Well done Ken Clarke

I'm not a Tory, I despise much of what the Conservative party stands for. I hate their hard right, particularly Philip Davies MP. But I have always had a soft spot for Ken Clarke.

When he became Justice Secretary I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw the opportunity to end Labour's decade of warehousing people. Much of what he wants to do has been frustrated by a mixture of lack of cash and the right wing press.
There is not a lot he can do about the former, but a couple of days ago he played a blinder on the latter.

This week it was announced an end to may the IPP sentences and a reduction in the number of people serving time on remand. For clarification IPP are Imprisonment for Public Protection orders. Basically prisoners who are given these sentences will not be allowed to be released until they can prove they are nothing more "than a minimal threat to public safety". The problem of course is that is quite a difficult thing to prove, sitting in a prison cell. So people sentenced for a crime of say 4 years may end up serving 20 or 30 years. This is extremely morally objectionable, and Ken Clarke obviously agrees.

However the right wing press and Labour were gearing up to have another go at Clarke over this. So he made a statement about how people should be able to stab burglars in their home. This "clarification" is nothing of the sort and would affect a handful of cases. But, the right wing press had to report the more sensational story rather than the more political nuanced IPP and remand story. The proposals have stayed intact. Well done Ken.

Why does the Prince of Wales escape the cuts?

I've just seen a headline on the Sky News website that says the tax payer funding of the Prince of Wales has GONE UP by 17.9%. Charlie now costs over 1.25 million with over £200k EXTRA lavished on him this year. I'm furious about this.

During the run up to the debates before the General Election all three party leaders offered small examples of cuts they would make. They interviewer would then say that this tiny cut wouldn't solve the debt problem. They would then give a few more examples and then the interviewer would make the same point. It was frustrating as a viewer because it was abundently clear that there wasn't one big cut that would solve everything. The only way to solve the defecit was to make hundreds of thousands of cuts and make sure that everything the tax payer funds would have to be make savings.

The cuts are painful, new schools have been axed meaning kids are still learning in portacabins. Police men and women are been laid off, Day centres for the elderley are closing. Some of these decisions are extremely difficult and hard.

So why does the Prince of Wales get more cash, he is not a frontline service! why does he not need to tighten his belt as every other public service does? He is a multi miliionaire landowner who can afford to pay his own way. I'm sorry this is a very bad decision - it gives the impression that the rich are immune from the effects of the cuts, and maybe this is because they are.

Breaking a Ben Gunn butterfly over a mobile phone mast

One blog I have been reading for the past year is called Ben's Prison Blog. It is a by a serving prisoner called Ben Gunn. Ben has spent over 30 years at her majesty pleasure. When he was 14 he was involved in a fight with another boy that tragically led to the death of this individual. He pleaded guilty to murder and was effectively given a life sentence with a tariff set at ten years - so he should have been released 20 years ago. Except he still in prison. While inside, Ben hasn't killed anyone, he hasn't committed one violent offence in the entire 30 years. He has, however, been a thorn in the side of the HM prisons service - he has not played the game. He has also broken a number of non-violent regulations, such as developing a relationship with a female member of staff.

Recently he was about to be sent to open prison with the hope he could be released in 12 months time. On the day he was due to make the trip to Prescoed Open Prison, he borrowed an illegal phone to contact the outside world. From this moment on the story becomes sketchy. The next fact is that when his property was x-rayed on leaving the prison the phone was in it. Ben's story is that the con who he borrowed the phone from, stashed it there. This is a problem because prisoners aren't allowed mobile phone (in fact it's a crime, punishable by a further 2 years in prison).

It is now highly likely that Ben Gunn release to open conditions will be go ahead and it may now be many years before he is released.

This is a case of breaking a butterfly on the wheel.

I think Ben is daft for using a mobile phone on the day of his release. I believe the phone was planted by the con as I don't believe anybody knowing their property was to be x-rayed would be that stupid. Even so should possession of a mobile phone halt Ben Gunn's move to Open Prison?

