Press here to detonate...

What kind of media do we want? They say a nation gets the media it deserves but that cannot be right - Britain is absolutely not that bad! Yes of course we want a free press. But what does that mean?

When I started out as a journalist in 1959 we had a fairly clear idea of what a free press was. Most people knew too that what we had was not exactly as free as we would like. Aristocrats like Beaverbrook, Harmsworth and Northcliffe owned most of it - the rest was in the hands of newer money such as Cecil King or Roy Thomson.

No one kidded themselves that these moguls did not exert influence but for the most part it was in the political field and known about, if not understood. And frankly little has changedin this area. Of course I abhor Murdoch but I wasn't all that keen on Maxwell either and I find it hard to discuss what has happened to the Express. Whatever Harmsworth is today it seems to go on forever - good job since part of my pension emanates from there. 

But over the years things have changed a great deal and power and influence has had a growing and worrying impact. Yet it is not there that the recent scandals have erupted. This time it is simply the extraordinary and illegal lengths to which some media has gone to 'get a story'. It is this bad behaviour that has led to Leveson

So the mendacious and hypocritical fears being expressed by the same popular (there's a laugh!) prints after Leveson and the possibility of some statutory support for the new Press Complaints body is laughable as well as dangerous. For it was not a free press that was either at risk or even in question when these benighted and tricksy hacks and their frankly evil bosses decided to break the law and buy information and tap phones. What was wrong was that it was AGAINST the public interest for these know-nothing sharks to intrude not only into the lives but the griefs of innocent people and to interfere with the due process of the law. 

We can only hope that it is this due process that has restrained Lord Leveson from proclaiming in more detail and stronger terms on the relationship - the propinquity even - between these hacks and certain police officers and others. His honour may be redeemed by events in the next few days. If not, bigger questions about his propinquity may be raised.

Indeed, had the laws which these newspaper broke been properly exercised against them at the time even Leveson may have been as unnecessary as Cameron makes him appear.

But to the core issue. He says rightly that the Press Complaints system is broken - that is not new news; most of us were of that opinion a long time before all this started. So indeed a new one is needed. And the dreadful experiences of the victims of the media wild west of recent years show only too clearly that this body must be independent and capable of investigating complaints. That however is not enough on its own and David Cameron must surely know this in reality. He is surely only in denial or at least under the influence.

For we have been here six times before in recent decades. And every time the press has been given a last chance. So many last chances, so many lost opportunities you might think.

Now is the time for a much more powerful and capable complaints body as Leveson says. And it does not require any interference by politicians now or in the future in what the press is allowed or able to do IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST. What is required is simply that this body is a legal body, with power to investigate, power to apply for warrants for searches and the power to act as it finds necessary - under the rule of law. In the extreme it might need to apply to magistrates for a warrant to force a witness to co-operate.

None of this statutory support needs to state in any way what  ever Cameron and the media may say. But it is essential to have a safe haven for victims of press excess to report.

And here is the crisis that we now face, entirely of Cameron's making. He is singing the media tune AGAIN. He has been got at or he looks and sounds very much like a man who has been got at..... 'Don't you worry Dave old chum; come the election and we'll see you right - as long as we don't get any of that nasty statutory stuff to spoil our little game'

I might sound a bit paranoid here but lets face it - he did say BEFORE Leveson he would implement the report. He is now saying he will not, despite his promise to the Dowlers. Little Cleggy doesn't seem to agree, along with many more.

Cameron, we know from all the u-turns, is incompetent and unfit to govern and he has a cabinet packed with people with their own dodgy agendas or simply, as the Widdicombe said of a less unsavoury character, something of the night about them.

The good news is that the victims are campaigning against him and that is political dynamite. I give him a few more months before either he comes to his senses or his cosy little coalition collapses round his silver spoon stuffed neck.

Oh and I wrote this elsewhere. I'll say it again: "Reading what my former colleagues have to say this morning about Leveson I feel the need to apologise to all my friends for the utter mendacity and hypocrisy of all, bar the Guardian and Independent. They make Cameron's pusillanimous and craven speech to the house take second place in the annals of infamy. Sorry for even having been a journalist (euch!)." 

Even Simon Jenkins decided to sully his reputation by arguing, nay pleading, for another chance. Shame on you Simon.

Criminal coppers? How can this be right?

STRUGGLED to find words suitable to start this. So here are the apparent facts: At least 944 serving officers and police community support officers (PCSOs) have a conviction, according to the figures released by 33 of the 43 forces in England and Wales in response to freedom of information requests.

I actually read this in a one paragraph item in the Eastern Daily Press. My researches have shown Norfolk has three such officers now. Over in Suffolk there are 13 according to the East Anglian Daily Times (sister of our own EDP) which carried a much larger report.

