A Word on the Riots

Enough. Enough of the fucking bullshit.

I'm not talking about the riots themselves which are, in case you haven't noticed, over and done with. In fact, contrary to expectation society has not actually collapsed around our ears. Everything is pretty much as it has always been. It's easy to overestimate the scale of events when you're caught up in them - especially when you're scared for your lives and your livelihood. No, the "fucking bullshit" I'm talking about is the reactionary knee-jerk response to all of this.

I can understand how those who've lost love ones and those who've lost their businesses would be absolutely devastated right now. The rest of us? We need to get some perspective. A small minority of people (children and adults of all races) took advantage of the opportunity to steal stuff, smash stuff and engage in violence. This is not about "Broken Britain." This is just one of those things that happen from time to time. It's happened in other countries this summer. It's happened in this country before. It's happened in every society since time began.

I've heard so much crap in the last few days from people who think they're experts in society and its problems. Some people will tell you that this happened because teachers are no longer able to hit kids in schools - actually the last riots we saw on this scale took place in the early 1980s, BEFORE hitting kids in school was banned.

Some people will tell you this is the result of "political correctness" (because these people have completely confused "political correctness" with basic human compassion). In fact, the reason police weren't using water cannons on the rioters had nothing to do with "human rights" or "political correctness," it was a tactical decision based on the fact that water cannons are only effective on fixed crowds, as opposed to fast moving rioters.

I saw the father of a rioter on the news today, complaining that "I can't physically tie [my son] to the bed - you're not allowed. I can't hit him - you're not allowed." The problem isn't that you're "not allowed" to hit kids (and there are plenty who still do - make no mistake). The problem is that there are still too many parents who WANT to hit their kids. The reason these kids don't respect adults is because they get nothing from resentment from them.

Immigration has been blamed again and again by a number of idiots, who are either colour blind or just stupid. Most of the kids involved (and they mostly are just stupid kids, rather than criminal masterminds) were white. And you just need to look at the photos of Muslims and Sikhs defending our streets to see that this isn't some kind of clash of civilisations.

The scariest thing about these riots? It's not the rioters themselves, it's the way that common sense flies out of the window as soon as we get scared. Remember when we started making stupid decisions after 9/11, and ended up being attacked by suicide bombers as a result of a rush towards conflict? Did we learn nothing from that? It's not "namby pamby" to acknowledge that the 12 year olds who appeared in courts today are obviously incapable of bringing down society. It's realism. But the truth is, we're so outraged and scared, we're willing to throw all our previously held principles out of the window.

I've just watched the BBC News and saw a reporter hassling the family of a 17 year old who has gone to prison for his part in the riots. When they understandably told him he had no right to be there, he pointed out that their son had been involved in the riots. "Don't worry," a woman shouted, "we'll be paying for it." And she's right. That family will already be a target within their own community (yeah, more violence, that'll fix everything). And now the BBC have pointed a giant fucking arrow at their house. Well done, BBC. It's bad enough you insisted on calling the rioters "protesters" for three days, implying that waving a placard around is the same as torching cars. Now you're actually assisting in perpetuating the violence.

"They have no right to privacy or anonymity," I hear you cry. "They haven't earned human rights," Paul Daniels claims. I'm not having that. Personally, I believe that in times like this we need to stick by our principles, not abandon them. You don't "earn" human rights and you can't sacrifice them either.

I can understand why people are angry enough to label the rioters "scum" and no doubt some of them deserve that title. But a lot of them were just children, doing stupid things because that's what children do. I see kids like that every day in my job and the truth is, when they eventually realise that there are people who really do give a shit about them, most of them are capable of turning their lives around. I've met kids who were involved in all kinds of trouble with the police, yet they're now off at college or in steady jobs. How do we reach those kids? Not by calling them "scum" and assuming they're all monsters, that's for sure.

Part of the reason we're so shocked by these riots is precisely because this kind of thing doesn't happen very often in this country. We have it pretty good in general. There are fuckloads of problems in our society and some of them played a key part in these riots - kids with no aspirations other than to own stuff are inevitably going to steal stuff when the opportunity presents itself). But when you compare our situations to those in Eastern Europe, Africa, Southern America and Asia, there's no fucking contest. None whatsoever.