The answer to me is no, maybe if this was the first parole hearing after the 10 year tariff was up, this maybe a legitimate reason to deny release. But after a further 20years it is disproportionate to prevent his freedom based on what is basically a misdemeanour. I have on occasion driven above the speed limit. People I am friends with have not paid for items they should have. Most students at my university broke copywrite law. Should the book be thrown at us for these trivial offences. The answer, of course, is no. Part of being human is making mistakes and doing things we shouldn't do. Very few people live a year, let alone 30 years, without been totally blameless and it unreasonable to expect even convicted murderers trying to get out not to be human occasionally.

There is a difference between these misdemeanours and what Americans would call a felony. If Ben had say stabbed an inmate, dealt drugs or stolen something then this would raise doubts about whether he was safe to be released. But do we actually think Ben Gunn is not suitable for open conditions because he used a mobile phone? Is he a threat to society, numerous psychological assessments and his non-violent 20 year stretch indicate that he is not a threat in any way.

I'm not saying that Ben shouldn't be punished for using a mobile phone (removal of phone privileges for a week or two may be an ironic punishment) but the sentence must fit the crime. This is about what society do we want to live in. Do we want to be caring and compassionate or vindictive and cruel. If it is the former then we should release the prostate cancer sufferer (Yes he is not well)to open conditions as soon as humanly possible. Plus as a taxpayer, I don't want the Government to keep on forking out 40 grand a year to keep him inside!

So what if the public deosn't care about House of Lords reform

Commentators and newspapers are telling the Lib Dems should give up on Lords Reform. The reason - that the public doesn't care about it.

I disagree with this argument - just because the public aren't engaged on a particular issue doesn't mean nothing should be done about it. If this argument was continued to it's logical conclusion - then the Government should do nothing for people with diseases such as Cystic Fibrosis, becasue the public are only interested in diseases they might get.

It is of course wrong to run Government according to public clamour, yes politicians must take public opinion into account in decision making but the key thing is to do what is right.

There were proposals in each of the main parties manifesto's, and actually in most of the minor parties as well, for Lords reform. The problem at the moment with the Lords is that they have an impact on the laws we obey and yet we have no say in the make up of this body. This is something we would condemn in other countries as non-democratic, mainly because it is. It is also unrepresentative - did you know there are more peers in their 90's than in their 30's. There isn't a single peer who is younger than 34!

But I don't want to rehash the arguments about whether or not we should have an elected house of Lords. What I want to argue is why the Lib Dems should push forward now.

At the recent local elections, it was noticable that we were losing a high percentage of the intellectual liberal left. In wards with a high percentage of this demographic our vote was significantly down. Accross the country support for Lords reform is highest amongst the intellectual liberal left. The coalition has done a number of things this group don't like (tuition fees been number one) so it important that we try and win this group back (lets not forget that we have a large of university seats, where intellectual liberal left have been crucial to our victories.

Secondly, for Lib Dem members and activists, it is very important, especially after the AV referendum. If we are to be electorally succesful then we will need the foot soldiers to go out and deliver leaflets, knock on doors and stuff envelopes. If we can't get any very lib demmy policies through then these people will melt away.

For the position of the party in national politics it is also key, if we can't get this, what changes to the country can we actually trumpet. The change to personal limits is popular, but easily reversable. The pupils premium, which hasn't resonated with the public can also be easily reversed (and in practice already has with the cuts to the education budget). With the loss of the AV referendum we do need things to say to the electorate that we have actually changed. If we don't how do we sell to not tory leaning voters the value of the Lib Dems in Government.

Finally, we are not a populist party. the preamble to the party constitution reads "The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community and in which no-one will be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity." If we are to build this type of society then Lords reform is crucial - the lords is not open, not free and not fair - where better to start than dismantling this anachornostic institution.

I hope Nick Clegg won't duck the clash with the lords and he doesn't end up thinking "I fought the Lords and the Lords won."

Diamond Jubilee - can it come up North?

A year today we will be starting a 4 day weekend for the Queen's Jubilee. One thing I noticed about the planned events is that they are all in London.

With the Olympics, London is already set for a great 2012. In 2005, when London were awarded the Olympics a number of prestige projects such as the Leeds Supertram were scrapped to pay for the Olympics.