It will not surprise any who know me or those few who have read this blog that I have been shocked and disgusted by this news. It is all the worse for the fact that it come when we now know that our MPs have been stealing our money, bankers have fallen from exaltation to troughing, our major institutions and corporations continue to avoid paying tax, the taxman lets them off anyway, and the media which might defend the ordinary man has been exploiting him for a fast buck.

How can we have allowed a situation where police officers remain in post or are even hired with criminal convictions? Does that itself not tell us the nature of our problem? We have lost our moral compass.

OK our own Norfolk police chairman makes it clear that the majority of these are what were once called misdemeanours - traffic offences mostly and for which dismissal might be draconian. But many are serious crimes including perverting the course of justice! They carry custodial sentences.

Are we really saying that the young thug driving a shopping trolley through the window of a High Street store may be arrested and charged by an officer who has himself (herself?!) committed burglary or - ye heavens - perverted the course of justice? Is it any wonder that society has lost any respect for our police?

I agree that there may be offences, once classed as misdemeanours but today elevated (over-elevated?) to the status of criminal, that would not deserve of dismissal or required retirement. How many officers convicted of perverting justice or burglary or assault WHILE in service have been allowed to remain in office? I have read of one such case in a neighbouring area.

Is it not surely the case that where a criminal conviction occurs the case must be tested thus: "Does this officer remain a convincing and commendable person for the pursuit of offenders and the defence of the law?

And there are deep concerns:

• What about the morale of other officers who must work with and trust men whom, in different circumstances, they would have prosecuted?
• Are we not at risk of corruption if the probity and inviolability of convicted officers is degraded by their conviction?
• Is it in any way reasonable that such an officer can be relied on when giving evidence in court?
• Should a barrister be aware of the situation they have the ability to destroy the officer's credibility and influence the jury.
• What about CRB checks for other sensitive post workers? If a police officer is allowed to function having perverted justice how can we take more draconian action against others?

The dreadful possibility exists that this is some weird interpretation of the Human Rights Act. But there is no RIGHT to be a law officer - it is a privilege and responsibility which I maintain should be only for those of proven probity.

Muddled thinking exists all around us. The Police Federation took a rather strange defensive view which seemed to ignore the fact that this situation is an insult to lives and work of the thousands of decent, law-abiding and diligent officers who face unreasonable risks on a daily basis.

I have written to my MP, to the Norfolk Police Authority (excellent fast and sensitive response from the chairman) and to the Home Secretary, Theresa May to seek a change in practice. I think everyone who can should do so too.

There is an e-petition you can sign on the direct.gov site http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/26776

Or another at http://tinyurl.com/6t85uwa

Sources include: Guardian, Daily Mail (!), Eastern Daily Press, East Anglian Daily Times, Norfolk Police Authority and others.

In the year 2012, 2012... the eve of destruction

Never have I been frightened by a government before. I grew up in the days of Eden and Macmillan and I was too young for proper political perceptions but they seemed merely patrician. I was able to vote in 1964 and felt empowered when Wilson got in. It seemed like a brave new world.

That it was not was only partly his fault or that of the Labour Government. When the Tories came back with Heath it was again pretty patrician although the country was in a mess. Douglas Home was a joke. Maggie appalled me but was sane for the first seven years. I had met Keith Joseph man y years before and was not surprised when things got a bit hairy later.

But I still had no fear and the grey days of Major proved me right to be sanguine. I had seen Blair in action as committee opponent of privatisation and thought he would be brilliant. He was but not exactly as I had hoped. But he still didn't scare me. Gordon Brown did but only when I met him; as a politician I expected him to be dour, deliberate and boring. Pretty much, he was.

But Cameron scares me rigid, and Clegg does nothing to ameliorate the worry. I think Cameron is already barking. It took Maggie years to believe her own legend; brave Davey is busking his own heroics already. He seems blind to the reality that he has no mandate, that he is embarking on policies even his own MPs have never seen and than the revolution he is attempting requires money as well as support it does not have.

He stands to wreck the health service - for ordinary people, not the rich who do not care. He is intent on allowing Gove to destroy what is left of the education service. Again the rich are not involved. He has so weakened the military that there is a real danger that the daft Trident will be all the sabres we have to rattle - Lord help us then. He is orchestrating the destruction of local government and in the process casting adrift the poor, the needy and dispossessed (there is no Ellis island for them Dave, honest!). He is willing to risk the destruction of libraries, parks, forests and a whole host of associated cultural and lifestyle benefits.

Meanwhile he is also failing to provide anything like a decent environment for business to flourish.

This weekend he decided to alienate our immigrant brothers. Nice one Dave.

If the nation slides into true depression with unrest on the streets he will even have emasculated the police and army in advance.

What frightens me is that this wholesale, blind revolution in the nation's culture under these conditions is the kind of bonfire of vitalities that can lead to the conditions for having an emergency government of national unity. I'm not saying Dave is a wannabe dictator of course. Just that I really do wonder if we shall have another election after all. Ever...