One Strike I Would Never Support

I'm with George Orwell on this one. Orwell remarked in Homage to Catalonia, "when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on."

Over the last ten years, British police officers have received the equivalent of a 39% increase in their pay. Whatever they have wanted - new equipment, new more draconian laws, a practical veto over criminal justice policy - they have been given. And now it isn't getting its own way, the Police Federation, perhaps one of the most reactionary organisations in the country, is threatening to try and overturn the ban on strike action by police officers.

But were it not for the ban on strike action that followed the Police Strikes of 1918 and 1919, the Police Federation wouldn't even exist. It was set up as what was effectively a 'company union' in direct response to the emergence of the National Union of Police and Prison Officers, which started to campaign for better pay (which was poor and inconsistent) at a time of international labour militancy. The police union was outlawed and the Federation has enjoyed its special status ever since.

The last time the Federation tried to rattle the government with the threat of overturning the strike ban was over potential criminal charges for firearms officers - yet another claim for special treatment and immunity from prosecution.

There may be some on the Left who believe that any strike action should be supported (witness the support from Respect for the thugs in the Prison Officers Association), but this is just sabre-rattling by a bosses' union. The Federation knows that overturning the ban would mean the end of its monopoly as the representative body for the lower ranks.

Beware of Lockheed

Do you want an arms company collecting senstive details about you?

Trust in the government's ability to safeguard senstitive information is at an all time low, following the disappearance of the child benefit data for 25 million people that was lost in the post by HM Revenue and Customs and the increasing number of computer discs that seem to have gone missing.

The only positive outcome of the HMRC fiasco is that hopefully it will scupper once and for all the government's ID card scheme, but with ever more sensitive information being collected by the state, do we really want data about everyone in the UK being collected in the next Census in 2011 by an international arms company?

Lockheed Martin is one of the shortlisted contractors to provide data capture and storage services for the 2011 Census, but the majority of its business is with the American Department of Defense and other US government agencies. They produce missiles, naval systems and land mines, as well as providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnnaissance services. Most worrying is their claim to deliver 'integrated threat information' to the US military by combining and analysing a widde range of intelligence information from around the world.

With Lockheed Martin involved, people in the UK will not believe that their Census submissions will be safe from being incorporated into these systems, and this is likely to harm the reliability of the 2011 Census.

A new campaign, Census Alert, has started an online petition calling for a halt to the involvement of Lockheed Martin in the 2011 Census.

This is one petition that's defintely worth signing.

Are the attacks on Lee Jasper just dirty politics?

The Evening Standard has kept up its attacks on Lee Jasper, race advisor to London Mayor Ken Livingston, over allegations that he influenced the London Development Agency over £2.5 million of funding paid to organisations with which he had strong links. The paper alleges that Jasper is at the centre of a network of groups controlled by by himself or his close friends that have received large sums of public money in return for little or no work. Specifically, it says that:

• Hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money paid to the companies is unaccounted for or has disappeared.

• • Up to £295,000 of this funding is the subject of possible legal action for return of sums from Diversity International, a company controlled by a long-standing friend and business associate of Lee Jasper called Joel O'Loughlin. It received LDA funding for the Diversity Dividend, a web-based tool for London business, even though it allegedly has no expertise in IT and is based in Liverpool. The website does not exist, the company has now gone into liquidation and all the money paid to it has apparently vanished.

• LDA officials had severe doubts about Brixton Base, a "creative training hub" for the black community whose patron is Lee Jasper and whose director is Errol Walters, another of Jasper's friend. Brixton Base has received £287,000 from the LDA over the past two years for "premises" - even though it has occupied an LDA-owned building throughout that time and was charged no rent in the first year. The Evening Standard alleged that the LDA wanted to evict the organisation from its building, but that in an email to the LDA's senior director, Tony Winterbottom, Jasper gave an order to "ensure that this action [the eviction] is withdrawn immediately and ensure I am consulted on all major decisions affecting [Brixton Base]".

• Several of the organisations are based in the same small room at a business centre in Kennington.

• The same people, friends or business associates of Mr Jasper - including Errol Walters and businesswoman and reality TV show star Yvonne Thompson - appear as directors or staff members of each organisation.

The Greater London Authority has refuted the allegations and called upon Andrew Gilligan, the reporter leading the story, to hand over any evidence to the police, saying that his failure to do so suggests that "the allegation is without any substance."