Surely some (if not all) of the Diamond Jubilee events could have been held outside the capital. It could have boosted tourism is places that will probably lose out to next year as people race to London, and help highlight to the rest of the world that there is more to the UK than London.

AV campaign a shambles

It's a week and a half since the referendum vote was lost. In the end it was a landslide for the NO campaign. This didn't surprise me in the slightest as I knew the campaign run by the YES campaign was frankly a shambles.

I have spoken to a number of YES campaign insiders as well as many throughout the Lib Dems. Almost all believe that strategic decisions were botched and the campaign was disorganised, ineffective and run by people who simply didn't know what they were doing. They had no idea how to run a campaign or how to influence voters.

I think it's important to ask why YES became a big NO so that if we ever need to win a vote on reform (Lords perhaps?) we don't make the same mistake again.

The first two big mistakes were taken in early September. These were with recruitment and campaign strategy. I know of one very senior figure at the campaign, who had to go to the Oldham East by-election as they had never attended a count before. Clearly they recruited “policy wonks” rather than campaigners, this is a bad mistake because policy wonks are good at the detail that the public doesn't care about. Campaigners, through experience and instinct know what are the key points and how to present them to the general public. One of the key problems was that the NO campaigns messages resonated but the YES campaign's didn't. Outside head office they recruited PPC's and Councillors - again a bad mistake, mainly because they don't have the time to kill themselves for the campaign.

Strategically at this point they also made a key mistake, they decided to spend their money and activists time on (drum roll please).... phone banking! My first response was eh? then comical laughter. I actually thought they were joking. In a campaign where people didn’t know what AV was they expected people to ring up and ask whether voters planned to support something they didn't have clue about! On a campaign note, phone canvassing is only a small part of any campaign as it can a reach a small fraction of the population. With most people undecided at the start of the election, it was clear to me that persuading people to vote YES was more important than getting people out on the day (which is what phone canvassing really does.) They should have gone for leafleting and advertising. They already have networks across the country that can deliver leaflets (Lib Dems, Greens, UKIP, some Labour) they could have influenced huge swathes but they didn't try. I was one being begged by Lib Dem activists in September for something to deliver with their latest FOCUS leaflet, nothing turned up until mid February. Crucial months were lost that could have been used to persuade people of the merits of AV.

The phone banking information that they got was never properly used because the database (the much vaunted Obama database) failed. While this is the fault of the American company hired, the ERS should never have got into this situation. They should have got this nailed before the General Election last year. Surely it's their job to be prepared for referendums, but tragically they didn't seem to be. This helps to explains the next big mistake of the YES campaign - fundraising.

It is my understanding that the YES campaign didn't have a professional fundraiser for months and months. As a Lib Dem I was amazed that I never received a begging letter. I could have understood this if they were doing big fundraisers, but to my knowledge, they weren't. What happened was that the NO campaign were able to massively outspend the YES campaign on billboards and advertising.

They could have got away with these blunders if they had got the messaging right. Unfortunately they didn't have a clue. They failed really to make any attempt to explain the system or why it was a positive move. I never heard the argument that “it gives the voters more choice” (I would have used phrases like elections shouldn't be about the MPs but about voters). It took until the final week with the Dan Snow broadcast to actually start making this point.

The constant refrain of "make MPs work harder" missed the point as well. Most people actually have a positive impression of their own MP, if you ask people what they like about their MP "hard working" will come somewhere near the top of the list. You only need to look at the incumbency boost many MPs get when they are re-elected to realise the truth in this. The negative point they should have been making was "Stop MPs fiddling their expenses" "Stop the Corruption" “they're taking your money because they know they can get away with it!” with big pictures of Bill Cash, Hazel Blears etc. The leaflets they did produce looked like something from the 1950's; wordy, boring and failed to explain the concept in a simple way. A further criticism I would make of all material they sent through was that it seemed to be aimed at two groups - students and left wing intellectuals.

