Community service is the only answer to MPs’ expenses cheek

You can say what you like about the Tories, but at least they know how to have a good time.

While our modest Labour MPs are content for us to treat them to a porno and a couple of Kit-Kat chunkies, the Tories aren’t satisfied until we’ve splashed out for professional moat-cleaning, chandelier hanging and, in one case, a thorough service to the family helipad.

Today, if he has any residual sense of integrity, former shadow home secretary David Davis will now be ruing the day he charged taxpayers £5,700 for a portico.

I don’t know what a portico is, but I’m fairly sure that it is a) naff and b) not a cost incurred “wholly, exclusively and necessarily” in the discharge of his parliamentary duties.

Today, the excuses have come rolling in thick and fast, forming for me the most enjoyable part of this whole affair. It was all within the rules! It’s the system that was wrong! Nobody stopped me!

I’m glad to hear that the fact that noone arrested them makes it all ok, that the fraudulent appropriation of money doesn’t have a moral dimension or anything. Why, only the other day I took the liberty of decanting the entire contents of a church collection plate into my coat pocket. It wasn’t my fault. It was the system. The idiot vicar had just left all the money there, in the middle of the church, ripe for the taking!

The apology made by Conservative MP Stewart “speedo” Jackson beat all of the others hands down. He confirmed today that he had made a claim for the upkeep of a swimming pool, but the conscientious public servant was keen to point out that he only did so once, to learn how to look after his new swimming pool himself.

He said: “I claimed £304.10 on a one-off basis for work on the swimming pool. The pool came with the house and I needed to know how to run it.

“Once I was shown that one time, there were no more claims. I take care of the pool myself. I believe this represents ‘value for money’ for the taxpayer”.

Sure it does, Stu, as long as I can come round for a dip. Otherwise, no sodding way!

Which brings me to what I consider to be the ideal solution to this whole sorry expenses affair, something to which, happily, many of the items claimed lend themselves perfectly.

MPs should be forced to do community service to make amends to the taxpayer using whichever items they have pocketed on expenses.

For former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, who charged taxpayers £90.09 to service his sit-and-ride lawnmower, this will mean getting down to his local park and trimming a few verges.

David Heathcoat-Amory can keep his 550 sacks of horse manure, but having been charged £20 for the “planting and after-care of dahlias,” I think we should at least be able to look forward to the occasional bouquet from the Tory MP.

Meanwhile, the balding Labour MP who claimed £1.65 for hair products will be required to invite a few struggling grannies round for a complementary shampoo and set.

And finally, though presumably it’s too late to ask for a bit of Hazel Blears’s Kit-Kat Chunky, ‘two-lavs’ Prescott should have his second toilet designated immediately by his local authority as a public convenience. As “Prezza” shows needy members of the public up the stairs of his second home, he can also point out to them the delightful mock-tudor beams in his ceiling, of which they have been the generous, if unwitting, benefactors.

This government’s ‘legacy’ will be the demise of plain English

The main point of political prose, said George Orwell more than half a century ago, was to give ‘an appearance of solidity to pure wind’. Orwell accused politicians of the being deliberately unclear in their prose, pretending to communicate but really aiming only to obscure.

You don’t need to look very far to see Orwellian echoes in the political language of our times. Take ‘credit crunch’, a word which popped up in newspapers as it became apparent that the country was facing recession. While ‘recession’ conjures unsightly images of dole queues and derelict factories, ‘credit crunch’ sounds inherently benign, like a breakfast cereal containing free toys in little plastic sachets.

Then there’s ‘quantitative easing’, which sounds lovely, like a scientific name for a nice lie down. It certainly doesn’t have the same alarming associations as ‘printing money’, which brings to mind moustached German housewives of the 1930s exchanging wheelbarrowfulls of banknotes for loaves of bread.

But the most shameless attempt to make things seem better than they are through semantics that I have ever seen was the use of the word ‘legacy’ in a recent nonsensical press release about the new Olympic media centre.

The Olympic Media Centre planned for Hackney Wick

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There’s been a lot of pressure on the Olympic Development Authority to ensure that the 2012 games will have a lasting benefit for Londoners. In other words, that the games will have a ‘legacy’.

The Olympic Development Authority has found a very easy way to ensure that this will be the case.

It has replaced the word ‘future’ with the word ‘legacy’, presumably using the useful ‘edit / replace’ tool on Microsoft word.

You can read it here if you don’t believe me.