Unsurprisingly, groups like The 1990 Trust, where Jasper was once Director, and Operation Black Vote, run by Jasper's friend Simon Woolley, have launched a counter attack on the Evening Standard. Karen Chouhan of the 1990 Trust has highlighted significant inaccuracies in Gilligan's reports, whilst Woolley has said (rather melodramatically) that the accusations are "an attack on the capital's African, Asian, Caribbean and other minority ethnic communities." Both accuse the paper of using the story to discredit Livingston as part of the coming electoral fight for the London Mayor's office. And certainly the latest attacks are so personal that they suggest an bitter vendetta - include the revelation that Jasper, who earns £117,000 a year, lives in a £90 a week housing association property in Clapham.

The problem for most of us, looking in from the outside, is to separate facts from rhetoric on both sides. Those who have known Lee Jasper for many years would find it hard to believe that Jasper would personally seek to involve himself in corruption - his main interest has always been political, not financial. However, hearing the story for the first time, it's hard to forget that Jasper has always surrounded himself with a coterie that he has protected, and that when Livingston first came to power, many of them ended up in City Hall. That's the problem - there is often a grain of truth in even the most outrageous lie. Certainly, if Gilligan and the Standard have evidence of criminal activity, they should put up or shut up, by passing their dossier to the police. But if they decide to do so, Jasper has to stand down until the case against him is thrown out or taken to court.

As for the idea that attacking Jasper means attacking London's minority communities, there is a grain of truth in this too. I spoke to a friend in one group in Newham that receives LDA funding, on the day the Standard's first story appeared. She was concerned that it would lead to an attitude of greater suspicion towards black-led organisations, which is a real concern. But in spite of the impression that Jasper has fostered over the years, his persona and London's black communities are not interchangeable. Most funders are likely know this, even in the event that there might be an unfair level of extra scutiny given to some organisations in the future, simply on the basis of past association with Lee Jasper.

Indeed, even if you accept the ludicrous idea that there is such a thing as a 'spokesman' for black Londoners, Jasper has long given up any credibility to hold such a role. He has firmly supported the Mayor's staunch defence of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair and defended the police on two issues that continue to anger many black Londoners - stop-and-search, which black communities are around four times more likely to be targeted for than white people, and the introduction of the police DNA database, which will soon encompass around three-quarters of young black men.

Jasper represents a wholly different approach to "anti-racism" from the progressive, community-led politics that once meant there was something resembling an 'anti-racist movement' in Britain. The road he has travelled, largely abandoning work with local communities to stride the corridors of power, has depoliticised the fight against racism, created an 'anti-racism business' rather than a movement, where black communities are clients and where the fortunes and reputations of the 'leaders' are more important than the impact that anti-racism is able to make on the ground.

Lee Jasper is now more like any corporate business leader, liable to hostile briefings from rivals and open to outright attacks from the press at any point. In the rough and tumble, the 'business' is likely to get hurt.

But considering his profile in the past, it's just surprising that it has taken the newspapers so long to turn on Jasper.

I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue

This remains the greatest radio program ever... from the South Bank Show on Humphrey Lyttleton, chairman of 'I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue'. Sadly Samantha had already nipped out with her gentlemen friend when these moments were captured.

Millennium Dome was insolvent from the start

The BBC reported yesterday that National Archive files from the Millennium Commission, which funded the Dome, show that on 28 January 2000 the project had run out of money and was insolvent.

The report also mentions that in 2002 a public consultation on lottery funding concluded that "there is (public) agreement that the (Millennium) Dome was a waste of good causes funds and that this project in itself has tarnished the supply of funds to large capital projects."

On Wednesday, Third Sector magazine reported mounting anger over losses of lottery good causes money to the 2012 Olympics is being fuelled by the Government's refusal to pledge that there will be no further lottery raids. Olympics minister Tessa Jowell has met third sector groups associated with the four lottery distributors but has so far declined to give this promise.

Some things never change.

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum *

Radio 4's Today programme this morning followed up a story in yesterday's Times, which reported that the daughter of a British imam is under police protection after receiving death threats for converting to Christianity. The woman has been hiding for 15 years but only recently placed under guard by the police after the most recent threats on her life from one of her brothers.

A spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Britain made a fair attempt at condemning this appalling situation. He pointed out that British Muslims are not exempt from UK laws forbidding murder and threatening behaviour, do not live under sharia law and that even in a country that practices sharia, it would be for courts rather than gangs of thugs to pass judgement (not a great deal of comfort, admittedly, but better than nothing).

