The Morning After

Yesterday, my country held a referendum on its future. I have made no secret of the fact that I voted Yes to its independence, that I felt it would be better for all involved if it were to disentangle itself from the UK. In the cold light of dawn, after a result that was disappointing but not altogether surprising, I still feel much the same way.

I'd like to make clear, first and foremost, that I respect the choice of my fellow Scots. 1.6M of them agreed with me. I don't think that the other 1.9M are stupid (though I continue to lament the poor standard of finance education in schools that makes it easy to be misdirected). I certainly don't see them as my enemies. I just don't buy the notion of a deep divide that many people (mostly outside Scotland) have been pushing. Almost all of us did what we did because we wanted the best for our country and for the wider world. Compared to that, disagreements over the means of getting it are trivial. I am awed by the fact that some 87% of the Scots electorate came out to support that cause.

The struggle to reach this point has been long and hard. Parts of it have been quite distressing, particularly the hatred for Scottish people, especially Yes voters, expressed in parts of the UK national press, where we have been repeatedly accused of being members of some fascist cult, with little meaningful opportunity to dispute this notion. It's one of those things that sums up the discomfort one can feel as a Scottish person in England, despite all the assurances of love we have received from that country recently. The togetherness everyone now vaunts (one does wonder how many have only just thought of it) must involve action being taken to resolve these problems, which have their roots in the othering and exoticisation of Scots. In other words, it cannot just be about what we do here. Despite what you may have heard, nobody is going out today to hunt down No voters in the streets. It has been a long campaign; most of us would far rather have a nice cup of tea and a sit down.

That campaign now being over, people are talking about three things: a No victory; where things go from here; and what happens to the major figures involved.

On the first of those topics, yes, the No campaign has achieved its aims, but it's hard to ascertain what that 'victory' means. What has been gained? What is there to cheer about? The land has been defended: we have our feet planted on the same slippery ground. Soon, some tell us, we will have a much better life. Soon, after what? That part is unclear, probably because there is no consensus on it within Better Together itself. In fact, do a little digging and you'll find that quite a number of Better Together supporters actually want independence; they just didn't feel that the were being offered the right model, or that now was the time. If this movement is to have any real political meaning it must first identify its own point of focus. All it can be said to have achieved otherwise is a muddled delay. Perhaps that's better than the alternative would have been, perhaps not. If it starts to look more like the latter, uncomfortable questions will be asked.

On the second, Scotland has been offered a bizarre assortment of assurances, most of which are next to meaningless in real terms but some of which have the potential to cause great complication. There is a strong suspicion that what will ensue is an attempt to cripple the Scottish parliament by giving it many new responsibilities and few, if any, real powers. Taking away powers would be politically unwise but remains a possibility, and not all of us have forgotten how Scotland was punished last time it flirted with independence. What's intriguing, however, is the political corner that the Conservatives and Labour may have painted themselves into in relation to this, given the fragile balance of power at Westminster (and the very real possibility that whoever is in government after next May's election may need the support of SNP MPs in order to actualise its manifesto commitments). Given their close rivalry, neither of these parties will want to incur the wrath of Scots just yet, so there will be pressure to act on some of those promses, and that will put certain politicians in very difficult positions indeed.

So we come to the third point. David Cameron has had a difficult month. If he had 'lost' Scotland, his political career would not have survived, so he took  desperate gamble and made his wild promises. In doing so, he created fury among powerful elements within his party, and any move to make good on those promises will make that worse. Furthermore, because of the impending general election, his party has only a brief window in which to dispose of him before it becomes too difficult to get away with. The only thing really going in his favour is the lack of an alternative likely to gain popular support within the party, which illustrates its deeper problems. Its best candidate may well actually be Theresa May, yet she has proven herself to be incompetent at a basic level (such as quoting laws inaccurately whilst serving as Home Secretary) again and again. Gove is electoral poison, Bois has limited appal outside London and, well, it doesn't look good for them.