At first you think it’s a typo. “The media centre for the London 2012 Olympic Games will create just under 900,000 square feet of business space in legacy with the potential to generate thousands of new jobs.”

In legacy? Don’t they mean in the future? Same thing, according to the ODA, which boasts that the centre “has been designed to be as flexible as possible to accommodate a range of legacy tenants and uses.”

Those ‘legacy tenants’, it continues, will be able to take advantage of ‘state-of-the-art utilities, power and digital connectivity, both during the Games and in legacy’.

The happy effect of this linguistic odyssey is, of course, since ‘future’ and ‘legacy’ are the same thing, then unless somebody drops an atomic bomb, the Olympic Development Authority can hardly fail to deliver the ‘legacy’ it has promised to Londoners.

I wish I could say this was just some halfwit press officer. But then ODA Chairman John Armitt chimes in.

He says: ‘This innovative design provides a quality working environment for the media during the Games while delivering flexible and green employment space for a range of potential business uses in legacy.’

Tom Russell, Group Director for Olympic Legacy at the LDA, couldn’t agree more.

‘’The media centre site will become a major employment driver in legacy with a main focus on the creative industries.’

Jules Pipe, Mayor of Hackney:

‘Local businesses and media companies have expressed strong interest in moving to the facilities in legacy, and we will continue to work to secure the best possible legacy for our Borough.’

And finally let’s hear from the big man, Sebastian Coe, Chairman of the London 2012 Organising Committee:

‘The impressive facilities we have planned will leave high performance workspace in legacy.’

The press release is only 1000 words long. If you ask Microsoft Word to replace the word ‘legacy’ with ‘bananas’, it has to make 25 replacements. Net effect on the amount of sense made by the press release? Zero.

How can we trust our government to tell us the truth when it’s not even speaking our language?

G20: Anarchy in the UK?

Fresh anarchist graffiti spotted in Islington. Not exactly banksy is it? I’m sure the G20 are quaking in their boots…

Did the black cab rapist strike in Hackney too?

The black cab driven by Worboys in which he carried out many of his attacks

Hackney police may have “missed an opportunity” to catch black cab rapist John Worboys in 2004, according to a senior Scotland Yard source.

A woman told Hackney police in July 2004 that a black cab driver who picked her up from a bar in Old Compton Street in Soho followed her into her house and offered her what he claimed were headache tablets.

The 30-year-old said she later woke up in bed wearing a dress but no underwear.

The case was dropped by Hackney police due to lack of evidence, but when the Worboys investigation was referred to the Serious Crime Directorate in 2007, Scotland Yard identified the incident as potentially linked to Worboys.

Scotland Yard detectives then questioned the cab driver but, four years after the alleged incident, the woman was unable to identify him from a police line-up. As a result the Crown Prosecution Service decided that the case would not be included amongst the 24 charges brought against Worboys at his trial.

The Scotland Yard source said: “It [the Hackney case] could be considered as a potential missed opportunity to catch Worboys. This case was reinvestigated and we reviewed it evidentially.

“Further investigation was needed in this case, as in many of these cases, before we could refer them to the Crown Prosecution Service.”

Worboys, 51, was convicted on Friday of sexually assaulting 12 women between 2006 and 2008. But police say there may have been many more victims of attacks dating further back.

Worboys' so-called rape kit was seized by police

Scotland Yard have identified more than 80 attacks with “methodological similarities” to those perpetrated by Worboys.

Two other cases police believe to be linked to the attacker, which were reported within 18 months of each other, took place in the neighbouring boroughs of Islington and the City of London.

Both women said they had been assaulted after accepting drinks from a black cab driver, but borough police failed to make the link at the time.

Hackney police have refused to comment on the original investigation.

Ruth Hall from the charity Women Against Rape said: “If Hackney police had investigated this properly they wouldn’t be evasive, they would be ready to look into what went wrong.

“Whether this was listed as a crime and not investigated properly or not recorded as a crime at all, the result for women is still the same.

“Women who report rape put themselves through a lot of pain because they are determined to stop it happening to others. Unfortunately, they do not meet the same determination from the police.

“The same thing is happening all over London. We need these cases investigated properly if we want anything to change.”

John Worboys met his ex-wife Jean Clayton in Hackney in 1991 at the Pickle Free House on Hackney Road, where she was working as a stripper. He was living in the area at the time.

During his crimes, Worboys would entice his victims by offering them spiked champagne, telling them he was celebrating a lottery win and showing them a bag of cash.