Today presenter John Humphries tried, as he often does, to imply that this story reveals something particularly sinister within Islam, which is clearly not backed by the evidence. In minority communities across the country, where identification with strong religious beliefs in Islam, Sikhism or Hinduism are commonplace, where religion is what Marx called "the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress", similar cases occur with depressing regularity. Bounty hunters track down young men and mainly young women who refuse to enter into forced marriages, or have partners from outside their parents' faith, or who abandon their faith altogether. It's not that Islam is unique in this respect. All faiths have elements that are equally guilty and all are as bad as each other in failing to stop those resonsible. This includes Christianity - the Church of England may be as non-threatening as a children's teddy bear, but try asking those in hiding from sectarian gangs because of cross-denominational relationships in northern Ireland whether the Christian religion is as tolerant and peace-loving as it is often claimed to be.

What is most surprising about this story is perhaps its most obviously missing element. At a time when the police have committed to take a far more robust approach to tackling violence against women, why aren't all those responsible for hounding this young woman and threatening her life currently under arrested and facing trial and imprisonment?

* To such heights of evil are men driven by religion - Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

Inside source in Menezes investigation?

Did Met have inside source in Menezes investigation?

As The Times reports today, rumours and allegations are rife about the sudden resignation of Andy Hayman, the senior Metropolitan Police officer with responsibility for anti-terrorism.

Hayman was criticised recently by the Independent Police Complaints Commission for briefing journalists about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Tube station in 2005. He provided information that he allegedly failed to also pass on to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair and the IPCC recommended that Hayman faced disciplinary action.

Now, the latest allegations against Hayman are that he sent 400 calls and text messages to a female member of staff at the IPCC at the time that it was finalising the Stockwell 2 report. The IPCC has said that the contact was not work-related and that the unnamed staff member has moved on to work at the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Having announced his retirement, Hayman cannot be disciplined. Theoretically, the Metropolitan Police Authority could refuse to accept his resignation, but it has proved completely supine when dealing with senior Met officers in the past. And the IPCC's statement seems to suggest that Hayman had been having an affair, which of course the media love. But there is something uncomfortable about this story and saying so runs the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist.

• Why is it impossible to believe that sending repeated phone calls and text messages to a member of staff in the IPCC could very likely be to gain information on a hugely controversial case that could have a direct impact on Hayman and his boss Sir Ian Blair?

• Why should anyone take at face-value the relevance of the IPCC's assertion that the "member of staff, who was not an investigator, had no involvement or contact with the IPCC’s two Stockwell inquiries" or that "we have satisfied ourselves as far as we can that there was no improper sharing of information"? Anyone who has ever had any contact with staff at the IPCC will know that, like most organisations, rumour is commonplace within its Holborn headquarters and that inside information regularly leaks out to other staff. Despite the security over the Stockwell reports, people in the IPCC knew what was in it well before publication, which is why details were leaked to the press. Why not also directly to the Met Police?

• Why is it impossible to believe that MI5 had an insider - one of its officers or at the very least a paid informer - in the IPCC because of the controversy over the Menezes case? Why is it beyond the realms of possibility that Hayman, who led the Met's Specialist Operations and was in regular contact with MI5 in his role as the senior anti-terrorism chief, was being passed information by a security services contact?

• Why is it also impossible to believe that Hayman has been pushed into retirement though an engineered 'sex scandal' to prevent him facing disciplinary action? After all, someone was obviously trying to force him out, which is why the investigations into his expense claims were leaked to the press. Why not to prevent Hayman potentially revealing more insider details about the Menezes case - a killing the Met have done as much as it can to keep its secrets about, including obstructing official investigations and briefing reporters with false information?

• How does someone who allegedly had an 'improper work relationship' with the country's most senior anti-terrorism officer end up vetted and working for the Association of Chief Police Officers? Perhaps because it was never considered to be 'improper' by the police and security services?

It sounds crazy, doesn't it? But because this story is tied up with the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, what may otherwise have sounded off-the-wall in other instances shouldn't necessarily be dismissed.

More to come, I'm sure.

Arkansas introduces Apostrophe Act

I can't believe I missed this story from earlier this year. It's a classic.

At a time when the governor of the US state of Arkansas Mike Beebe was busy declaring a number of counties as disaster areas due to thunderstorms and tornadoes, the state Senate was supporting a resolution declaring... “Arkansas’s” as the correct way to write the state’s possessive case.