If Cameron goes, things get more complicated elsewhere. Labour may well seize the opportunity to get rid of the increasingly flaccid Ed Miliband, with Yvette Cooper a likely replacement. In Scotland, Johann Lamont, who was almost invisible to voters during the latter stages of the referendum campaign (with those in strong No voting areas more likely to enthuse about Ruth Davidson - if you're less popular than a Tory in Scotland, you're in trouble). No's campaign was shambolic in general and has little to do with its victory (which hinged on the concept of risk, introduced early on and gradually growing less effective as time passed); it is difficult to see what Lamont contributed. Despite the official victory, she too may disappear before long.

Of all the major players, the one who seems to have come through this best is Alex Salmond, despite him officially having lost. It's broadly agreed that the Yes campaign could not really have done more. If he resigns, it's likely to happen after the negotiations of the coming months, and will probably involve a decision to step down at the next Holyrood election (in 2016). Should that happen, Nicola Sturgeon will slip easily into his shoes, and the degree of precision with which Yes crafted its campaigning will become fully apparent. Take Salmond's statements about the unlikeliness of a future independence referendum, for instance. They may have sounded definite (they had to, or people might not have bothered to vote in th one), but not a one of them was presented as anything other than personal opinion. In other words, if the Conservatives and Labour (and, for what it's worth, the LibDems) fail to live up to the promises which they strongly disagree on (and some of which would be extremely difficult to implement at a technical level anyway), there will be nothing hypocritical about the SP calling for another referendum. For that matter, the Greens could call for one any time they liked. It would probably take at least five years to engineer, but it's a credible threat. And sure, Westminster could refuse permission for it, but if a clear majority of Scots wanted to go, that would place them in a very difficult position in terms of their international reputation.

Why do I suggest there might be a clear majority in favour when there isn't this time? For several reasons. Firstly, broken promises don't go down well, especially if they inspired people to change their votes this time around. Secondly, if you look at the demographics examined in polling, you'll see a clear trend for No voting to correlate with age, and one that doesn't seem to relate to people's preferences changing as they get older; in time, much of the unionist vote will simply die off. Thirdly, looking at the pattern of No votes in this referendum shows a correlation with areas of poor internet penetration. As people get online, they become less dependent on mainstream media, they are better able to educate themselves, and they are more likely to encounter a diversity of political opinions. Internet access is expanding geographically in Scotland at a considerable pace. Over time, this will have a political impact.

That relationship with the internet has been one of the most interesting aspects of this campaign because it illustrates the increasing breakdown of traditional networks of power, of traditional frameworks through which ideas can become dominant. This isn't easy territory for Britain's traditional institutions to lay claim to. Despite the threat posed by increasing censorship, the internet is a real force for political change, enabling ordinary people to participate in public life as never before. It's a game changer.

Given the old choices familiar in Westminster elections, barely half the electorate turns out to vote in most places. Yesterday, when presented with the prospect of influencing something that actually mattered, with real choice available, voters achieved turnouts as high as 91%. That's what democracy ought to be about. We have a choice now. We can sit back and 'go back to normal' (which mans, essentially, accepting imposed changes we normally do), or we can stand up - not just in Scotland but all across the UK - and demand real choice in other elections. We can tell our politicians that we want leadership and vision, not just frantic clustering around whatever the Daily Mail says is the issue of the day. We don't need to sit around passively and let those who are supposed to be our servants take us for granted.

If Westminster hoped that a No vote in a referendum would pacify the Scots, they were wrong. Not only are we still here, still engaged, still capable of hoping for and fighting for something better, but we all stand together now in pressing for change. Westminster, stand and deliver!