Worboys would show victims this bag of cash, claiming he was celebrating a lottery win

Worboys was allowed to walk free after police questioning on twelve occasions before he was finally caught in February 2008.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is reviewing the investigation by police into one of the rapes, an attack which took place in July 2007. Deborah Glass of the IPCC said that there were “very specific concerns about this investigation.”

Metropolitan Police have since changed their procedures for dealing with rape to ensure that all cases involving serious sexual offences are reported to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Written with Josie Ensor

The Hackney Post

If my blog has been somewhat neglected of late, it’s because I’ve been busy launching- with my City University compatriots- the Hackney Post: Hackney’s very own local paper for the twenty-first century. So I thought it was about time I gave it a shameless plug.

This is where the contacts and newshounding skills we’ve all been building over the course really got put to the test. Despite the obvious hurdles to which all student hacks are accustomed by now – sample press officer response: “Who the hell is the Hackney Post? Are you even a real journalist? What do you mean this isn’t actually going to be published?” – the Hackney Post is a real triumph. It’s full of original local news, arts and business as well as some great multimedia reportage.

Though we can’t afford to print and distribute (above is a rare glimpse of the elusive all-colour print edition) by engaging with new media such as youtube and twitter, we’ve managed to spread the word about our site, and it has now had upwards of 4000 hits after just a week- not bad for a bunch of amateurs!

The Hackney Post is here- do pay us a visit.

Our deafening silence on HIV in the UK

Steven Andrews* contracted HIV ten years ago, but never told his father, who died three weeks ago. “I suspected it would not be good for his health,” he explains, smiling faintly at the irony. “He was very old. He knew I was gay, and he was ok with that. But HIV is one of those things which test the limits of peoples’ liberalism. I kept it from him till the end.”

Mr Andrews is one of the 80,000 people living with HIV in the UK. He contracted the virus from an unfaithful ex-partner. Ten years on, the eloquent, energetic, successful businessmen says he is happy and feels well. But he admits that it has been hard to get used to the constant doses of anti retro-viral medication, which he says are “daily reminders of one’s mortality.”

The National AIDS Trust (NAT) says that people like Mr Andrews who are living with HIV in the UK have slipped off the agenda. “In the media, images of HIV abroad, in Africa for example, tend to be very sympathetic,” says Deborah Jack, Chief Executive of the National AIDS Trust. “But for people with HIV here in Britain, it’s a completely different story.”

Ms Jack points to headlines from British newspapers. “AIDS terror of jabbed bus driver,” reads one from The People. “Asylum seekers raising HIV risk” reads another from the Daily Mail. The message is clear. AIDS in Africa is a tragedy. HIV over here is a threat.

It’s a phenomenon that Mr Andrews knows all too well. “When you tell people, you kind of think everyone is going to be OK, because it’s the 21st century,” he says. “That’s actually not the case. I needed to talk about the practicalities of what I was going to do, but people were unable to discuss it.

“It’s like the way people react to a funeral. It causes people to contemplate their own mortality, so it’s loaded. HIV is the same. That’s especially true for gay men. Male homosexuals cut themselves off from other homosexuals who are HIV positive, because it’s too close.”

According to the NAT, levels of knowledge about the virus are actually declining. In 2000, 91% of the British public knew that it was possible to get HIV from unprotected heterosexual sex. But in 2007, that figure was just 79%.

The NAT says that our ignorance about HIV is down to continued misrepresentations of the condition since the successful public awareness campaigns of the 1980s. The recent ‘Hear no evil’ HIV awareness campaign, sponsored by the fashion company ALDO, which featured monochrome photographic portraits of stars like Christina Aguilera, Pink and Avril Lavigne, was criticized as ‘misleading’ by a leading HIV specialist because it targeted teenagers, instead of high risk groups such as Africans and homosexuals. Epidemiologist Dr Barry Evans accused government of being cowardice over telling the truth about HIV in the UK- namely, that those with the virus are primarily black and gay.

“We have shied away from telling the explicit truth about those at greatest risk from the virus for fear of how it will be manipulated by racists and homophobes,” says Dr Evans. In London, one in ten gay men has HIV. For black Africans, the figure is one in 27 – and rising fast. Evans adds: “I am not sure the government can handle or wants to handle a genuine debate about HIV in Britain.”

After ten years on medication, Mr Andrews is testament to the fact that life is not over for people with HIV. He has a full work life and a new partner, who is also HIV positive. “Viewed from one angle it’s been a tremendous gift,” he says. “Finding out you are HIV positive has the ability to completely change your point of view. It started out transforming my life in a very frightening way. But in the end, it connected me with my humanity.”

