The joys of Parliamentary privilege

The freedom to say pretty much what you want (while staying within the arcane Parliamentary restrictions, of course) at Westminster can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand it allows people to speak freely, bring to light goings-on which may otherwise remain hidden from public scrutiny, and can be quite entertaining. But the politicians must be careful what they say, even when they're in a position to speak freely. Tory Health Minister Simon Burns provided a splendid example today of why politicians, in the main, obfuscate, duck direct questions, waffle – all without saying anything of any great substance or answering whatever question they've actually been asked.

This startling piece of frankness, a completely fatuous comment made about members of 38 Degrees (a group of people from all walks of life who have come together online with the intention of letting the voices of the electorate be heard, thereby applying pressure on politicians to listen to them or at least be accountable for not doing so), betrays what some politicians evidently feel about the people they're supposed to represent. The other side of that blade I mentioned, the one which betrays an MP's real thoughts when (s)he temporarily forgets that the cameras are never off, can really cut quite nastily.

I'm a member of 38 Degrees, a group which has had some success in applying, for example, pressure on the government over the proposed National Forest sell-off, mainly through huge numbers of people signing petitions or writing to MPs. Far from being zombies, members are consulted on which issues they'd like the group to focus, and how we feel about the layers within those issues. What's important to us, what isn't, where we think government is right or wrong, or has no choice. Only when there's a clear mandate from such consultations is any specific campaign launched. It's another example of the force for democracy that the internet is rapidly becoming – giving people the means to voice their opinion, and the strength to make that opinion count for something.

Evidently the Minister thinks us plebs are not capable of deciding if government policy is wrong, even if they're broadly backed up, as in this example, by the medical profession which the proposed changes will affect. The people who pay for and use the NHS having a say in how the representatives they elected to manage it do so? That just won't do. Clearly we're just a mindless mob, doing what we're told by pesky, annoying, big mouthed, interfering busy-bodies who just won't let the government get on with it unquestioningly. Tut tut.

Well, Mr Burns (how appropriate – "Smithers, release the hounds..."), get used to it. You're there to represent us, not merely to resent us, and as previous administrations have found out to their cost, if you don't like the electorate having their voices heard, and are happy to dismiss us so casually, you'll find the bill for your arrogance waiting for you at the next general election.

Coogan et al are holding a mirror up to all of us

Steve Coogan's evidence, given at the Leveson Inquiry yesterday, was compelling and damning in equal measure. Compelling because it was, to be fair to him (after he presented himself as a man merely doing his job, saying that fame is a side-effect of what he does, that he'd never promoted himself as a personality per se), an unusual experience to hear him speak as himself. His argument does indeed hold water – how little we hear him speak with the voice of anyone other than Alan Partridge or one of his other characters. It's not Steve Coogan he's selling. So we got a short glimpse into how he sees both himself and the industry he's in.

And damning because, though most people who find themselves well-known through working in 'showbiz' must understand that there will be unwanted attention, he revealed some of the very worst excesses of tabloid journalists in their hunt for 'news' on celebrities. Now it could of course be argued that, at the time the invasions of privacy he spoke of were happening, he'd brought it on himself by having an affair. Personally I reject that view because he's never set himself up as some guardian of, or commentator on, moral standards or behavioural mores, so certainly cannot be accused of hypocrisy. I also personally believe that what happens within (and outside of) a couple's own marriage is a private matter for them, unless they're actively opening it to public scrutiny, as many 'celebs' do, or telling everybody else how to conduct theirs.

That's why it's so important that this whole tawdry mess be unravelled and the perpetrators of what are, frankly, crimes, are brought to justice. Regardless of whether you think he deserved to have his bins rifled through, his phone tapped and to be duped by tabloid reporters into confirming what they already thought, there can be no argument that his then wife was an entirely innocent victim of the whole thing. Bad enough that her husband had cheated on her, she then had to find out, as Coogan put it, 'all the lurid details'.

I wrote on these pages that the News of the World's activities and closure would doubtless not be the full story, but exactly how commonplace it seems to have been, how entrenched in the tabloid press as an accepted means of getting dirt on famous people, is truly astonishing, to me at least. It now seems that the figure quoted early on in this whole affair by Milly Dowler's parents' lawyer of around 7,000 people having had their phones hacked, for example, was startlingly accurate, with the police's own figure coming out at around 6,700. Coogan called the day the NotW closed 'a great day for the press', and railed against the people who came after him, naming some of them publicly in his evidence.

So it is, to those of us who don't like that kind of 'journalism' and don't consume it, extremely gratifying to see the harshest possible spotlight turned on those responsible for producing it. But I can't help thinking about something else I've said on here too. Given how many millions of people do read the celeb gossip mags, do watch TV on the same stuff, did read the News of the World, should we really be surprised that this goes on to feed that appetite? I was shocked at the scale and depth of it, but not that it happens in the first place.