They also failed to counter the simple and effective arguments for the NO campaign - It's expensive, it's unfair, it's complicated and you can give Nick Clegg a kicking. Apparently they didn't want to be knocked off their message! the trouble was that they already had been. What they should have done was to work out the real cost and spread it over four years and divide it by the entire population of the UK. AV won't cost you 250 million but only 1p would have been a good message - again not used.

My final gripe with the AV campaign was with the election broadcasts. The first NO campaign video was slick, and clever. They explained their key arguments with good visual images, used a celebrity to rip apart AV and used analogies that people would understand - classrooms, horse racing etc. It may have been complete hogwash, but it was effective hogwash. The first YES video was pathetic. The Christian Party Election Broadcasts are known for been comically bad and the production values of BNP are notoriously atrocious but the YES campaign's video beat both these parties with the worst political broadcast I have ever seen. It was truly terrible. Whoever was involved in this should be lined up and shot. First of all it's production values were shocking - literally secondary school rather than professional. Secondly the acting was rubbish. But my main gripe was with the entire concept. A load of (not particularly) normal people shouting at their MP (who didn't look like an MP) about god knows what. The final insult was a lady (who may or may not have been suffering from mental illness) shouting "porn" randomly. What they should have done is started with a collage of newspaper clippings and broadcasts about the expenses crisis, followed by an explanation about AV and how it would stop corruption. They should have used a celebrity. I think this broadcast was a vital moment when the country decided that AV was not for them.

The second broadcast with Dan Snow was much better, my only gripe was that he used young people. It should have been a family with grown up children, going out for a curry, Italian or Pub lunch. But at least it explained AV in a simple way that pointed out its benefits. Unfortunately by then it was too late.

I know Nick Clegg was an issue and that people wanted to give him a kicking and that the referendum was a convenient way, but we could have used Ed Milliband (and for that matter Caroline Lucas and Nigel Farage) much better. It would have been harder to have given all of them a kicking) In the North, Leaflets to labour area's should have been sent out with Labour Leader Ed Miliband says "YES" but they never managed to get this message across.

The ERS needs to learn lessons. There will now not be another referendum for at least ten years. Hopefully next time it will be on PR. But they still need to work out how to run electoral campaigns rather than political campaigns. They also now need to diversify and be the champion of people who cannot vote at all (the mentally ill, prisoners etc).

Why no banking crisis prosecutions?

Since the Budget, Labour have been spinning the line that the Government are protecting the rich (particularly bankers) and the poor are paying for the mistakes of the bankers.

On two levels Labour are being mendacious. If Labour were in Government they would not be going after the banks in the way they are now suggesting. The financial sector is Britain's leading export sector, now it is back in profit, Britain would be mad to drive them out our tax receipts. It is an sector of the economy (unlike manufacturing) that can just up and leave. This maybe morally unfair, but it is a fact.

Secondly, bailing out the banks is not the only reason why we have a structural deficit. We have a total debt of about 900 Billion of which 100 Billion was caused by bailing out the banks. We are paying 51 Billion a year in interest payments, so the banks are costing us about 6 billion a year of our 114 billion deficit. In other words, most of the deficit is caused by non-banking crisis activities.
But the public does feel that the bankers have "got away with it", and they did cause 1/9th of our debt, so the public does have a point.

So what can be done, if we can't "punish" bankers through financial means, what about legal means? I would be amazed (even taking into account the lax regulations in place) if nobody had broken the law during this crises. One of the main reasons we haven't seen bankers in prison jumpsuits is that financial prosecutions are notoriously hard to prosecute, the police and CPS don't know what to do and jurors don't have a clue.

I would therefore set up a special commission to investigate the crisis, with powers to prosecute and investigate. Its goals would be to find out precisely what went wrong (and ultimately suggest reforms to prevent it happening again)and where the law had been broken to prosecute and sentence the culprits.

Of course this would have the advantage of casting the light back over Labour's failure to regulate the banks and their less than proper relationships with banks, while at the same time inflicting some much needed public retribution.

EMA unspun....unfortunately

The Government PR machine has failed quite spectacularly again. Yesterday after months of been bashed over the issue of EMA we have finally come up with a bursary scheme that is much fairer than Labour's Educational Maintenance Allowence.