* Name has been changed

Breaking news: Another teen stabbed in Islington

A teenager is in hospital after being stabbed in Islington.

Police were called out to a group fight near Canonbury Station, N1. A youth aged 16-17 was found with a stab wound and was taken to hospital.

Police say the youth’s injuries are “not life threatening”.

The Wallace Road area was cordoned off. Residents who had been prevented from entering their homes were being invited to wait in the nearby Alwyne Pub.

A police spokesman said: “Police were called out to a group fighting at 9.45 pm on the evening of February 24.

“Officers found a youth aged 16-17 suffering from a believed stab wound.

“The youth was taken to hospital and is in a non life threatening condition.

“Islington CID are investigating and no arrests have yet been made.”

Islington Police has named knife crime as its top priority after the fatal stabbings of Ben Kinsella, aged 16, in June last year, and of 14-year-old Martin Dinnegan in 2007.

“After the earthquake, people said that God had left us”

Nasir Abdullah, 34, was in London when the Kashmir earthquake struck three years ago. He returned to his native city of Muzaffarabad to find that many of his friends and relatives had been among the 73,000 killed. This is his story.

When I look back now at the city where I grew up, I think of everything I have lost. I remember the small ground where I played cricket, the corridors of my house and the paintings, the market where I would laugh with my friends and we would play cards and have tea with Kashmiri biscuits. Now all those friends are dead, my house is gone, and there is nothing where the market was.

The earthquake happened at half past eight in morning. It was the month of Ramadan, so I had got up early to eat. When I saw the news on TV I felt faint. I knew my wife would be sleeping at home with our daughter. I was thinking about the construction of the houses. They are not built properly.

On the plane home, I was thinking it wouldn’t be that bad, maybe a few houses damaged. But when I arrived, the whole city had been flattened. I did not know then, but 73,000 people were dead.

It normally takes me ten minutes to walk from the bus station to my home, but it took me an hour and a half to climb through the rubble. I was seeing dead bodies everywhere around me, lying on the floor. I was just stepping over them – there was nothing I could do. I can remember being outside a school that had collapsed. There were kids there, under the rubble, screaming. The mums were outside, just crying. No one can even imagine. It was unbearable.

I passed the house of my friend. His arm was sticking out but I could see the rest of his body had been crushed. I had not seen him for a long time, but I could tell it was him by his watch. He always wore it.

The next door to my house was a family of eight, and six had died, all of them children. I am thankful most of my family escaped, although my uncle and cousins were killed. When I arrived, I found the others in a graveyard. They had been sheltering there for three days– it was the only safe place. The women and children huddled underneath a plastic sheet while the men held the four corners. It was raining all day and all night.

I don’t know how they survived. Some people were breaking shop windows and taking food. They had no choice. My brother even had to go back to my house at one time to get some rice, even though the ground was still shaking.

It was terrible, especially for the kids. Kashmir is very mountainous and tough, and in October it rains very hard. My daughter was one and a half years old. She was crying and crying. Now she is four she doesn’t remember anything. I am happy about that. I will never tell her about it.

After a few days when the international media knew what was happening, food began to be dropped from helicopters. Pakistan’s emergency services only came after two weeks. There is no fire brigade, no infrastructure, nothing. Only the NGOs were doing anything to help. The army came eventually, but they helped the soldiers in the barracks first. I felt ashamed.

After two weeks everything smelt awful, because of the rotting bodies all around. People were beginning to agitate. The first week they had just wanted to get their loved ones out of the rubble, but then things went wrong. Many children were kidnapped, for trafficking, and many women were raped. These people came in from other parts of the country. They had guns, so there was nothing you could do. They were not behaving like humans. People lost their religion. They said that God had left us.

Looking back, I don’t want to remember the scenes that are in my imagination. I just feel so thankful to God that I am alive. I know now that what is important is the people you love. Many people in Pakistan believe the earthquake was a punishment. I don’t believe it. I believe there is a reason that we cannot know.

For me, it was a very crucial moment. Before the earthquake I wished to study mathematics. Now I realise I need to help my country. When the earthquake happened we were helpless. I want to make sure that if this ever happens again we are prepared.

I am studying my masters in disaster management and then I want to return to Pakistan and work with the government to help introduce a system for dealing with these disasters. My wife is happy because she wants to be with her family. We do not care about material things anymore.