Was it an unacceptable situation? Yes. Is it a signal of society's imminent collapse? No. The worst thing we can do is allow these events to frighten us into going back on all the progress we've made in the past few decades. Councils are talking about evicting the families of people who were involved in the riots. That's only going to force MORE people into crime. What about the innocent siblings of those who were involved? What about the elderly relatives? The police are trying to restore the public's faith in their abilities by naming and shaming everyone charged. What good can come out of tarnishing the name of an eleven year old girl for the rest of her life? David Cameron is now going to use these events to push forward his ridiculous "Broken Britain" agenda. The true lessons we should be learning here, about the folly of cutting police budgets and the inability of politicians to react quickly to unexpected events, will be lost.

The riots were not a failure of liberal values. If we put more money into the police, they would have been ended sooner. If we gave kids something to aspire to, rather than teaching them that the only thing that matters is what they own, they wouldn't be going out and nicking stuff. We all talk about "community values" but if you spend your life being hassled by the police and sneered at by your community, why the hell would you owe that community any loyalty?

This is a failure of conservative values - values that teach us that owning nice things is more important than who you are. Values that tell us that keeping taxes down is more important than having properly funded police forces. Values that tell us that anyone who frightens you is "scum" and has sacrificed any right to compassion or understanding.

And now, because people are too poorly educated to understand how we got there, we're just going to get more of the same.

The US Debt Crisis and the Rise of the "Fuck the Poor" Movement

It amounts to this, basically, and if the news programmes could just say this outright instead of unnecessarily complicating it, I think a lot of people would have a clearer idea of what is going on...

The US has something called a "debt ceiling." This is a limit on how much money they can borrow and it is something the US imposed on itself during the first World War. The debt ceiling is continually raised so that the state can meet its legal obligations - paying interest on the debt, fighting wars, paying Social Security and funding Medicare. Naturally, the cost of these obligations keeps going up when you're dealing with the current global financial mess, because more people are out of work, less people have health insurance and the level of debt keeps going up.

Raising the debt ceiling is a pretty routine thing normally. It happened 17 times under Ronald Reagan and 7 times under George W Bush. Over the summer of 2011, the debt ceiling needed to be raised again. For this to happen, Congress needs to approve the decision and the Republicans were not having it, largely due to the influence of the Tea Party.

The Tea Party are basically lunatics, much in the same mould as Margaret Thatcher who once declared "there is no such thing as society." This is the Tea Party position - instead of paying a reasonable level of tax to fund the state so that the state can meet its obligations to the people, the Tea Party want lower taxes and a smaller state. It's an "everyman for himself" movement, which basically equates to "fuck the poor." If you look at their support base, they also tend to be anti-immigration, anti-gay and anti-Muslim. And their favourite politician is Sarah Palin.

The Tea Party wanted to use what should have been a routine thing to call for a smaller state, for public spending cuts and some even went so far as to suggest the US should default on its loans (which would have led to even higher interest rates on the debt). So the Republicans held out for spending cuts, refusing to raise the debt ceiling without them. The Democrats wanted tax increases along with a smaller amount of spending cuts. A deal was eventually reached, but the consequences are this:

1. The Tea Party are now being taken seriously.
2. Bigger spending cuts than originally planned will occur.
3. The stock market is jittery, which has international consequences.
4. The US' credit rating has been downgraded.

If some of this seems familiar, it's because we're facing a similar situation in Britain - a conservative, anti-state movement that is seeking to use the worldwide financial crisis (caused in itself by their own policies in the 1980s) to do what they've wanted to do all along. These people do not believe in fundamental human ideals such as looking after one another, living up to your responsibilities and helping the disadvantaged. They talk instead of "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps" despite the fact that the vast majority of them come from priveleged backgrounds themselves and have never had to pull themselves up by anything.