Why I'm saying Yes to Scottish independence

Despite looking in depth at a number of key issues in the Scottish referendum, and writing on it from a number of angles for several different publications, I have hesitated to say anything personal about my vote. This is't simply about trying to keep people happy, having friends on both sides. I trust my friends to respect my decision as I respect theirs. Rather, it has been an ethical choice - it has been very important to me to keep my writing neutral and focused on the facts, because I think that's what the people of Scotland have been crying out for. I have also wanted to keep things straightforward as far as my business and charity work is concerned, though I can assre you that my coming out today does not mean either Trans Media Watch or Eye For Film will lose their neutrality. I haven't asked my colleagues what they think and I wouldn't presume to speak for them. The former is there to serve, the latter to entertain and inform; there is no place for this kind of politics in that.

Why, then, am I coming out now? It's because I think that, at this point, most minds are made up; because I want to be honest with m friends and my readers; and because I don't want to be smugly positioning myself after the fact. I want to be clear that this is what I believe in, in or lose.

As someone with fourteen years of experience in business and eight years of experience writing about it, as well as about the world of high finance, I feel confident in assessing the economic arguments at stake in this debate and I am not about to pretend that I think independence would be risk free. The thing is, I see some serious risks with staying in the union as well. It's important to remember that voting No is not a neutral option, not a vote for no change. There is always change, and there are many other major political and economic factors creating instability just now. I do find it vaguely amusing to hear avowed neo-liberals suddenly preaching against risk when it comes to this vote. All in all, I'm not too worried, because I've been following the policies of big business on this for a long time, I respect their ability to manage contingencies (they wouldn't be big otherwise) and I have, unfashionable though it may be, a degree of faith in the basic principles of capitalism. Market niches do not stay empty. High prices make retailers vulnerable to competition. Etc. Where currency is concerned, a see use of the pound (approved or not) as a viable short term option, and I would expect an independent Scotland to develop its own currency within five to fifteen years.

If these seems a little brusque, forgive me. I could write pages on any one of these issues, but I don't want to bore you.

Setting aside the fear of financial catastrophe, then, and laying to rest some other fears through the simple process of looking at what has happened to other countries that have made this kind of change, I shall move on to look at some of the other headline issues. Firstly, England. You're so vain, I bet you think this vote is about you. Well, to be honest, that's not what most English people think, and I've heard a wonderful diversity of opinions from those I've discussed the matter with; I know many of them are frustrated at being purportedly represented by the likes of David Cameron saying "I think I speak for all English people when I say that I want Scotland to stay." In fact, many English people themselves want something loosely described as "independence from Westminster," and I wish them well with that - I hope that Scotland's actions can encourage a flowering of political engagement in England. That's why I don't accept the "Stay and help them fight" line. I think the best way to help is to illustrate what's possible. What politics has been most painfully short of in recent years has been ideas and real faith in the potential of ordinary voters. That, and I've helped England fight for decades, and nothing has changed. I refuse to keep on nobly banging my head off the same brick wall..

Still, it's not about England, and it's not altogether about Westminster either. It is, strangely enough, about Scotland, about what we are, what we can be, what we can do. It's about a different kind of politics already manifested in a fairer voting system, a much more diverse set of political parties (I alone have voted for four different ones at Holyrood elections), and a much more engaged public. Woken now that it might act tomorrow, the dragon of Red Clydeside, so long bound in despair and apathy, is not going to go back to sleep again. This is a country where the voices of working class people have political weight, and that, rather than any sentimental factor, is why I think it can become a fairer country. I don't think Scots are better than other people, but I think we are in a position to take advantage of a range of cultural and political factors that give us the potential to make active use of the virtues and talents we have.

I don't comprehend the argument that independence is tragic because it will make people into foreigners. I already am a foreigner to most people in the world. There are borders between me and my friends in Pakistan, Canada, Brazil and New Zealand, yet I don't care about them any less than my friends in England or my friends who live just down the street. I see borders as practical things, enabling society to be split into democratically manageable sections. I'd like to see more evenness between those sections, more freedom of movement, and respect for human rights across all of them, but those are bigger causes I shall be no less engaged with for supporting an independent Scotland.