The Government is doing the right thing, EMA was a classic example of Labour wasting money. Yes, there are students in real need and do need support to continue with their post GCSE education. But nine out of ten who receive EMA would have done A-Levels without it. My sister in law got EMA, she spent it on new clothes, a friend of mine called his EMA his "going out on the piss fund". These are not isolated examples. 45% of 16-18 students received EMA, an astonishing figure, do 45% of these students really need thirty quid a week from the tax payer?

So I fully support changing EMA (note I don't use the word scrap). The problem is that we should have had a scheme in place when the first announcements about EMA were made. Then we could have plausible denied we were scrapping it. The Government could also have said we were giving more money to those who needed it most. We could have called them EMA bursaries.

Instead the PR machine announced they were being scrapped so Labour could tell hundreds of thousands of parents and teenagers that the Lib Dems were evil and going back on promises. Rather than us telling the population we were saving money and helping the poorest. Slick!

Why our intervention in Libya is right

Ten days ago was the eight anniversary of the start of Iraq War. I was opposed to that war. I even joined the over a million others in marching against it - something I had never done before.

Now once again British planes are bombing an Islamic nations tanks, do I feel a sense of deja vu?

The simple truth is that I do not. I believe the actions of the coalition are essentially just. However this does not mean that I have changed my mind of the Iraq War. I still believe that was not morally justifiable.

There a 3 factors with regard to the Libyan conflict that were not evident in the Iraq conflict.

The first is the imminence of a humanitarian catastrophe. Had we not started bombing, Benghazi would have fallen and Gaddafi would have levelled the city. It is likely that the number of dead would dwarfed the death toll from the Japanese Tsunami. This was another Rwanda, another Srebrenicia, another Cambodia in the making. In Iraq the there was not the same immediate threat to vast numbers of civilians. I don't doubt Saddam was a terrible, evil dictator. But by 2003 he simply didn't have the capacity and ability to kill the amount people to qualify for a humanitarian catastrophe. Why is this concept important? quite simply war by it's very nature is horrific and will kill and cause damage that is greater most abuses of human rights. Only with an imminent humanitarian catastrophe can war prevent more damage than it will cause.

My second factor leads on from this point and that is the response is proportionate. We have essentially stopped Gaddafi from killing his subjects, but we haven't gone the whole hog and invaded or fired nuclear weapons, napalmed towns etc. So again we have limited the damage that war causes as far as possible to combatants. With Iraq, the response was not proportionate, the damage we caused; 700,000 dead (according to one report)years of civil war, the collapse of state infrastructure was not a proportionate response, as the good of removing Saddam was outweighed by cost of the action.

Finally the Libyan conflict has legal backing. Unlike Iraq, the UN has passed a resolution that sanctions hostilities. In Iraq there was no resolution, mainly because we had not reached the end of the diplomatic process, in Libya the diplomatic time frame was much shorter because of the imminent threat to Benghazi. In Iraq, weapons inspectors were still to report and then there could have been further movements towards forcing Saddam to comply with Human Rights law. Yet the invasion took place before legal backing had being obtained. Legality is important as the failure by the allies in Iraq to obey the will of the UN, undermined international law, potentially for generations. This assists those leaders who wish to break international law as they now have a powerful precedent and will argue if prosecuted that it is "victors (or western) justice" with some degree of justification.

In conclusion, this does not meant that the Libyan conflict will necesserley remain just, if we are causing more damage than we are stopping, or the UN decrees that we should stop then the conflict in my view would become unjust...time will tell.

I'm £85.14 better off

Hooray, this is the second budget in a row I'm better off!

Under Labour I was always worse off because although low paid, i don't have kids or qualify for the myriad of benefits that Labour introduced. Labour wanted to buy off the middle class swing voters, so many low paid got shafted. The raising of the threshold is the fairest way to help those on low incomes and helping people into work. It's also cheap to introduce as it's simple, the only problem is that it doesn't bind voters to the Government in the way that Labour's tax credits did. It's better economics, morally better but politically Labour have the last laugh.

