attention

The United Kingdom is already becoming one of the most surveilled and spied upon societies in Europe. We are becoming draconian in our approach to criminality. Terrorist suspects are held without trial here longer than in most other European democracies. We have an inordinate number off CCTV cameras spying on our every movement . We have road traffic cameras. We have phone tapping on an ever increasing scale.

The frightening thing, to me, is how easy it is to slide into authoritarianism. How easy it is for government and police to glibly argue that all surveillance and monitoring 'is in the public interest'. But primarily it's in their interest.

I didn't ask to be born in the United Kingdom. It just happened that way. I'm reasonably happy about it as long as I am left alone to pursue my own life as I see fit, within obvious legal constraints. I do NOT want to be ID carded, photographed, monitored, swabbed, kept on a database for anyone to look up my details, for financial institutions and possible employers to access. I don't want to be a cypher on some civil servant's report. I want a sense of freedom , of privacy, of independence. I don't want to live in George Orwell's Big Brother society where someone is watching my every move and capturing my every personal detail - just because it makes the job of the authorities easier.

Screw 'em! I' m not living my life for their benefit. And I'm certainly not going to be oppressed by the heavy hand of authoritarianism without putting up a fight. Life's too short!

A terrible spectre haunts Bridgend

Bridgend, in South Wales, mid way between Cardiff and Swansea has nothing particularly to recommend it. It used to be a mining town before the mines closed down but, unlike some other towns, it did recover from this to some extent, the Ford Motor Company and Sony setting up plants there and Logica, the IT company have set up a major office there too. So the area has employment and a reasonably high average wage level.

True the town is - well - a dump, to be honest. There is precious little for its kids to do and loads of them hang around street corners at night and the pubs have been known to harbour the violent from time to time.

Yes, I hear you say, very dismal but what's so different about Bridgend from other similar pretty down at heel British industrial towns?

Well nothing - except that in the last year, in a town of only 39,000 people, 16 children and youths under the age of 20 have committed suicide, most by hanging and at least seven of them knew one another.

Where this starts to sound like a grisly Stephen King novel is that nearly all of the victims engaged in 'social networking' on sites such as Bebo and Facebook, and memorials were posted to some of the dead BEFORE they committed suicide.

The police are saying that there is no connection between the deaths and it is just a series of unhappy coincidences, but the social networking connection would seem to say otherwise.

Of course, we are now getting the wise-after-the-eventers demanding that such sites be shut down, despite the fact that millions enjoy their facilities without doing themselves any harm. Surely the police need to piece together exactly the relationship between these kids - we have had two more hangings today, two young cousins - because this situation is grimly unacceptable. The web site merely facilitates contact, but what in God's name drives young teenage boys and girls, attractive kids just like Natasha Randall pictured below and apparently healthy, to take the extreme step of killing themselves? And why just in Bridgend?



I have read all sorts of crap about peer pressure and one upmanship - but you steal cars or rob post offices to do that. You don't kill yourself. What on earth drives these children to take that final irrevocable step to the grave? Whether there is a cult or some grim influence working on the minds of these children, no one knows - but I think the police and social services need to put a lot more effort into finding out than they appear to have done so far.


Update on 19/02/08

It was announced today that yet another attractive teenage girl has been found dead in Bridgend. The body of Jenna Parry, aged 16, was found in woodland. The police are saying there is no connection with any of the other deaths. They have been saying this for months with every successive teenage suicide. !!!

Kevin Rudd restores a sense of decency

Australia's new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, honoured a pre-election pledge when, yesterday in the Australian Parliament, he publicly apologised to the Aboriginal nation for the policy which dishonoured Australia for a century, that of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their tribal homes and placing them with white families or in orphanages in order to create a new assimilated race of Australians. It is estimated that 100, 000 children were taken in this way, regardless of the distress and misery caused to their natural parents.



Rudd's predecessor, John Howard, refused to take this step arguing that what was past was past and, instead, simply offered a statement of 'regret'. The Howard government was also concerned that any formal apology might open the government up to all sorts of legal claims.

Rudd has taken a different view - and it's one for which he should be soundly applauded. It's not everything the Aborigines wanted and in fact Rudd's government is resisting calls for huge amounts of financial compensation for past misdeeds.

But it's a start towards assimilating the Aboriginal nation into the nation state, making them feel like citizens of Australia at last. He has promised to enrol every Aboriginal child into school and an accelerated numeracy and literacy programme. He has promised to do more in the area of health care to reduce the obscenely high infant mortality rate among Aboriginal children.

These are great promises - but Kevin Rudd has to deliver or start the process at least or the warm feelings towards him after his speech yesterday will be obliterated in cynicism and contempt.

Rudd has recognised quite openly what he describes as the 'contempt' between the indigenous and non-indigenous peoples of Australia and has pledged to try and eliminate that. It is a tough ask and he has a lot of work ahead of him. But I admire his attitudes and where he is coming from, and he deserves the support of the whole nation.

I have visited Australia and the situation for many Aboriginals is dreadful. Many were brought into the towns to help with building projects and , when the work was over, they were simply left there out of their tribal homelands, with no roots and no real direction. They get access to alcohol and drink it to excess to drown out the depression and the misery - and then they get violent. I remember visiting Cairns in Queensland and being told, along with the other tourists in our hotel, to be careful going into town past the Aboriginal settlements on the outskirts. If you see men hitting their women with sticks, we were told, don't get involved. It's a regular occurrence.

The Aboriginal leaders know what happens when their men are left with no sense of belonging and plenty of booze and have worked to try and help with the problem. The situation for urban Aboriginals is a blot on Australia. 25% of Aboriginal men in the cities have severe mental health problems caused by the stress of trying to cope in an alien environment. Aboriginal males have a very high suicide rate. Much of this has been due to a complete lack of a social structure in which Aboriginals who moved to the towns for work could live, allied to the disgraceful forced assimilation policy to which I referred earlier. Of course, as is common among all deprived peoples, there is a high correlation between mental illness, substance abuse and criminal behaviour.

