Questions to be answered over Damian Green

There are serious questions which need urgent answers after the arrest of Conservative Immigration spokesman Damian Green on Thursday. There is no doubt that he has discomfited the government on a number of occasions over recent months, with information known to be leaked from the Home Office. Green was arrested on suspicion of 'aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office', held for 9 hours and released on police bail - due to face further questioning in February.



It is clear that Green got his information from a Home Office 'mole' - information which the government clearly did not want published - and that forms the substance of the charges.

But this raises very serious questions about the ability of the Opposition to do its job and the role of the police in such matters. There are issues which any opposition sees as being in the public interest which governments will try to suppress - primarily because its not in their interest rather than the public's. Gordon Brown is saying that government ministers were not involved in any way in the police decision to raid Green's parliamentary office and his two homes.

This may well be true. But I think it needs to be clear to everyone what did motivate the police action and exactly why, without any hiding behind some 'compromising future legal proceeedings' bullshit. The police need to come clean about what evidence they acted on in this case and who initiated the arrests.

We do need to be certain, regardless of our choice of governments, that democratic rights of Her Majesty's opposition are not being hindered and threatened by a wrongful use of police intervention.

Picture of the week

Remember him? Cheney's puppet? The guy who used to pretend he was running America until Obama stepped in and relieved him of a job for which he was hopelessly out of his depth? Well, he's obviously decided to go back to what he clearly does best

Has the bottom fallen out of Cameron's boat?

A few months ago, Gordon Brown was on the ropes...no, worse,he was half way through the ropes heading for a knock out at the next general election. His handling of the government was criticised, local election results were dreadful for Labour and the knives were out. David Cameron, on the other hand, was basking in the sure knowledge that he was Prime Minister-in-waiting, the British public certain to hand him the next election on a platter. The Tories were riding high in the polls. In a thriving economy, Cameron's arguments about Labour overspending and how his Tories could match the government's spending plans on necessary health and educational improvements without resorting to more borrowing - in fact robbing Peter to pay Paul - had met sympathetic ears.

Then came the credit crunch and the failure of the banks. Out of a financial disaster came Gordon Brown's hopes of salvation. Although the public blamed the government for some mistakes - not least the shilly shallying over the future of Northern Rock - it has bought Labour's contention that the problem is world-wide and needs extraordinary financial leadership. And, amazingly, despite being the party of government, and the Prime Minister being the man who has presided over Britain's fiscal policies for 11 years, it was to Brown the public has turned for leadership.

Suddenly Gordon was in his element. More, he was bestriding the globe like a financial colossus, hectoring, nagging, bullying governments - and especially America's - to follow his lead and spend their way out of trouble. Incredibly the United States Republican government has flirted with a form of socialism, baling out Wall Street to keep the banking system alive, intervening to pump money into the economy - policies which America would never have contemplated once.



And suddenly Cameron looks out of touch, caught off guard. He has had to do a series of U turns on what Conservative policy now is. They wont try and match the governments spending plans, they don't believe in spending our way out of a recession. The trouble is it's not clear what they do believe in. The situation seems to have caught them completely on the hop and at present Cameron is floundering.



I'm not for a minute suggesting that the Conservatives are now a busted flush. But certainly their serene stroll to power which not too long ago seemed inevitable is no longer the case. The budget of Alistair darling yesterday is a mind-boggling gamble which, if it fails, could plunge Britain into the level of recession not seen in decades. But if it works and the financial repayment strategy works to plan we could see, come the next election, one of the greatest revivals since Lazarus.

Is the blame-game a knee jerk response?

The saga of tragic little Baby P. whose hideous treatment and eventual death at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend and a lodger, has been front page news for a week or more now and I don't intend to again detail the horrors of the case here.

But much is being made of the fact that it happened in the same London borough of Haringey as a previous front page case, that of little Victoria Climbie, 8 years ago.

Already the knives are out for the social services staff in Haringey, and not least for Sharon Shoesmith, the Director of Childrens Services in the borough. It is being said that for two such horror stories to happen in the same borough must imply major failings in the social services set-up there.



Well it may be true. Certainly the case is more shocking even than the Climbie case because the little boy was on the 'on watch' register and had been seen by countless officials and a paediatrician, all of whom, it appears, were misled to an amazing degree considering the extent of the little boy's injuries.

But we have to look at the complete picture. Haringey is demographically a very mixed borough, reasonably prosperous in the west, and pretty deprived in the eastern part. How many successful interventions have social workers made in the last eight years? I would imagine that there are parts of that borough where they are constantly on their toes.

Ms Shoesmith as Director of Children's Services has come under savage attack from the media and there is some pressure for her to resign her post. If that were to happen, it might satisfy the knife wielding critics, but would the children of Haringey be any safer. As soon as the knives came out for Ms Shoesmith, an amazing show of support came from nearly every head teacher in the borough.

"She has done an amazing job in turning this borough round ..there are no schools in special measures in Haringey" were a couple of the remarks in support.

There are, indeed, serious questions to be answered over social worker Nevres Kemal who claims that her concerns for some children in Haringey were ignored by her bosses and that she 'blew the whistle' on the Baby P case 6 months before the child died...and there does indeed seem to have been intense efforts by Haringey Council to legally have her silenced and the plot thickened this week when it transpired that a letter sent by Ms Kemal to Patricia Hewitt, the then secretary of state who passed it on at a time when two government departments were changing roles and the letter appears to have fallen down a bureaucratic hole in the middle. The classic cock-up theory - 'if the worst thing can manifest itself out of confusion, it will'

So there are serious questions to answer. But before social workers or their Director are roasted on a spit to pacify some media inspired sense of outrage, there should be a full and comprehensive public enquiry to ascertain if, as Ms Shoesmith said this week 'Sadly if parents are intent on killing their children it is very difficult to prevent them' or whether there are still fundamental flaws in the way the department of social services in Haringey operates. If there are, then at that point changes should be made - possibly of personnel as well as procedure. But until then, I believe hard working people with terrible decisions to make daily should not be scapegoated on the altar of some misplaced sense of righteous justification.