It probably goes without saying, but I am no more afraid of being invaded by aliens in an independent Scotland than anywhere else on Earth. Nor am I worried about being invaded by the armies of Vladimir Putin, in part because I understand his empire's economic and naval limitations. I think Scotland could continue to play a useful role in the world militarily, playing to its strengths in engineering, tech and medicine; I favour maintaining a ground army but I honestly don't see us as high on anyone's target list provided that England doesn't get any silly ideas. I trust we can all be more grown up than that.

I don't see everything as dependent on oil. As has been pointed out, if we're still dependent on oil in fifteen years, we're really screwed regardless of our governance (and our low-lying neighbours are even more so). We have a number of strong industries here in Scotland and they compare pretty well to those on which many larger national economies are dependent. We're pretty flexible and we've maintained our strong tradition of innovation, which reinforces that advantage.

For the sake of friends elsewhere in the UK who have been dependent on UK national newspaper coverage to make sense of what's going on in Scotland, I would simply like to say, don't panic, there is no terrifying fascist cult here, thee is no danger of No voters being hunted down in the streets if their side wins; we're really not that exciting. There's no terrifying censorship going on (I think I personally have a pretty strong record on fighting censorship, so I hope you will trust me on this, at least enough to do some real research before buying those lines), and there is at present no convincing evidence that the debate here has led to elevated levels of violence (there have always been a few people who enjoy that, and it's not surprising to see them attaching themselves to each side of the debate, but they'd probably have been behaving much the same way without it). Perhaps most importantly, no-one here is going into the voting booths without having thought things through. It may be that parts of the UK have only just discovered the issue, but we've been talking about it for over two years. W've thought about this, you know?

So this is what it comes down to, for me. I'm voting Yes because I think it's the right thing for democracy and gives Scotland (and perhaps other UK nations too) the best chance of achieving greater social justice. There is no conflict between my head and my heart; I am voting Yes because my experience of Scotland's business landscape, its creative sector, its political mechanisms and its community leaders convinces me that it has what it takes to make a success of this, and to exemplify a better way to live than we have recently known. I don't know if it will make me better or worse off. I don't believe I have any right to concern myself with that ahead of what is good for the electorate at large. I think the time has come to grasp the nettle and to make practical change. There's no future in England's dreaming, nor in the vague promises of those who lied to us last time. If we want a real future, we must make it.

I don't ask you to stand with me. I ask only that, if you are voting in this referendum, you consider your decision carefully and do what honestly seems right to you. But for better or worse, this is where I stand. Yes I said yes I will yes.

Kitchen Sink Drama

By now, people all around the world are familiar with Patronising BT Lady. M&C Saatchi have done it again - they have created a viral advert distributed even by those in opposition to the cause they are supporting. The theory behind advertising strategies like this is that they raise the profile of a movement and help it connect with new people, so that even if initial impressions are unfavourable, those connections can be productively exploited in future. It has, however, misfired for Saatchi clients in the past, and it looks like it's doing so again.

In the case of Better Together, which has just three weeks in which to try and persuade the Scottish populace not to vote for independence, the adage that all publicity is good publicity really doesn't apply. People who switch allegiance or make up their minds at this point are very unlikely to switch back. A number of women of my own acquaintance have told me that they have moved from an undecided position or even an outright unionist position to a pro-independence position because of this advert, and I have not met any who have moved in the other direction. I have also talked with women who were already intending to vote Yes but were not very assertive about their politics who have started speaking out and trying to change the minds of those around them specifically because this has made them so angry; and I have met firm No-voting women who feel deeply embarrassed that they have been represented in this way.

Why do they feel like this? The message is pretty consistent, regardless of political position. Women feel that they are being treated (a) as if they're idiots, (b) as if they don't respect other members of their families, (c) as if they're expected to exist in a domestic space that eschews politics, and (d) as if their sincere voting intentions must be based on gut feelings rather than reason. Many of those who are or recently were undecided are far from apolitical - if anything, it's their awareness of political nuance that has kept them from taking firm decisions earlier in the campaign, though most of them do intend to vote. No voting women who thought they were part of something are now wondering if, all along, they've been thought of as pawns.