The shame of American justice: Patricia Spottedcrow

I've recently come across a case that actually shocked me to my core. A 25 year old mother of four has been sentenced to TEN years in prison for selling 31 dollars worth of weed. Apparently the (numbskull) judge who handed out this ludicrous sentence thought it was lenient!

There are a couple of points to be made here: Firstly, Patricia Spottedcrow had no previous convictions. Secondly she was the primary carer of four children under the age of nine (the youngest is only 12 months old). Thirdly it was a sting operation, she sold the drugs to an undercover cop. Fourth, this is the USA, although anyone reading this had probably realised that already!

So what has the idiot judge achieved:

1. Leaving four children without a mother, the children now have a 20-30% of going to prison later in life and likely to be far less successful in terms of education and employment than if their mother was on the outside. Psychologically it is much harder for children to grow up without a mother.

2. A huge cost to the tax payer, Oklahoma residents will pay for the food, board and lodge of this woman along with the help that will need to be provided to her children.

3. She will now be far less likely to be able to get a job in future and therefore is more likely to commit a further crime, making Oklahoma's streets more dangerous than less dangerous.

4. The judge has robbed a human of ten years of her life for committing what can in reality be only called a minor crime - no one was hurt, the person buying the weed was doing it as part of their free will and the quantity was tiny.

The point I am trying to make is that sentencing cannot just be about punishment, we cannot take the social consequences out of this type of decision. Of course having children shouldn't mean you should get away with murder but this type of punishment has no benefits to society - so why bother?

I think cannabis should be legalised, I accept the health implications, but taxing and educating people about a drug is much more effective than banning (see alcohol in the prohibition era - as that was obviously a resounding success!) but even the staunchest defender of criminalization of drugs cannot really agree with this sentence.

I hope people in the USA will write to the Governor of Oklahoma to ask for him to pardon Miss Spottedcrow, but I wouldn't hold my breath, America doesn't have a great record of correcting injustice.

NO to AV's 250 million pound lie

The NO campaign have surged into a seven point lead and I think much of this is down to a significant killer argument they are now deploying - that AV will cost 250 million quid to introduce, with most undecided and everyone tightening their belts, this will certainly swing the undecideds the way of the No campaign.

£250 million isn't a lot of money in terms of what the Government spends, but tell people a figure in millions and it gets them thinking.

The problem is that it is complete rubbish, they base their figures on spending 130 million on counting machines, that won't be bought (because AV can be counted by hand) and an education programme based on the Scottish Parliamentary example. The education programme will be substantially less as a) AV is much simpler than STV, b) we've had a referendum on it, so people should be much more aware of how it works (the referendum acts an educational tool as well) c) We don't need educate people about the new powers of a parliament as we did in Scotland. d) we should use the BBC to educate people as that would be free.

But the YES campaign must respond and respond quickly, first it needs to work out how much it would cost - I'm guessing around £30 million. then display this as a real percentage of people's income and divide this figure over 4 years (the length of time until the next election.) In other words AV is going to cost you 12 and a half pence. Once they have a significantly cheap amount, they need to say that the NO campaign are lying (the machines are dream machines! etc) and that it just part of the corruption of the old system. But they need to do this fast, a media blitz is needed, without it they will lose.

Nick Clegg launches AV campaign

Last week I was involved in helping to organise the Nick Clegg visit to Leeds to launch the AV campaign. The event was a success bar a couple of nutters, sorry Socialist Workers Party activists trying and failing to hijack the event.

Nick Clegg was right to say (before the election) thaty AV is a measly little compromise - STV would be far superior but that is not the choice, so why should I back AV?

Well basically it's a bit better than first past the post, it's a bit more proportional, making it harder for idiots such as Stewart Bell MP (for Middlesborough), who does bugger all for his constituents, to get re-elected. Basically it will bring into play well over 50 more seats that use to be considered "safe" leaving under half the commons in safe seats, for the first time since the khaki election.

But the best reason to vote to vote for AV is that it gives voters more choice, many people would like to express their votes in different ways, for example , many UKIP voters want the Tories to run the county, but want to express their opinion about Europe by voting for UKIP, under AV they could vote UKIP as number 1 and the Conservatives as number 2. Likewise many Lib Dems who vote Tory or Labour because of fear of the one of the big 2, can now vote Lib Dem 1 st knowing that they will not be contributing to victory for either Labour or the Tories.