And I think, fundamentally, there are a lot of people who oppose the ideals of these movements. Only nobody has ever bothered to explain it to them. Instead, we describe the US debt ceiling crisis or the Eurozone crisis as if these are concepts too difficult for the average person to understand. And the only part that comes through clearly is the sense of overwhelming fear.

Understand this: we are in a bad economic situation and the roots of it were laid in the 1980s. We had a recession then too, and we were so scared of having another that we flew off in the wrong direction - getting rid of the regulations and laws that stopped private companies from doing whatever the hell they liked. And it has led us back here again. We can either keep hold of our ideals - the idea that the most vulnerable in society must be protected and that this is the number one priority of the state - or we can panic again and lay the roots for another economic crisis in 30 years time.

That's assuming, of course, that we get out of this one first.

They Still Don't Get It

And now the backlash against the backlash has started. Last night on Twitter, Alan Sugar appeared to suggest that Rebekah Brook's resignation from News International should be an end to the whole thing. This morning, Jeremy Clarkson has come to the defence of the tabloid press, warning "we may well end up with a press that can't expose a thing." Why I should still be interested or irritated by anything Clarkson says after all these years is anyone's guess, but this kind of nonsense beggars belief even coming from him.

Even after the last two weeks, it appears that the tabloid press still don't get it. This isn't just about phone hacking, and it isn't a freedom of the press issue either. In a free society, we all have the right to free speech but we don't automatically have the right to a massive platform from where we can abuse that right to manipulate others. And the right to free speech doesn't come with the right to violate the law either.

The phone hacking scandal is just the latest in a long line of examples where the tabloid press has violated the right of privacy in order to sell newspapers. It has nothing to do with "the public interest" when reporters hide cameras in women's bathrooms in order to see if they're doing cocaine. It has nothing to do with the public interest when police are paid for information on celebrity arrests. It has nothing to do with the public interest when a reporter dresses up as a sheikh in order to entrap people into committing crimes in public. It certainly has nothing to do with the public interest when they print medical details of the prime minister's son having cystic fibrosis (and however that story was obtained, it still should not have been published). This is about one thing, and one thing only: selling newspapers.

The defenders of the tabloid press are so out of touch, they don't realise that this isn't only about the phone hacking anymore. Members of the public have been complaining for years about the focus on celebrity and the cut-throat approach of tabloid reporters. Whilst politicians, celebrities and other journalists have been restrained by fear of the tabloid press, the general public has been clamouring for years for something to be done about it. Murdoch and his cronies have abused the "freedom of the press" argument, not to expose truth but instead to fuel people's love of gossip and prejudice.

It is terrible, yes, that some pathetic excuse for a human being thought it was okay to hack Milly Dowler's phone. And yes, it's a good thing that Rebekah Brooks has now resigned. But it doesn't even scratch the surface. Taken together, the accumulated stories reveal a newspaper that felt a sense of entitlement when it came to accessing private information, a culture fuelled by arrogance and disregard for the human consequences. That's why, unlike many in the press, I will not mourn the News of the World. Even if nobody working there in 2011 ever had any knowledge of phone hacking, these were still people who used unscrupulous means to violate the privacy of mostly innocent people. These were people who sought to manipulate the political agenda, to sit in judgement of celebrities and ordinary people and to ultimately sell as many newspapers as possible without ever taking responsibility for the consequences. The final News of the World was a sort of "greatest hits" issue, featuring reminders of past scoops such as a shot of Michael Jackson's deathbed. If this is the stuff they're NOT ashamed to be associated with, then it really is a good thing that the miserable little rag is gone for good.

It started out as being about phone hacking. Now it's gone beyond that. This is about a tabloid press that focuses on the insignificant and trivial, that has too much influence over our elected representatives and that uses a culture of fear to keep itself beyond the reach of the law. Most of all, it's about one man who owns a larger share of the British media than is legal in many other countries, who has used that platform to push forward his own free-market neo-liberal political views and who has made an enormous amount of money by exploiting the British people, without even paying tax in this country.

It's not over until Murdoch is gone.