It is of course worth noting that there are some very capable women involved in the No campaign, and one can only conclude that they lacked the marketing savvy - or confidence therein - to prevent this advert from going ahead. The Saatchis have long had a bad reputation when it comes to the representation of women, so arguably something has been imposed on Better Together that doesn't fairly reflect what's going on inside it (I'm happy to attest that I have friends within the campaign who have done solid work on women's rights in the past).

Desperate attempts to justify the advert haven't really helped, however. "The woman [in the advert] is of course not representative of all women – no one woman is – and I think it has been unfairly distorted into an illustration of what the campaign thinks of women. I can confidently say that is not the case. I wouldn't be involved in such a campaign," Talat Yaqoob told the Guardian - which, of course, is tantamount to an admission that she finds the character objectionable. It has also been argued that the representation is fair because "all the quotes are verbatim from women we've met on the doorsteps." Well, sure, I can see how that might seem like it makes it okay, but whilst any one woman feeling confused about one or two issues is understandable (and a sensible reason to seek advice), combining all that confusion in one woman creates an idiot, and to have her decide how to vote on the basis of her confusion is still more deeply problematic. it's the antithesis of political argument.

How could Better Together miss something so fundamental? Some have argued that they couldn't - that they contain a fifth column secretly working for Yes, or that this is pat of a more sophisticated Saatchi strategy yet to be revealed. Well, possibly - but then there's Hanlon's razor to consider.

There's also a worse possibility - and that's that the advert genuinely reflects what influential people in the No campaign think of women. One can only hope that such attitudes are not widespread. Whatever position one takes in the great debate, it ought to be apparent that hoping people don't exercise thought before they vote is loathsomely anti-democratic. The best thing about the past two years has been the political awakening taking place in Scotland, where people with diverse political perspectives have been engaging in debate like never before. it's opening up new possibilities for us as a nation - whichever way the big vote goes - by contributing fresh insight and energy into our political system and reviving our democracy. Women must be a part of that, and their contributions must be respected. It is way past time to get out of the kitchen. Scotland may choose to be independent or it may choose to stay in the union, but whatever it decides, there will be no place in it for those seeking to deny women a political voice.

Making the news

Early in the morning of the 23rd of May this year, I contacted the BBC to raise my concern about its coverage of the local elections in England and Northern Ireland. Now, I'm not a party political person (I tried that at one point and it didn't work out), but I wouldn't have needed my research degree either to identify the bias in this coverage: the Green Party, despite making impressive gains throughout the night, was almost completely ignored. I counted just three mentions of the party before midnight, there were a couple of minutes devoted to their story later on, and there was an interview with leader Natalie Bennett (looking impressively chipper) after 3am, when most viewers would have already gone to their beds. In expressing unhappiness with this situation, I was joined by people from across the political spectrum, and a substantial petition was later presented to BBC headquarters.

Today I finally got a reply from the BBC. It reads as follows:-

Please accept our apologies for the delay in replying. We understand our correspondents appreciate a quick response and we are sorry you had to wait on this occasion.

We are committed to impartial, balanced reporting but we appreciate that not everyone will agree with how we choose to cover a particular story.

In the case you have highlighted we felt it most newsworthy to report on the results of the three 'major' parties and UKIP, who finished second. The Conservatives won the election whilst Labour came third.

As you've pointed out, the Liberal Democrats were sixth, behind the Greens and an independent candidate. However, the fact remains that are [sic] a party in government which came third in the popular vote in the last General Election. Therefore we felt their performance to be both editorially relevant and of interest to our audience. But as explained above, such decisions are judgment calls which we recognise not everyone will agree with.

Let's address the issues this raises one at a time.

