ian tomlinson's killer given enough rope

It's the second day of the inquest into the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests. The officer who assualted him, Simon Harwood, has been giving evidence, logged on the Guardian's blog.

He says before he got to Tomlinson he 'collided' with a BBC journalist but then, after the footage is shown, admits he pulled him to the ground. He says he was hit on the head from behind by a missile, then it is pointed out that he had his back to a wall at the time. He say his push on Tomlinson was slight and didn't 'push through', then after the footage is shown he has to admit that he did.

Why is he giving such misleading fob-offs when the evidence is plain and he is immediately shown to be lying? Because it's the way cops answer questions, and they usually don't get tackled this closely, normally they get to give their one version and that is accepted as truth.

Harwood was unlucky. The kind of assaults dished out thousands of times that day, and on hundreds of other days, risk death but usually only injure. As I said at the time,

Look at the video of Ian Tomlinson. Look at the casualness of the officer who attacks him. Look how the colleagues are completely unsurprised.

Do you think this is the only time that officer behaved like that? Do you think the colleagues didn't do the same thing elsewhere?

Even when they do kill, a later haemorrhage is hard to link up with a single assault and, of course, until a couple of years ago those assaults were very unlikely to be caught on video. Harwood is experiencing something new for police, and he has no idea how to respond.

Harwood says he 'couldn't recall' if he warned Tomlinson before striking him.

Asked if Tomlinson posed a threat, he replied: "Not to me, no," leaving an open implication that he might have posed a threat to others. This was picked up and, pushed further about whether Tomlinson posed a threat to anyone at all, Harwood conceded, "No, I don't believe he did, no."

He admitted a breach of duty by not recording any of his uses of force against Tomlinson in his Evidence and Actions Book.

And this was only the softly-softly questioning designed to get Harwood's version, before counsel for the Tomlinson family question him.

Harwood interrupted Matthew Ryder, counsel for the Tomlinsons, to disagree when they said - as is plain on the footage - that Tomlinson had his back to Harwood.

Eight days after the incident, when Harwood had watched the footage dozens of times, he made a statement saying "if this was me, the use of force was necessary, proportionate and reasonable". Counsel point out that he was then (as he is today) using misleading qualifiers. There was no 'if' about it - it was him and he knew it at the time of the statement. After repeated questioning, Harwood concedes that 'possibly, yes' he had known at the time.

Ryder: We have all see the video, how you push him and follow through, and we have heard from everyone else who was there as to how they perceived it. You have told us that you didn't perceive Mr Tomlinson to be a threat … If you want to help, would you like simply to admit that what you did to Mr Tomlinson was unreasonable, unnecessary and excessive?

Harwood: No.

Harwood said if the officer using force believes it to be reasonable at the time, then it is reasonable. No other test can or need be applied.

Utterly gripping stuff pouring light onto a dark injustice, but we already know the outcome. Not just because experience shows that cops routinely get away with killing the public despite overwhelming evidence, but because the decision not to prosecute Harwood was taken last July.

This is all uncomfortable for Harwood but, like so many other killers in uniform, he nothing to fear except embarrassment.

john and yoko's bed in

I've written another guest post for kickass countercultural anniversary blog On This Deity.

Today is the 42nd anniversary of John and Yoko's first bed-in for peace.

[No comments here; the place to leave them is on the On This Deity post]

marley's mellow moneyspinner

Well the other week there was Bob Geldof selling his arse to promote watches.

This week I found product endorsement far beyond that. It is so unlikely that I didn't get disgusted or outraged but literally stood there in the shop laughing.

Having trouble sleeping? Try a can of relaxing citrus flavour Marley's Mellow Mood.



It's got several herbal extracts, though frankly if you ask anyone what herb they think mellowed Marley the answer is unlikely to be 'chamomile'.

Just as the Martin Luther King estate rob the great man's grave for cash, so the Marley heirs license his image to hawk soda drinks and thereby make him no different to the Disney toys that come free with Happy Meals.

climate camp is dead, long live climate action

The Camp for Climate Action has announced that it is disbanding. The statement is bold and clear, acknowledging the Camp's achievements - tangible in the cancellation of Heathrow's third runway and the shelving of Kingsnorth power station - and is certainly a brave move.

I want to be clear that I admire the work the Camp has done, and I genuinely don't have a clear idea as to whether the disbanding is a wise move or not. What I am uneasy about is the unreserved glee with which it is being met, and the underlying reasons for that.

Climate action requires long term effort with little chance of major success, and even less chance of being able to measure your contribution to that success. As such, it is really not very rewarding. I should know, I'm one of the people who was involved in the Camp and has latterly ducked out.

It also demands that we all change much of the way we live our lives. This is never going to be comfortable. It is much easier to have 'me and my friends good, those people over there bad' campaigns. This tendency was seen in Climate Camp with some people saying action should never impede the actions of individuals and that 'government and corporations' should be the sole targets.

The anti-cuts campaigns are much more comfortable from this position (as long as we ignore the contradiction of anarchists complaining about a reduction of state intervention in our lives).