Voting for more of the same old shit

Jesus Christ, I'm furious. I don't know why. I've known for ages that the No to AV Campaign was going to win the referendum. Their campaign was bigger and more attention grabbing. The polls have predicted a defeat for people who want a non-shit voting system for months. So I should have already been resigned to it really.

Except, somehow I'm not. I guess there was just a little bit of hope in me that the UK electorate was not wholly made up of sheeplike, idiotic wankers and self-interested Tory cunts. I thought about various times when the pollsters have got it wrong and I suppose I was swayed by the fact that most people I've actually talked to said they were voting yes to AV, not to mention most of the people on my Twitter and Facebook feeds.

This doesn't just piss me off, it actually fucking hurts. Yes, yes, I'm being a drama queen again, but with good reason this time. The referendum on AV was the most important vote any of us will cast in our lifetimes. This was not just the best chance in a generation to reform politics, but the best chance in centuries. This should have been a defining moment in British politics. It should have been the start of the decline of the Conservative party, who have unfairly benefited for decades from the way that the left-wing vote is split between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Electoral reform is something I deeply believe in because the current system is completely immoral. How can anyone justify a system where a party with 36% of the vote share gets to rule the fucking country? How can anybody think it's fair that the other 64% are effectively told to fuck off until the next general election in 5 years time.

It's true that the No to AV camp ran a very effective campaign, but their methods were underhand and despicable. They told despicable lies at every turn, pretending that AV systems lead to a coalition everytime (not true), claiming that AV would cost the country £250m (a government minister admitted it would be no more expensive than the current system), scaremongering that it would help parties like the BNP get into power (not only did the facts not support this argument, but the BNP themselves campaigned against AV) and, most insulting of all, telling the British public that they were just too thick to understand this very simple, very straightforward and much fairer voting system.

If the No to AV campaign was despicable, the proponents of AV were almost invisible. Their first fuck-up was choosing the campaign name "yes to fairer votes." If you type the word "AV" into Google, the No to AV campaign is one of the first results to come up. The Yes campaign doesn't feature until the second page of results. Whilst the No to AV campaign was noisy and belligerent, the Yes campaign was virtually unseen. Months before the campaign started, Ed Milliband stated he wouldn't even consider campaigning alongside Nick Clegg because Clegg was "toxic." The Yes campaign should have paid attention - it was largely because Clegg is such a despised, unpopular snivelling little worm that the country overwhelmingly chose to make the wrong decision. They voted against AV out of spite.

Of course, all parties involved (the media as well, the Yes campaign and the No campaign) are guilty of failing to outline both the facts and the arguments properly They made AV look unnecessarily complex and difficult (as did the leaflets sent out by the Electoral Commission). They allowed politicians from the No campaign to spread smears and lies without challenging them. They failed to expose the vested interests in keeping the current system. They failed, basically, in drowning out the likes of the Daily Mail and all the small minded, ignorant cunts who have run this country for too long despite the fact that evolution should have killed them off by now.

There may yet be an upside to all of this: the Liberal Democrats have been well and truly trounced in yesterday's election. Not only have they lost the AV referendum, they've also lost thousands of council seats across the country. If the party had any integrity at all, they would now pull out of the ConDem coalition (which has done nothing to achieve Lib Dem aims in the last year) and force the Conservatives into trying to govern with a parliamentary minority. But this won't happen, because the Liberal Democrats have no integrity. Like any other party in power (even though the power they have is meaningless), they will cling on to the bitter end. Because they're a bunch of tools. And if you voted against AV to spite the Liberal Democrats, remember this: a better voting system would have punished them just as much as it would have punished the Tories.

So if you voted No to AV, this is my message to you: SHUT THE FUCK UP. You don't get a say in politics anymore. None of us really get a say, but when we had a chance to make things better, you chose instead to close your ignorant tiny minds. Your ill-informed, unresearched vote cancelled out the votes of all those people who actually did bother to find out what AV is all about. You have sacrificed our best chance to make politics better. From now on, you get what you deserve.