Kevin Rudd has a massive task to redress all these situations and it would be a real pie in the sky optimist to believe that he will sort them all - and maybe the problems of todays Aboriginal adults are too far gone in many cases.

But he is right to start with the children. To try and give them an education and a health system which is the right of every white Australian. He has not promised the earth nor indeed committed Australia to everything asked for by Aboriginal leaders. But he has made a brave start in recognising grievous past wrongs and he deserves to have the good will of every Australian in his efforts to build on that apology and the consequent promises of a better future for the Aboriginal people

Sad that we need to thank people for behaving decently!

This week was the 50th anniversary of the tragic Munich air crash which killed eight of the finest footballers in Britain, members of the Championship winning Manchester United team - known as the 'Busby Babes' on account of their youth - returning from a match against Red Star Belgrade. The plane had stopped at Munich to refuel and took off in icy conditions. It never cleared the runway due to, as it transpired, ice on the wings, hit a house and a fuel truck which exploded. In addition to the players, six members of the United coaching staff, eight of Britain's top sporting journalists, and four of the crew, were also killed. Their manager Matt Busby hovered between life and death for weeks before finally pulling through.



The disaster, back in February 1958, shook the football world and of course particularly in Britain the shock was felt most keenly. Ironically it changed the perception of Manchester United for ever and the consequences of that have been very divisive. At the time of the crash they were simply England's best team playing in Manchester. After the crash United were raised to almost God like status and, again ironically, the worst disaster ever suffered by an English team was the making of them. They became world superstars with supporters all over the globe, the money poured in and, along with Real Madrid in Spain, became just about the richest football team on the planet.

Of course any such elevation has its downside and, for those not among the worshipers of the 'new Deity', initial sympathy over the crash turned to hatred, and United soon became, outside its fan base, the most despised team in England. Nowhere was this more true than in their own city of Manchester where their rivals, Manchester City, had long strived to keep pace with United and whose supporters always seemed to live in the shadow of the illustrious 'Reds'. Once the United 'brand' hit world superstardom, the anger and jealousy of City supporters reached new levels of intensity and that has remained to this day.

On Sunday, the very week of the 50th Anniversary of Munich, the fixture list drew the two Manchester rivals together in a local 'derby'.

For weeks the press, police, United management had all been quoted as frantically trying to get the game postponed for fear that City fans would disrupt the one minute silence planned to honour the dead players. The fearful predictions almost reached fever pitch but still the game - and the tribute - went ahead.

As it turned out , the City fans put aside their hatred of the opposition, and to a man(and woman) totally respected the one minute's silence in honour of United's dead heroes. You couldn't hear a pin drop inside that stadium.

And that's surely how it should be. It is a pretty sad indictment on the tribalism which afflicts British football that first we should live in fearful anticipation of booing, jeering and catcalls during a respectful silence for the dead,then when that doesn't happen, that the authorities gratefully publish their thanks to City fans for NOT disrupting the occasion.

Surely thats only common matter of fact decency isn't it? The day someone justifies football rivalry as an excuse for such conduct , I'll be certain that our sense of perspective has totally disappeared.

The road to ruin paved with good intentions

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams has, this week, been literally shocked by the wave of anger provoked by his suggestion that some aspects of Sharia Law are 'unavoidably' going to be accepted into British law in the future and that maybe politicians should be considering this.





I don't doubt for one minute the good intentions of one of Britain's most renowned academics, nor for that matter, the basic common sense of allowing cultures - within the accepted framework of British law - to operate in way consistent with their cultural beliefs. It has been pointed out that, already the Jewish faith operates marital and business dealings within its own cultural ethos in the United Kingdom,and that such latitude should be granted to other faiths too.

What is surprising about the very public way Dr.Williams expounded his views is that he seems to have had no cognisance of the reaction they would provoke, not just among the media and the 'man in the street' but by members of his own Church of England synod. At least three of them are calling for him to resign over this.

It is quite clear why so much antipathy has been stirred by these remarks. Whether rational or not, there is great fear of the Muslims in this country, not helped by Al Queda, not helped by the fact that 55 people were killed by Muslim extremists on that dreadful July day 3 years ago. The fact that the majority of Muslims in the UK are law abiding doesn't wash with many people. There is a feeling that the faith is aggressive and that its laws brook little tolerance of the cultural traditions of others. The very word 'Sharia' conjures up beheadings and amputations.

Now all this might well be unfair but it is undoubtedly the perspective many Britons have. Now no doubt Dr. Williams shakes his learned head at such ignorance but as leader of the Church of England he should have been aware of it. Remarks such as these from the most powerful Churchman in England are going to have several side effects. They feed the idea that instead of Britain becoming one society, regardless of race or creed, living under a set of clearly defined secular laws, the horrors of 'multi-culturalism' with new Britons living in their own secluded ghettos and obedient to only their own culture, will only get worse.

Second, people in the C of E are asking why the leading Christian is asking for the creed of another faith to be absorbed into our laws. I'm not a Christian and thus that aspect doesn't bother me so much, but I'm surprised at the Archbishop's naivety in opening himself up to that one.

Third. Views such as this are an embarrassment to a government which is trying to find its way through the delicate mire of multi cultural Britain and Gordon Brown has already had to take steps to distance himself from them.

All in all, this is an issue on which a wise Archbishop should have sought very detailed council before opening his mouth. The fact that he didn't, and that he is 'shocked' by the responses he got really does make me wonder if he is fit for the job.