AV isn't perfect but is better than FTTP, and it less likely to deliver a freak result. A couple of opinions polls before the last election put us ahead of both the other two parties, if that had been the reult, we probably would have still finished third in terms of seats, that surely is wrong.

Moaning about the media

Reading Tony Blair's book i was struck by the number of times he said that the tabloid press would treat the Labour Government less fairly than a Conservative Government. I'm sure David Cameron would say that the BBC would treat him and the Conservatives less fairly.

The truth is that both are correct the Tories get shafted by the Beeb and Labour do get shafted by the right win Press.

We Lib Dems get shafted by everyone!

Causing offence is not an offence

A Crawley Town FC fan has been arrested. Not for Hooliganism or drunkenness, but under the Public Order Act on suspicion of causing harassment, alarm or distress. He was featured on the Crawley Town Football Club music video for their forthcoming FA cup tie against Manchester United, where he apparently imitated an aeroplane, which apparently has offended the survivors of the Munich Air Crash.

Having seen the re-edited video without the offensive scene, I am not entirely sure that the Crawley Town fan was deliberately causing offence (basically it's a band with a load of blokes swaying about badly in the background, doing a plane in not that unusual on a Saturday night out is it?). But assuming he is deliberately causing offence why should he be arrested?

It does actually really concern me that somebody can actually be arrested for this, while (assuming he was deliberately causing offence) it isn't very funny, and I can understand why survivors may feel upset. But this surely it is not arrestable, comedians every day make grossly offensive statements, that may cause the recipient of that joke great alarm or distress. Recently, I went to a comedy gig where Frankie Boyle made a very nasty joke about Katie Price's eldest child Harvey. But would we want Frankie Boyle locked up for that? the answer is no, we don't want our comedians imprisoned for making offensive jokes as we would consider this an unfair restriction on our right to freedom of speech.

I do accept that there has to be limits to freedom of speech on broadly feminist, anti-discriminatory lines. I do also accept there has to be some anti-harassment element to restricting freedom of speech (we don't want a granny to be continually abused by kids shouting at her - this intuitively is wrong.) But I do not accept the case that somebody being alarmed or distressed should be protected. Being alarmed or distressed by a particular comment or action does not mean you are not necessarily right. My Great Aunt used to be greatly alarmed and distressed when a black man entered her shop, this certainly didn't make her right.

I have not read the legislation and it may be that the law was badly applied and that the Crawley Town Fan should never have being arrested (he is still on bail though). Either way the law needs to be amended so that people who are suffering harassment, i.e. are being bullied are protected, but people aren't arrested for making a bad joke.

Prisoner Votes

The world seems to be up in arms about prisoner having the right to vote - lurid headlines such as "Huntley set to vote thanks to Europe" abound.

And I must admit that it does annoys me.... that prisoners don't have the vote. For me it is quite simple - it's a matter of human rights. The right to vote is a human right and therefore should be afforded to all prisoners. I think most people in our society do not believe that prisoners should lose the right not to be tortured, when convicted of a crime. Likewise the right to religious expression is one that is protected for prisoners. They are rights we are all entitled to as we are humans. The point of human rights is that you cannot lose your them because of who you are. To start removing individuals rights because of who they are is dangerous. Not only do we have history (the final solution) to remind of this, but in practice it dilutes everyone's rights. Once one set of rights is taken away from one group of people, it's more easy to remove rights from other groups of people.

So is the right to vote a human right in the same way that the right not to be tortured is a human right? the answer, I think, is yes. When groups of people have been excluded from the franchise, they have tended to be unfairly treated, both in terms of life prospects and application of the law. Governments can ignore their needs as they cannot influence elections at either a local or national level.

So if we respect Human Rights, we should give prisoners the right to vote. But there is another reason to extend the franchise to prisoners. Jail should not be just about punishment, it should also be about rehabilitation. We want our prisoners to come out and be good citizens, one aspect of good citizenship is...voting.