5 Reasons to Vote Yes to AV in May

1. The BNP want you to vote no

The No campaign have been claiming that adopting AV Plus as our voting system will open the door for fringe parties like the BNP. So if that's the case, why are the BNP urging their supporters to vote no? Channel 4's Fact Check blog reviewed the evidence and found that AV plus would be highly unlikely to help the BNP get into power, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it, because for any party to win a seat under AV, at least 50% of the constituency would have to choose them for first, second or third preference. The BNP simply aren't that popular and would have a much better chance of winning seats under the current system, whereby a candidate can become an MP with as little as 30% of the vote. As the BNP's Deputy Chairman Simon Darby said: "We are never going to get our feet under the table under the AV system."

2. AV Plus will reduce the need for tactical voting

My grandad was a Labour supporter all of his life, but when he moved to Timperley he was forced to vote Liberal Democrat as it was his best chance of stopping the Conservatives from winning the seat. This story is repeated all over the country at every election. Conservatives vote Liberal Democrat in the hope of stopping Labour from winning. Labour supporters vote Liberal Democrat in hopes of stopping the Conservatives from winning. Lots of people who would rather support the Green Party find themselves voting Labour or Liberal Democrat because they don't want the Conservatives getting in. Under AV, you can give your first preference vote to the party you really want to win, then choose two more candidates to vote for (you don't have to choose three candidates if you don't want). So there's no need to try and guess who might win in advance and then vote accordingly. You can vote for the party you want, every single time, and it won't mean that you're indirectly helping your least favourite party getting into power.

3. Coalitions can happen under the current system too

One of the most popular arguments against AV Plus is that it can lead to hung parliaments, coalition governments and "shady, back door deals" where parties compromise on their beliefs in order to get into power. In May 2010, the Conservatives won 36% of the overall vote share, with Labour getting 29% and the Liberal Democrats getting 23%. That means that the majority of voters, 52% in total, voted for left of centre parties, and yet the Conservatives were able to take power by going into a coalition (with details hammered out behind closed doors) with the Liberal Democrats, a party they have previously appeared to have little in common with. The resulting coalition government wasn't voted for by anyone, and it happened as a direct result of our current First Past the Post system.

But coalitions aren't the worst thing that can occur under the present system. In February 1974, Labour took power as the party with most seats, even though they came SECOND in terms of overall vote share. That's right, under FPTP, the party that comes second can take power without going into a coalition. Remember that the next time you see the No 2 AV campaign pushing their trite "horse race where the fastest horse loses" comparision.

4. Some votes are more important than others under the current system

Until 2010, no politician ever knocked on my door to canvass for my vote, because my seat was considered a "safe seat" for the Labour party. My vote was essentially worthless - if I'd voted for Labour, my vote would just be an extra unnecessary vote, but if I'd voted for anyone else, I would have been throwing my vote away. In every single election, the overall result is decided by what happens in a small number of "swing constituencies" and these constituencies are the only place where anybody bothers to canvass for votes. Why should the votes of indecisive swing voters be worth more than the votes of those in safe seats? People have fought and died for our right to vote, and it's only right that ALL of our votes should count.

5. The "No 2 AV" campaign are looking increasingly desperate

Why do the No campaign feel it's necessary to show photos of vulnerable, hospitalised babies with the slogan "She doesn't need AV" on them? Why do the No campaign feel it's necessary to mislead the public on the cost of AV (it's no more expensive than the current system), the likelihood of the BNP getting in under AV (they're more likely to get in under the current system) and the complexity of both systems?

What I find especially insulting is the idea that the general public are too stupid to comprehend AV. It's actually a pretty simple system - you just choose your first preference, second preference and third preference votes by putting a number 1, 2 or 3 next to the appropriate candidate. There are numerous forms we find ourselves filling in all the time (tax forms, for example) which are far more difficult than voting under AV. Counting the votes isn't particularly difficult either - you simply eliminate the candidate who comes the last and reassign their votes until someone has more than 50%.

The desperation of the "No 2 AV" campaign is easy to explain - the current system is morally indefensible. It means that many votes don't count at all, that many voters are not able to vote for their prefered party because they feel obliged to vote tactically, and that politicians who are important to a party can simply be placed in a "safe seat" rather than having to fight to stay in government. It's an absolute travesty of democracy and the only reason people are campaigning to keep it is because they believe it benefits their own party. It's cynical, patronising and absolutely unforgiveable.