Excuse me, is this lap free?

Great spot yesterday on the Hammersmith and City line, though I do say it myself. Somewhat ironically, in order to take this photograph, I had to force an old lady to give up her seat on the tube. But hey. We all have to make sacrifices sometimes in the name of top quality journalism.

“I thought everyone would walk out”: David Tennant’s understudy on being Hamlet

On his debut, a nervy Edward Bennett waited in the wings as director Gregory Doran told an expectant audience that he was to replace Dr Who star David Tennant as Hamlet. “Before I went on stage it was kind of a heavy, cold feeling,” says Bennett. “Probably how the French revolutionaries felt when they believed in their cause but knew they were going to die.”

The hype surrounding this year’s Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet, starring David Tennant, had been intense. Tickets, priced at £37.95, sold out in hours and were changing hands for more than £600 on Ebay. Devoted fans clamoured to catch a glimpse of Tennant in the flesh. But when the star’s back problems worsened, Edward Bennett was forced to abandon his small part as Laertes and step into some rather large shoes, in a role considered the most challenging in theatre.

As Bennett talks of his big break the nervous energy of the experience seems to rush back – he is all wide blue eyes, large nose and animated features. “When Greg said David’s not on tonight, you just heard this groan,” he remembers. “I was incredibly nervous. But then someone said to me, you hear that groan, and you either do one of two things. You either let it get to you, or you go: right. Watch this.”

Bennett chose the latter and gave the performance of his life, winning a standing ovation which reduced him to tears as the curtain fell. “It was extraordinary,” he remembers. “Just amazing. I went out with some friends, had a couple of whiskeys, brilliant, done it, wow, what an experience. And then, when they said you’re on again for press night, I did not believe it! I regretted those whiskeys.” But his performance as a serious, brooding Hamlet – “er, that was because I was terrified” – received glowing reviews. Not bad for someone who insists he had “only just got used to being an actor.”

Bennett dizzily recounts his subsequent fifteen minutes of fame, including the moment the papers discovered he was also going out with an ex-girlfriend of Tennant’s. “That stuff- stole the part stole the girlfriend- that was alright,” he laughs unconvincingly. “That was quite funny. Nat thought it was funny.” He says he was more embarrassed when his mum read an interview in which, “high” on day nurse and Lemsip, he had “accidentally” done a lot of swearing. “I was quite ill,” he jabbers, “and I was kind of feeling like I had to keep talking and I was talking about some mug that David had and I think I came across as a bit neurotic. I thought, they won’t put all that swearing in. But they did! My mum phoned me about it, actually.”

But Bennett comes across as a bit neurotic even without the day nurse. He is excited by the menu at Café Rouge, by the film he saw last night (Frost/Nixon: you must see it “at your earliest opportunity”) and even by the voice recorder. “Aren’t these great?” he grins, grabbing the device with a gangly, oversized hand. “I’ve just bought one. Do you mind if I just have a look?” To the waitress he alternates between exaggerated, deferential public school manners and a rather effective interpretation of Bond-style flirtation, apparently just for the fun of it. “And I’m going to start eating eat now. Mmm. This is excellent.”

After five minutes with Edward Bennett it becomes pretty apparent that there isn’t going to be much he doesn’t think is excellent. Playing Hamlet? “Brilliant”. David Tennant? “Great guy.” York? “Best city I’ve ever been to in my life.” Monster munch? “Love them. Still love them to this day.”

David Tennant later returned to play the lead role after back surgery

But despite his easy-going demeanour, Bennett is obviously a critical observer of life, a man for whom all the world’s a stage. He talks of life in Broadway, an idyllic, Cranford-style village in Herefordshire where he grew up, with the bemused detachment of a bystander, and describes his job in a shoe shop there as if it had been a make-believe existence. “I went to a Christmas work do!” he grins. “I’d never done that before. It was interesting. I got really into it.” Was he playing a part a little bit? “Perhaps” he muses. “I was the joker.”

At fourteen, when Bennett saw Chekhov’s The Seagull at the Swan theatre in Stratford, he decided he wanted to a real actor. “I just thought, those actors backstage have such and an incredible life, doing something where you never ever think, I hate this job. And you don’t. Never.”

After his current production, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which runs for another two weeks, Bennett says he may do a film – playing either a soldier from Virginia or something to do with a space ship. He’s not sure. His perfect job? “I don’t know,” he grins. “I’ve kind of done it, in a way.”