The austerity issue should not distract people from continuing vigorous climate action. Take it from The Onion.

climate change, the popular mid-2000s issue that raised awareness of the fact that the earth's continuous rise in temperature will have catastrophic ecological effects, has apparently not been resolved, and may still be a problem.

Back to the Climate Camp statement itself, there are elements that smell a bit funny to me.

Climate Camp leaves a space. What fills that space is up to us. This is a unique opportunity to work together with others to create a more co-ordinated, dynamic and stronger movement against climate change and its root causes.

Climate Camp acted as a lightning rod for those who wanted to take action. Much of climate action away from the Camp has been taken by people who have met and bonded through the Camp. With such loose structure and affiliations, it was easy for people to be involved in different ways and to different degrees and yet still feel part of it, to be propelled by its underlying momentum.

With no other organisation having a similar role, it is very hard indeed to see how taking it away will create something stronger and more dynamic.

we can’t demand that society changes radically, while we ourselves do not.

This is a rationalisation hiding in a word game. The implication is that drastic change of methods and views is, in and of itself, a good thing. That is simply wrong.

Doggedly holding on to a tactic that has become useless is stupid, sure. Refusing to revisit your fundamental philosophy to see if it still makes sense leaves you open to inconsistency and irrelevance. And as William Blake said, 'The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind'.

However it is perfectly possible to hold a radical political perspective and advance it by the same methods for a lifetime. If we oppose some of the fundamental structures of our culture - the profit motive, consumer-capitalism, enormous concentrations of power - then we're unlikely to be in for a quick win. We are probably going to spend our whole lives working on this stuff. Radically changing away from that is not going to help the cause. Doing so for its own sake would actually reduce our chances of improvement.

The movements for women's rights and trade unionism took several generations to make solid advances. Had they been distracted by more popular issues or decided to change for its own sake, we may well not be enjoying the fruits of their work today.

None of this is to say that Climate Camp has taken the wrong decision. Time will tell whether it was the right move or not, and I can readily see how it might turn out to be the right thing. But regarding such change as an intrinsically good thing is erroneous, and engendering that idea could damage radical movements in future.

spongers

As the government introduced the Welfare Reform Bill, complaining of spongers getting easy money off the state for doing nothing, I saw nineteen police officers milling about Leeds station with an airport-style metal detector asking - with no powers to compel - random people to go through to see if they were carrying a knife.

kyoto remembered, and what has to come next

Following last month's piece about the Newbury Bypass, I've written another article for Dorian Cope's kickass On This Deity site.

This one's for the anniversary for the day the Kyoto Protocol came into (non) effect

is it ok for protesters to damage property?

I've just done a written debate with another activist for the New Internationalist on 'Is it OK for protesters to damage property?'.

These NI debates try to get an issue that has progressive people on both sides and have a debate that's thoughtful and respectful but strident, and useful to the movement rather than a retread of polarised cliches. I think it's met the brief this time.

[No comments on this post - the place to leave them is on the New Internationalist site]

watch out for geldof

Saw this in a jeweller's window the other day.



Even by the satanic standards of celebrity-endorsed advertising, and even within the confines of just a few words, it's amazing how many different kinds of wrong this poster can be.

FOLLOW YOUR CONVICTIONS
'I don't want to live like you. I don't want to talk like you. I'm going to be like me'.
Sir Bob Geldof - Musician, Activist, Businessman

The slogan makes it clear that we're trading on Geldof's Band Aid reputation here.

His outspokenness with authority was always a fine quality, even before Band Aid had him gobbing off at Thatcher. On a chat show he shared a sofa with Vidal Sassoon who said that everyone owed it to themselves to stay in shape so he does a few lengths of his pool every day. Geldof rounded on him and pointed out that most people have knackering jobs and family responsibilities that sap their energy, as well as a notable lack of money to buy their own pool. That's good stuff, but he crowned it by then asking Sassoon if he didn't consider himself grossly overpaid for a barber.

Anyway, what we're meant to think here is that the part of Geldof that was fearless in dealing with the powerful because he knew he had the moral high ground has somehow led him to wear a particular brand of watch. Whereas it's actually just the pay cheque, a lump of money for a man who is already a millionaire several dozen times over.

But more than this, if you buy the brand of watch that he's prepared to be on a poster for then you too will be as righteous and morally valiant as Geldof is perceived to be. (Let's just ignore his tax evading non-dom status.)

Next up we have that quote that's supposed to chime with this rugged valiance of the spirit that 'follow your convictions' has set up. It's taken from Lookin' After Number 1, the first of the Boomtown Rats' stupendous opening salvo of six singles.



It is written with glaring knowing irony from the perspective of someone toweringly arrogant and selfish.

Don't give me love thy neighbour
Don't give me charity
Don't give me peace and love or the good lord above
You only get in my way with your stupid ideas

I am an island
Entire of myself
And when I get old, older than today
I'll never need anybody's help in any way

I'm gonna take your money
Count your loss when I'm gone
I'm alright Jack,
Lookin' after number one

I don't wanna be like you
I don't wanna live like you
I don't wanna talk like you
I'm gonna be like me

This is obviously written as something that only an idiot would think rather than, as the advert believes, something to identify with.