Why sick babies DO need AV

I shouldn’t have to state the case for the Alternative Vote Plus voting system here, but I’ll do so anyway because this is an issue that the media has refused to explain clearly. Anyone who’s ever looked at our current voting system will be aware that First Past the Post is one of the worst possible systems we could have in place. Under FPTP, the majority of votes don’t count at all. If you vote for someone who doesn’t end up winning, you may as well have stayed home. The only votes that really count are in swing seats.

Allow me to demonstrate with simple mathematics: let’s imagine a constituency consisting of 1000 people. Let’s say 450 of them vote Conservative, 300 vote Labour and 250 vote Liberal Democrat. The Conservatives win and all other votes are discounted. The 550 people who voted Labour or Liberal Democrat may as well have stayed at home. And the Conservatives only needed 301 votes to win, so 149 of their voters needn’t have bothered either. In total, 70% of the votes cast in this constituency were irrelevant.

AV Plus is not the best alternative available to First Past the Post, but it’s the only other choice we’re likely to be offered anytime soon. A real proportional representation system would be preferable, but the main parties don’t really like PR because it hands more power to smaller parties. But AV Plus is still far more fair than FPTP.

Let’s go back to the above scenario. When the Liberal Democrats come last in our fictional constituency, their votes will be looked at again and allocated according to second preferences. So if 225 Liberal Democrats put Labour as their second choice, then Labour would be left with 525 votes, which would ultimately put them in first place (yay!). Are you beginning to see now why many Tories don’t like the idea of voting reform? The fact is, Labour voters and Liberal Democrat voters have a lot more in common than anyone has with the Tories, so like it or not, AV will always cost the Tories votes.

David Cameron argues that there is “no other walk of life” where a system like AV Plus would be considered, comparing it to athletics and all sorts of other irrelevant human endeavours. But voting is not like running a race. When you win a race, it doesn’t matter whether you win it by a five minute margin or a 0.0001 second margin. It only matters who is fastest. When you’re running a country, you can’t claim a tiny margin of victory gives you a mandate to run the show. Politics is too important to be decided in the same way we decide horse races.

Back to the advert above. The No 2 AV campaign have gone for a truly tasteless and despicable way to bring voters round to their side. They’re trying to scare the public into siding with them, hoping to take advantage of the fact that many people don’t really understand our current voting system or the alternative that’s being put forward. They’ve avoided an honest debate, because they can’t win an honest debate. There’s no good moral reason to support FPTP. It’s an affront to democracy. So the No 2 AV camp has to carp on about perceived practical issues instead.

What practical issues? Well, they say, it’s too complex. People don’t understand it. The odd thing is, AV Plus is already used for some local and European elections. A system similar to AV Plus is used on plenty of forms used in the public services. So if the public can’t understand it, wouldn’t we have already heard about it by now? Voting under AV is not a complex task – you simply write 1 next to your preferred candidate, 2 next to your second preference, 3 next to your third preference, etc. Any idiot could do it, and it’s both deceptive and insulting to the general public to claim otherwise.

Then there’s the money issue, which the advert above aims to highlight. The No 2 AV campaign is telling us that implementing AV will cost £250m. Ministers have since admitted that this is bullshit, but even if it wasn't, how can anyone put a price on real democracy? In the long run, if it helps us to elect rulers who have our best interests at heart, it will save money for us all.

Consider the baby in the above picture. Her parents may have voted Labour, but because they live in a Conservative safe seat, their vote didn’t count, even though the Conservatives only obtained 1% more of the vote than Labour did. Thanks to the current voting system, the Conservatives walked away with the constituency seat, and that helped the party to win the election. Now the NHS is facing widespread cuts, health workers and social workers are losing their jobs, Dad is about to lose his job with the council and Mum is suffering post-natal depression and unable to get the treatment she needs from her GP consortia (which doesn’t have the same resources or depth of knowledge as the recently disbanded local primary care trust).