And how ironic that the inquiry into those activities is itself now being lapped up by the public, with the focus of the media of course on the famous people lining up to give evidence. Like opposing mirrors in a corridor, this whole thing reflects itself back to infinity, with us standing right in the middle, watching ourselves get smaller and smaller and smaller. With any luck, Leveson will shatter one of them, and our society will end up with a much clearer view of itself.

I'm an ordinary TV viewer... get me out of here

I can just about see it with X Factor for example, providing you put to one side the preposterous notion that it's a talent show and accept it merely as 'entertainment'. Strictly Come Dancing too, OK, I can see why people like that. But this is both depressingly inevitable and at the same time utterly incomprehensible to me. What the bloody hell do people get out of watching this bilge?

I had the misfortune, for the first time, to catch most of an episode this week. It will be the last time I do. I simply cannot see what's entertaining about watching Z-list celebs, predictably a mélange of on-the-career-down-slopers, people who were famous 30 years ago and people I've never heard of in the first place, subjecting themselves to the ignoble tasks demanded of them by this show. What is anybody, anybody getting out of watching some poor, desperate, overweight, too-many-facelifts luvvie sod dunk their face into a writhing box of cockroaches? I simply can't understand it.

And there's always one person on it who disappoints you by going on there. What the hell does Willie Carson need to demean himself on this for, given the career he had and the esteem in which he's still held by the horseracing community? He can do himself no good on there - he's betting his dignity and it's not a bet he can win on this vehicle.

I also thought that the days of using live animals to create entertainment were largely behind us, so why is it acceptable to watch them eaten alive, crushed, smacked aside, whatever, simply because they're invertebrates? Are the same people who watch this also campaigning against fox hunting? Or telling the Spaniards they can't fight bulls? Morally, what's the difference? Do the producers of TV programmes now get to decide which animals can be disposed of for sport and which cannot?

Throw in those insufferable, smug gits Ant and Dec, and you've got a show which pretty much ticks all the boxes that dictate which TV I avoid. It need only feature contestants sporting Palace shirts as some kind of unspeakable, ersatz uniform, and be sponsored by the latest off-shoot of a mobile phone company (probably some ghastly all-mushroom ready-meal outfit), and you'd have the full bloody set.

But over 11 million people can't be wrong. Can they?

Warsi - what is she good for?

An interesting piece in the Telegraph from Tory chairman Baroness Warsi recently which has prompted some fairly vociferous comment from the British Humanist Association. It's here if you particularly care. What bothers me most about this is not her florid and I'm sure quite admirable sentiments on inter-faith communication. No worries there. Remembering though that she is a Cabinet minister, and while in opposition held the post of Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion and Social Action, she should really know better than to exclude people without faith quite so completely. A cohesive society should surely, after all, include everybody.

Thing is, she does know better, but she's got form in this area. She's not forgetting us, she's basically leaving us out deliberately because we're apparently not worthy of consideration. Consider her comments at the Conservative conference in 2009 when she called secular people 'intolerant and illiberal', or her speech to Church of England bishops in Oxford in 2010, in which she claimed that a “vocabulary of secularist intolerance” exists. She also said that, “those who are religiously observant are more likely to volunteer and give than their non-believing or non-practicing counterparts.” This is, of course, bunkum, by why let an irritating thing like the facts get in the way of telling your audience what they want to hear?

A person in such a position of authority, and part of an elected government, albeit one elected by a minority, should not be so quick to not only alienate but actively dismiss a significant percentage of the electorate. She would certainly do well to remember that the Big Society her party's PM is so keen on looks quite a lot smaller if you strip people out of it who have no religion. She's evidently only worrying about what religious people of one stripe are saying to those of another. Though she may perhaps wish it were otherwise, we atheists are still at least allowed to vote. I hope she thinks about that before she demeans us again so readily in future.

Jim fixed it for him

My friend Mike, a better writer in his sleep, I suspect, than I ever will be even in my better efforts, has placed what I assume will be a one-off entry prompted by the recent passing of Sir Jimmy Saville.

It can be found here, and I strongly urge anybody who enjoys good writing and a bit of nostalgia to give it a read.

Do you think Mail writers wonder why people hate their paper?

The Daily Mail has long been the standard bearer for the very worst, the absolute worst of right wing, intolerant, bigoted, out of touch prejudice peddled as 'old fashioned values'. Far worse than the Sun, because it pretends to be something it isn't, by disguising its vitriol in a more formal tone than is used by the red tops and trying to come across as reasoned and intelligent.