The Arkansas Senate voted to support the resolution introduced by Rep. Steve Harrelson, a Democrat from Texarkana, who argued that adding apostrophe-s makes sense. Apparently (and you learn something new every day), although Arkansas became a US state in 1836, formalising its spelling was complicated by maps from the time often dropped its final “s.” A resolution by the Arkansas Legislature in 1881 formalised the state’s current spelling and pronunciation, making its final “s” silent.

Harrelson introdued the resolution on behalf of Parker Westbrook, who describes himself as a “longtime practical Arkansas historian.” Westbrook described the Senate vote as a vindication for his long-held view and told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazzette (which does not use the extra 's') that "we’ve waited 126 years for this.”

Harrelson, who apologised repeatedly to legislators about the attention the bill had received, said he had no regrets, although he has no plans to offer additional grammar-related bills in the future.

“I’ll tell you I never expected all the attention I received on this resolution,” Harrelson said. “I did this as a gesture and tribute to a well-known historian. I was glad I did it for him.”

Brick Lane gets its own Tube station?

The Evening Standard has reported today that London Mayor Ken Livingstone's plan to rename Shephard's Bush station on the Metropolitan Line as 'Shepherd's Bush Market' could followed by the renaming of at least four other Tube stations.

The Mayor has indicated that the two Edgware Road stations could also be renamed to end the confusion between them, with the Circle, District and Hammersmith & City line stop changing to Chapel Street and the Bakerloo Line stop becoming Church Street Market. Apparently there is also pressure to rename Aldgate East, the Tube station I spent so much time travelling to and from when I was at university, as 'Brick Lane'. Livingstone has said that he is prepared to look at these suggestions.

So what other changes could be made locally? If West Ham FC finally bugger off to the former Parcelforce site next to West Ham Station (we can but hope), then there is no excuse for not renaming Upton Park as 'Green Street' - not if Brick Lane is a serious proposal. And now that Transport for London has taken over a number of train services under the banner of 'London Overground', Woodgrange Park badly needs renaming (perhaps to 'Romford Road') and Wanstead Park really has to be called 'Wanstead Flats'.

We just have to hope that in 2013, any tube station renaming plans involving 'Stratford Olympia' are fiercely resisted.

Outrage Over A Teddy Bear Called Mohammed

You've got to feel sorry for the British teacher Gillian Gibbons, who has been jailed for 15 days after allegedly insulting Islam's Prophet by allowing her pupils in Sudan to name a teddy bear Muhammed.

Not only is her situation driven by an interpretation of religion that is as twisted as those who believe Harry Potter should be put to death, but Ms Gibbons is also the citizen of a country whose press love a story about the travails of the English abroad, especially when it's a white woman in a Muslim country.

The Sun claims today that "all Britain is outraged by the jailing of this innocent schoolteacher" and speaks of the demonstrations in Sudan in support of the prosecution as "scenes of savagery yesterday [that] sent chills down our spines." It's little wonder that the British government, long a hostage to the tabloids, seems to have expended more energy on Gillian Gibbons than it has on real scenes of savagery, the genocide of 200,000 people in Sudan's Darfur region. Or in helping others trapped in unfair legal proceedings overseas.

Some questions have been rattling around my head over the last couple of days:

Isn't Ms Gibbon's detention less about religion and more about politics, an attempt by the Sudanese government to threaten and discredit international aid workers from countries pressurising it over Darfur? Wasn't it the children that named the teddy bear, not the teacher? Are we to hear that they too have been locked up - or could this be an excuse for the government in Khartoum to close the British international school that allows Muslims and non-Muslims to be educated together?

Moreover, what 'mistake' has Ms Gibbons actually made? As there was no intention to use the toy as a representation of the Prophet, how can naming it Mohammed be idolatrous if there is no idol worship? And if there was no intention to used the toy to cause deliberate offence, how can it be an insult? For years, the Islamic Society in Britain has apparently sold a soft toy made for British Muslim children named Adam the Prayer Bear, named after the prophet Adam. What are they to do now?

Will every British Muslim who looks on this sorry affair with embarrassment now be required to "stand up and be counted" as opponents of extremism, just like after the London bombings and after every story around the world that involves extreme interpretations of Islam?

And will Archbishop Rowan Williams make a statement on 'Jesus Camp' (as he has over the treatment of Gillian Gibbons)? Harry Potter fans everywhere demand to know...