The ultimate manifestation of the American obsession?

Yesterday, an incident took place in St.Johns, Arizona, which shocked even local police and townspeople in a country which has become inured to terrible gun violence.

An EIGHT year old boy calmly and methodically shot and killed his father and a lodger in the house with a .22 calibre rifle. A case of a child doing something in spontaneous haste? Oh no. The child used a single action hunting rifle from which he had to eject the shell each time he fired - and he shot each man at least four times.



To the average mind, this kind of behaviour by an eight year old child is inconceivable. It seems the conduct of a monster. But is it all part of the twisted psychology linked to America's obsession with the gun? We have seen so many occasions in the past where teenagers have acquired a gun and wreaked havoc in the shopping mall or on the college campus and, in every case, some investigation has gone on into their disturbed past and then America has gone on just as before.

This little boy's father was a hunter. He taught his young son to shoot almost as soon as he could walk. And he taught him pretty well, it would seem. The kid was unerringly accurate. The child was taught to kill prairie dogs when he was very young and one wonders what his father's attitudes actually were to shooting anything. Now heaven forbid that I should blame the victim in the case of a murder but - and this is rhetorical since I don't have the answers - was the parent's priority all wrong.

Was the child taught that being able to shoot a gun was manly and macho? That being accurate and deadly was important? Was he also taught that a gun was something you had to respect and use to kill only when it was necessary? Did his father talk to him gently about the sanctity of human life and how the weapon he held in his hand was so lethal that he had to think twice three times every time he pointed it at something ? Was his father the kind of man to get that message across or was that perceived as wet, sentimental woman's work?

And what happened with the maternal side of his upbringing. The parents had recently divorced and the father awarded custody. That's unusual. What kind of influence did his mother have? Did he hate his father over the marriage break up. Maybe we'll never know.

But a tiny child now stands accused of the murder - premeditated and cold-blooded - of his father and another man. Is this the manifestation of the ultimate horror...that American children have such ease of access to guns and so little understanding of the finality of their use? That a gun is a kind of fantasy toy that you read about in the comics..something that takes away all the troubles in your life?

The new President-elect is concerned about the degree of gun ownership in American homes and attitudes by some towards their use. But there is precious little he can do about them faced with the tough lobby of the National Rifle Association and the terrific amount of money poured in by pressure groups to maintain this perverse interpretation of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.

If it is impossible to take the guns away from American homes, as seems the case, maybe when he becomes President, Obama could spearhead a campaign for much tighter controls and maybe classes in infant schools to press home the message of how lethal a gun is. But I suspect it will all fall on deaf ears and I fear that some American children - like the little boy in Arizona - will continue to see the gun as the answer to all their problems without fully understanding the enormity of what they've done.

A time for hope and renewal

Well to my absolute joy, the US election did produce a watershed, not a wash-out (see previous post) and what a stunning result with Senator Obama winning by a landslide.

America can be an amazing country in its ability to transform and metamorphose virtually overnight. Speaking personally - and I don't think I'm alone - I'm a 'foreigner' who, as of this morning, has renewed his love affair with the United States after eight years of almost despising the country, politically. After eight years of the squalid Bush administration where America's reputation throughout the world reached the pits, a Kenyan American black man, by one stunning victory, has changed that picture in a way that is little short of miraculous.



It makes me wish that Martin Luther King could have been alive to see this day. I'm sure he would have been very proud. I accept that Obama does not come from the former slave population of America, but from a mixed Kenyan and American parentage, but that's really a nit pick. His skin colour alone, not that many years ago, would have ruled him out of any contention for the highest office in the land.

And he motivated black voters in a way never seen before AND he achieved success with convincing the white electorate too. It is a stunning achievement in a country which, only 40 years ago, needed anti race discrimination laws forced upon it, where children were bussed to segregated schools, where black civil rights workers were set upon and killed.

There is a danger that too much will now be expected from a man who has been elevated to the role of America's - and the world's - Messiah. That's only natural given the hype but it is a major danger. Winning could be Obama's finest hour and the rest could all be downhill unless real change is seen in the first 100 days of his administration.

Just a word for John McCain. I think he is a good man but I'm relieved that he lost. I'm relieved not so much because of his ramshackle campaign -forced upon him to some extent by trying to be a 'new' Republican and distancing himself from Bush - but because he IS a Republican and, regardless of his own views, he would have carried the luggage of die hard Republicanism into the White House..and frankly the world needs a break from that...and it's got one - in style.

Obama has inherited a nation fraught by problems in the economy and with withdrawing from the Iraq mess that Bush created. How he handles both in the first 100 days will be a measuring stick of his executive qualities, hitherto untested. I hope too, that an Obama presidency may give a fresh impetus to resolving the Palestinian problem. I believe Obama can, and will, take a step back from the old Israeli-American bear hug which gave the US little room for manoeuvre and start taking a more objective position in negotiations. I don't expect the US to abandon Israel, and nor should it, but neither should the opportunities for a peaceful resolution to this issue be hampered by the US always being seen to be in Israel's pocket.

Amyway time will tell what kind of a president Obama will make. For now I will simply glory in the capacity America has for self renewal after eight years of ignominy, and last night they did it in style! God bless America!!!