But this article is a new low. At first it appears to be a condemnation of the racism which is still occasionally heard at football matches in Spain. I was vaguely surprised at the tone of the first few paragraphs. But the last lines give away the writer's intent. Basically, all he appears to be doing with that first part is setting up this pay-off, enabling him to say that we're so much better off than those really nasty Spaniards that a couple of black footballers allegedly being racially abused by fellow professionals is nothing to get too worked up about, that they should merely have 'got on with the game'.

I don't even really know where to begin with this. It's a statement of such mind-boggling nastiness that blind fury is the only reasonable response. How the hell does he think such progress in eradicating racial abuse from our stadia has been made in the first place? By tolerating the 'mild' stuff? Those last two sentences absolutely epitomise everything I hate about this disgusting, abhorrent rag. "I know you feel insulted," he says. No you don't, Mr Doughty - only a black person can have any concept of what it must feel like, and though I don't know for absolutely certain, I'd be stunned if the writer of this tripe is black. Only the fictional paradigm of the cowed, downtrodden, Princess Di-loving, white 'Anglo-Saxon' middle Englishman that the Mail so assiduously asserts comprise our population could agree with this, let alone write it.

'Right Minds' the section is called, edited by one Simon Heffer, who should be ashamed of himself for allowing this to appear under his name. "There are worse things to complain about," says Mr Doughty, rather giving himself away. Right minds? Extreme right minds acting as apologists for alleged racism, disguised as reasonable argument, is the truth of the matter. Mr Doughty has chosen to publish this piece before investigations into the allegations have even been completed, so clearly feels that the alleged victims have not been 'abused', regardless of what's actually been said to them.

Fortunately, plenty of people (myself among them, though it meant registering with the Mail Online in order to comment on their articles, which has resulted in me feeling rather filthy and ashamed, as if I'd been caught doing something unspeakable by my mum) have vented their disgust at the thing, clearly showing that word has got round of what's been written. I hope (though have no faith in this happening) that the response of considerably more 'right-minded' people to his piece will make Mr Doughty, and his editor, think a bit more carefully before publishing such bile again in future.

Manner of Gaddafi's death is difficult to feel too sorry about

The 'liberation' of Libya, to use the interim administration's own term, and the resultant capture and on-the-spot execution of the despot Muammar Gadaffi, has been featured in the news as much for the way in which he was killed as for the significance of the revolution itself.

Firstly, I must state clearly that from an ethical point of view it would have been better for justice to be seen to be done 'properly', in an open and fair trial. Of course, the sort of summary justice dealt out to him is not the way to deal with a captured and unresistant prisoner. But the various calls for an investigation by other governments, including those who have been happy to lend military support to the rebellion, rather stick in the craw.

Gadaffi died at the hands of his own people. A people he'd subjugated for 42 years. A people who lived in fear of him, thousands of whom he'd allegedly imprisoned, tortured or killed in the manner typical of tyrants like him. Any trial he'd undergone would have inevitably ended in his death anyway, so what exactly would it have been held for? Would a trial have been put on so that justice be done, or would it only have been to make it OK to kill him, make it official, that with the sanction of a judge his execution would somehow be different? He'd still be dead one way or the other and any trial would have felt, to me, like a salve on the consciences of the states who'd helped overthrow him, killing many of his supporters in the process.

He'd also have been given the opportunity to turn it into the kind of grandstanding farce that Saddam Hussein's trial often degenerated into. And look how his execution turned out - the clamour to kill him, while understandable, was so hysterical that in his last moments that evil, murderous bastard somehow became the dignified one, the only one to come out of the process with any credit. So any judicially approved killing would not necessarily have been much better.

And where were the howls of protest at the execution of other dictators in the past? Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife, for example, were executed after a show trial so hastily arranged and carried out that he was dead before the TV cameras could get there to cover the trial, let alone the execution. Not a peep from other governments at the time, as I recall.

So, as I say, I entirely understand that to make the process legitimate, to lend weight to a new regime's judiciary, to see justice administered ethically and to avoid lowering themselves to his murderous level, it would of course have been much better for him to stand trial. But I find it difficult to feel any sympathy for him, and I find it even more difficult to find any credibility in the clamour for an investigation coming from outside Libya. I hope the Libyan people can now be left in peace to find their own way forward, and that they do so peacefully, without the societal divisions that are so clear in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The truth will out. Eventually.

I've written on here before that, for Joe Public at least, there is no power but the vote. Happily, today showed that this is no longer necessarily true, thanks to the power of the internet. As much as it may be used to look at pictures your gran would disapprove of, try to scam innocent people out of money, sell complete tat or waste time by laying out the minutiae of one's life in Proustian detail to an uninterested public, it can also be capable of catalysing great things.