The baby needs AV. We all need AV. The only people who don’t need it are Conservatives.

Why the Tory focus on civil liberties is plain wrong

When the Conservative opposition started ranting on about civil liberties a few years ago, many on the left were surprised. After all, the Conservatives are traditionally the party beloved by the "hanging's too good for them" brigade. Whilst Labour's reaction to 9/11 and the 7 July bombings was to curtail all kinds of civil liberties (extending the amount of time you can arrest someone without charge, limiting opportunities for peaceful protest, the planned introduction of compulsory ID cards), it seemed a little bizarre that the big bad Tories were the ones sticking up for civil liberties. Was it possible that, for once, the Conservative policy was actually adopting policies aimed at increasing freedom in a real and meaningful way, rather than just increasing the freedom of rich people to make even more money?

Obviously, the answer is no. David Cameron's political views are not based on deeply-believed moral values. They're based on pragmatism. How else do you explain the fact that he voted to keep Section 28 in 2003, then voted in favour of the Civil Partnership Bill in 2004? Cameron always knows which way the wind is blowing, and in 2005 he knew that the vast majority of the British public did not want ID cards. Whilst in government, the Conservatives have now made it clear what they really mean when they talk about civil liberties: the right of middle class people to go about their business with minimal state involvement.

One story which broke this weekend exemplifies this mindset. The Daily Telegraph revealed that the Tory government will be relaxing laws which state that all adults working with children should have CRB checks. You can find the details here. My position on this move isn't just the viewpoint of some knee-jerk reactionary. I work for a charity that employs hundreds of volunteers to work with children and I know what can go wrong when people working with children are not CRB checked. So did the Labour government and that's why they introduced the Vetting and Barring Scheme after school caretaker Ian Huntley murdered two schoolgirls.

From the viewpoint of many adults, having to wait for a CRB check is a pain in the arse, so reducing the amount of people who need to have a CRB check is potentially a vote winner. On "The One Show" just a few weeks ago, a self-righteous middle class woman who works in a cathedral was spouting outrageously about how she shouldn't have to have a CRB check because it's an invasion of her privacy. Wrong. CRB checks are not an invasion of privacy. Anyone who employs you, in a paid capacity or in a voluntary capacity, is responsible for the safety of any children or vulnerable adults you come into contact with during your work. It is their duty to check that you do not pose any risk, and this is the purpose of the CRB check.

The Home Secretary Theresa May believes that the current system risks discouraging volunteers who want to work with children, but I certainly would not want any child of mine coming into contact with volunteers who have not been CRB checked. Volunteers who have a criminal record will not automatically be excluded from working with children. You can still work with children if you've had convictions for shoplifting or cannabis possession as a teenager, for example. You won't be stopped from working with children if you had a drunken punch-up with a mate twenty years ago. The point of the CRB check is to ensure that nothing serious and relevant goes unnoticed.

So what is the point of this move? It will make the lives of some middle class voters a little easier, and it will also help to push David Cameron's "Big Society" initiative by speeding up the volunteer selection process (although it will not undo the damage that the widespread public sector cuts have already done to the voluntary sector). It will also put the safety of our children at risk.

What else have the Conservatives done for civil liberties? Well first of all, they've scrapped ID cards, which might have something to do with the fact that the scheme would have cost billions to introduce. I was always against the introduction of ID cards, but suddenly the threat of having to carry another card around in my purse doesn't seem so worrisome when faced with the constant threat of imminent redundancy caused by public sector cuts. They've also scrapped the Contact Point database, which would have allowed professionals working with children to check which other professionals are working with those children for information sharing purposes. This will make it more difficult for professionals to update each other on the children they're working with, potentially putting those children at risk.

The coalition deal between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems in May 2010 also promised "a restoration of rights to non-violent protest." We've all seen how that's working out so far.

So, in a shockingly predictable manner, it turns out that the Conservative interest in civil liberties was just a ploy to grab middle class votes all along. Even if it means putting children at risk. Then again, the kids who work with voluntary agencies tend to be working class kids. And who cares about them, right?