Even that name under the quote, Sir Bob Geldof, isn't right. Geldof got gonged with a KBE, Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. As he's a citizen of a country where the Queen is not head of state it's just an honorary knighthood. He is not a 'sir'.

All of this deconstruction component by component focuses on the advertiser and the advertisement. We then have the additional principle of the whole thing. Doing something good that makes you prominent and thereby leads to an incidental increase in your album sales is one thing. Taking the doing of good deeds and using them as a marketing tool to enrich yourself by getting people to buy a luxury item is a leap beyond.

As one of Geldof's punk contemporaries said,

I believe in this, and it's been tested by research,
He who fucks nuns will later join the church

Misrepresented as having integrity, misquoted as a lyricist, mistitled as a British knight, all in one swift shot. Advertising; the area where consumerism packs more of its wrongness per square inch than any other.

westminster council attack the jobless (slight return)

Further to the last post, not only are Westminster Council punishing the unemployed wanting council houses, they're attacking the poor who rent privately too.

In June last year, Westminster Council's - her again - Philippa Roe defended the forthcoming cuts to Housing Benefit. Lambasting its currently huge cost she said

we have no issue with the families who have been claiming these high levels of benefit, as it is the system itself that is at fault and not them.

The system she speaks of is one the Tories instigated, where few new council houses are built and huge quantities of them are sold off, making the remaining number available spiral down the plughole. So, almost everyone poor has to rent from a private landlord, which is far more expensive than council housing.

Private rent funds two things: money to cover the landlord's mortgage on a property, and extra money to give the landlord a profit for being the owner.

As George Orwell said,

the ground-landlord in a town area has no function and no excuse for existence. He is merely a person who has found out a way of milking the public while giving nothing in return. He causes rents to be higher, he makes town planning more difficult, and he excludes children from green spaces: that is literally all that he does, except to draw his income.

The Housing Benefit system will not buy a house for a family who are renting, yet it will happily pay that same mortgage plus a fat premium to buy that same house for someone who already owns fifty others.

It would clearly be cheaper if the landlord took less of a premium, as is the case with councils who own housing. But the private landlord's main aim is to maximise that premium, so the predictable and inevitable result of reducing council housing is that the Housing Benefit bill will increase. The expense Roe complains of is expense her party created.

The cuts in Housing Benefit will force people to move away, ghettoising them in wherever is cheapest. This will shred communities, with all the associated impacts on crime and mental health, and of course the places with the cheapest rents are the ones with no opportunities. Moving the jobless to unemployment blackspots is hardly going to increase their chances, yet the new benefits regime penalises those who don't find work within a few months.

Philippa Roe assured us last June

the new changes will not take hold until April 2011 and we have time to plan and forecast what the housing needs of Westminster will be.

By December, Westminster Council reportedly

admitted it plans to move 80 per cent of homeless housing benefit claimants needing temporary accommodation out of the borough.

When the Tories talk of 'forecasts' and 'rewards', they are speaking of whitewashes and penalties. Wherever you live, if you are unemployed it is your personal moral failing for which you must be punished.

punishing the poor. again.

With the massive demand for whatever council houses are left in the UK far outstripping supply, there has to be some method of prioritising those on the waiting lists.

Westminster Council is planning to shuffle unemployed people to the bottom of the deck and give first dibs to those with jobs. They say it is

designed to recognise positive contributions to society, reward those who are in jobs and to encourage those who are not currently employed to seek work

We've been here before on Bristling Badger, and I've no doubt we'll have to revisit it in future, but here we go again. The government's own figures show that unemployed people outnumber the available jobs 5:1.

Once we see the rise in unemployment that the government expects to be caused by George Osborne's first budget, and the ranks are futher swollen by the millions of people on Incapacity Benefit who the government has decided are suddenly magically fit to work, that ratio will be more like 11:1.

You cannot expect people to get jobs that don't exist. Penalising them for not getting these jobs is an exercise in cruelty.

Westminster cabinet member for housing, Councillor Philippa Roe, said: "We want to introduce a system which is fairer to local people and rewards those in employment."

This is an attack on the fundamental reasons for having social support such as council housing and the benefits system. It is not there as a set of incentives and penalties. It is there to ensure that, in our wealthy society, no person has to fear homelessness, destitution, hunger or illness simply because they have no money.

These are risks posed to us all, so it is a kind of insurance. Also, societies with the greater gaps between richest and poorest have the most crime, so a robust welfare system protects everyone, even those who will never be poor.

But more than that, it is organised compassion. Most of us - Tory councillors evidently excepted - do not want to live in a place where people suffer for lack of any simple and cheap remedy. This is why previous generations of workers agitated and voted for the welfare state to come into existence. It was working people actively saying they do not want the unemployed to be punished for their predicament.