The Commons website which allows people to set up favoured issues which they'd like to see debated, and which, should they pass 100,000 signatures in support, is instrumental in getting those issued debated in Parliament, allowed the reopening of the Hillsborough Stadium disaster debate.

Today, after 22 years of campaigning by the families of the 96 innocents who lost their lives, Theresa May stood in Parliament and promised full disclosure to the Hillsborough Independent Panel of all the documents relating to Cabinet discussion of the disaster in its aftermath. That disclosure should reveal the full truth of the causes, the reaction of police and fans, and the scandalous, shocking rubbing of salt into gaping wounds by a press intent on demonising those supporters, those victims. The families will, hopefully, finally get the full story and have their dead loved ones (and all the other Liverpool supporters there) fully vindicated, as they indeed were by the Taylor Report.

Over 139,000 people signed this particular petition in a short space of time, giving sharp focus to the strength of feeling that's still there, and the number of people to whom this was important. As an example of power, some power at any rate, being put back into the hands of the people, this was outstanding. It also allowed Parliament to show that it hasn't completely forgotten that it's there to serve the electorate, not the other way round, and that it can act as one and do the right thing.

A more comprehensive run-down of the debate can be found here. One poster rightly says that it's a shame that more MPs couldn't be bothered to turn up for a debate which was so important to the public, but I suspect many of them knew that which way it was going. Had there been continued resistance from the Government I'm pretty sure there would have been a lot more there. And the families of many of the dead were in the public gallery to see this important step towards justice for the 96. All in all, a good day for British justice and democracy, I reckon, and it ain't too often you can say that.

Another day to be grateful for

Another wedding on Saturday, and once again I felt fortunate to witness a joyous occasion for two people cut from the very finest cloth. A bright blue sky, entirely cloudless, and unseasonably warm. A reception in a beautiful old manor house, bits of which dated back to the 12th century, right on the banks of the Thames in one of its more beautiful stretches. And, once again, a crowd of good people you felt happy to be part of getting cheerfully drunk and throwing some shapes. (Not me, of course. Everyone knows I don't dance, and in any case I retired to my room with a cocoa at 9pm to read some poetry and meditate. *cough*)

Anyway, here's to you indeed, Mrs (and Mr) R. All good health and happiness to both of you.

How to react to Knox's freedom?

Hmm. The Knox/Kercher case (for that's what it's become, despite the fact that there were two co-accused in the dock with her, one of whom, her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, has also been acquitted – you'd never know this from the headlines). It's extremely difficult to know how to feel about it. The dichotomy in the media portrayals of her by supporters and opponents has been revealing insofar as, I suspect, the truth of her character lies somewhere in the middle. She and Sollecito were, in the eyes of the media, condemned as guilty from the moment they were photographed canoodling just a week after the murder. Perhaps this condemned them in the eyes of the Italian police as well because, it seems, part of the success of her appeal was that they appeared, during their investigations, to look for clues that fitted their supposition of guilt, rather than objectively consider all evidence as it emerged. They also, in a move which is enough in itself to introduce 'reasonable doubt' to the case, completely botched the handling of the forensic evidence. (I heard on Radio 5 for example, that one of the pieces of evidence recovered from the murder scene, which became central to the prosecution's case, was not put in a sealed bag for 42 days after it was collected. What the hell???)

But aside from the handling of the case itself, there was also the weird behaviour of the accused, manna from heaven to the news media. It does to most people, I imagine, seem odd that Knox and Sollecito behaved apparently indifferently, even oddly, under questioning, but that does not make them murderers. They'll live the rest of their lives, whether they're innocent or not, guilty in the eyes of millions because of that one photo of them which we've all seen.

The truth is, no matter that the police seemed to fuck up the investigation, no matter that you can interpret evidence either way, no matter that it's all too easy to read guilt in oddness, no matter the vehement protestations of innocence or assertions of guilt, there are probably only three people on the planet who know if Knox and Sollecito are guilty – themselves and Rudy Guede, who's still in prison for the murder and whose own appeal failed some time ago. Anybody else who 'knows' is likely deluding themselves. All we can do is hope that the appeals court has got things right, that the murderer is behind bars, that innocents are free. So I hope Knox and Sollecito are indeed innocent, but not because I care about them one way or the other specifically, other than in the abstract sense of wanting justice all round of course. I hope they're innocent because the friends and family of Meredith Kercher, themselves victims of this appalling crime (who have rightly criticised the fact that the victim herself seems to have become a forgotten footnote in the whole thing), are now again being punished themselves, this time with the possibility that two of the murderers of their loved one have walked free.

That is reason enough to hope that justice has indeed been done, because their suffering must be indescribable, and it can only have been worsened by what's gone on in court. However little difference it will make to them, at least if Knox and Sellicito are innocent, it would mean their additional suffering won't have been for nothing.