Time to leave London behind

When you live in the North, it’s easy to forget sometimes that London is part of the same country. After all, when you talk to people from the North West, the North East, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, there’s a sense that, however disparate we are as a people, we’re all in it together. We’re all being screwed out of our jobs together, we’re all losing our public services together and we’re all pissed off at London together.

If the regions of Great Britain were a family, then London would be the irritating older brother who doesn’t come to dinner much since he got his new girlfriend and a flash car. And when he does show up, he talks endlessly about himself, whilst eating more than his share of bread rolls. The rest of the family stare at him in horror and wonder how this greedy, self-important prick can be related to the rest of them.

Since devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it's like they’ve all gone and married off into other families, so whilst London is still a source of irritation for them, at least they have some say in their own households now. And when they all come home for Christmas and find the North being picked on, London arrogantly snarls "it's none of your business anymore." The North West and North East are still living at home, waiting for London to bring back the car he borrowed so they can head down to the Job Centre to sign on.

Because there’s always been a gap between living standards in the North and the South, but as with all regrettable gaps (the gap between rich and poor, the gap between public service provision and public need, the gap between Piers Morgan’s perceived worth in the eyes of television commissioners and Piers Morgan’s perceived worth in the eyes of everyone else), it’s getting wider instead of smaller. The public service cuts will inevitably have a larger effect on areas with the highest level of need, because these are the areas that have traditionally received the bigger share of government funds. You can’t cut as much from councils like Kensington and Chelsea, because there’s simply not as much to cut.

Which means that whilst London will notice relatively little change over the next couple of years, the North East and North West will lose tens of thousands of public service jobs, as well as experiencing significant cutbacks in education, health services, housing and policing. This in turn means wider unemployment, falling aspirations, voluntary organisations losing their funding and a dark cloud cast over the towns that are most affected.

If you seriously believe that it’s in Britain’s economic interests to cut public expenditure in favour of reducing the deficit, then try moving to Bolton or Oldham or Newcastle for a year. Once you’ve struggled up to your new home on an overcrowded, overpriced train, you can start scrambling around for a job. Of course there are no new public sector jobs, so you'll have to go for one of the rare private sector jobs that are created in the North (just one in the North East created for every ten created in the South). This will make it even more difficult for you to get one of the few affordable homes, and no more are being created because new build initiatives are being ended. When you eventually find a job, you can look forward to clocking off late every day, travelling home down pothole-filled roads and switching on the TV to a news report on the latest government cut and how it will disproportionately affect the region you now call home.

Yeah, yeah. It’s rough all over, I know. Unless you’re a city banker. Or a Conservative politician. Or a newspaper editor. The point is that, whenever things are bad for the majority of people down South, they’re that much worse for us in the North. And because we’re trapped by lower wages, family connections and lack of opportunity, many of us will stay in the North and put up with it for the rest of our lives, whilst London runs around getting girls pregnant and starting feuds with the neighbours.

And the worst of it is that the North didn’t even help to vote in the fuckwits who are making policy right now. In the North West, the Tories won just 22 out of 75 seats, compared to Labour who won 47. In the North East, Labour took 25 out of 29 seats, compared to the Conservative and Liberal Democrats who won just two seats apiece. Even in relatively affluent Yorkshire, Labour won 32 seats against the Conservatives 18 seats. The entire narrative of politics in this country (the big story of 2010 suposedly being that voters turned away from Labour and threw their lot in with the Tories) is based on what happens in the South, with few people even noticing that the North is effectively experiencing a different history entirely.

So maybe it’s time to take action. If London insists on pissing away its money on cocaine and prostitutes, then fine. But let us have nothing more to do with it. Let the North secede from the United Kingdom and become a sovereign nation, with its own parliament, its own powers to raise taxes and its own decision-making powers about how we spend our money. From the Southern point of view, we’re just a burden anyway. So let us go our own way. That way we can decide for ourselves whether or not hospitals and social workers are an unnecessary luxury, and London can shag as many teenagers as it likes without having to explain itself.