Firstly, that apology. It's notable that no reason is given for the delay, though I had been contacted briefly earlier to advise me that investigation would take some time. How long does it take to find out about an existing policy? If the explanation is so obvious, why couldn't it have been provided immediately?

Secondly, that commitment to balance - what exactly does it mean? Running the numbers (votes, percentage growth, comparative positioning, poll comparisons) makes that lack of coverage look distinctly unbalanced. As the letter goes on to explain that newsworthiness, not balance, was the prime consideration, it sees rather disingenuous to mention balance here.

Thirdly, whilst I acknowledge that UKIP did come second, the increase in their share of the vote was lower than that of the Greens and, notably, they had significantly fewer elected representatives in senior positions. If being in government is enough to give the LibDems consideration although they came sixth, ought not being represented in parliament to be a consideration when it comes to balancing coverage of the Greens against that of UKIP?

The most glaring point here, however, is this: that coverage of the Greens was missing right from the start of the programme, when they were several time lumped in with 'others'. At that point, the BBC did not know what the results of the vote would be. They made the decision to run extensive coverage of UKIP's story (actually disproportionate in relation to the major parties, too) and to exclude the Greens before the programme began.

There's another major point at issue here which the BBC's letter does not even try to address. Newsworthiness can sometimes explain not having room to mention something or someone in a short article. But this was a broadcast over six hours long. In that context, there is no need to make hard choices between subjects. There would have been ample room to properly cover the Greens' story and that of UKIP and the major parties.

It's generous of the BBC to explain to me that I may take a different point of view. As a commissioning editor (at Eye For Film and KaleidoScot) I understand the issue of editorial lines. As a sociology graduate, I understand the importance of anticipating bias in one's own work and work one is reviewing. The problem is that the BBC does not, as an organisation, acknowledge any of that. Rather it passes itself off as a neutral arbiter, delivering straight, unbiased facts. That makes slanted coverage like this deeply problematic.

On the night of the elections Natalie Bennett pointed out an interesting fact (which, from what I can determine, seems to bear up): the Greens were getting more new members per minute of airtime than any other party. In other words, there are a lot of people out there who are drawn to their politics once they know it's out there and know what it's about. in a context where overall levels of voting are falling lower and lower, doesn't the BBC owe it to potential voters to let them know what their options are?

Women against feminism: what's the story?

There's "a large and growing number" of women who are against feminism, says the BBC, referring to "a wave of anti-feminist argument from young women". This evidenced by a group Tumblr blog with 4,700 members and a Facebook group with 14,784 members (a good many of whom are there to argue with its founders, to troll, or simply as observers). Far be it from me to dismiss these women's voices, as they may have important points to make on an individual basis, but numbers like this are, when considered in proportion to the number of women using each medium, hardly evidence of a mass movement. The pop group One Direction has over 400 times as many Facebook fans and its cultural relevance is not accorded that kind of weight.

Several publications have now seen fit to publish lists of some of these women talking about their feelings on the subject. If we are to take these as representative at all, we must further question the premise behind these rather wild claims. Around half of those interviewed stress that they are for equality. They say they want the chance to achieve things on their own merits. In other words, they are not anti-feminist at all - they simply describe themselves that way because they don't know what feminism is. Given how little education is available on the subject, this is hardly surprising, and it doesn't mean they're stupid - most of them seem to have arrived at reasonable ethical positions by themselves, just without using the same labels. It does mean, however, that journalists should know better than to treat them as part of the same 'movement' as women who don't believe they are the equals of men.

In between, there is the more obscure group of women who believe they "have all their rights already". Again, this belief doesn't mean they're stupid - they may simply never have been in situations where they were knowingly impacted by gender inequality. It's relatively easy to be sheltered from these things if young and from a relatively comfortable middle class background. If they have limited experience of employment, living independently, raising children, coping with ill health etc., they may not have noticed the worst inequalities, and if they are aware that the potential for male sexual violence has a limiting effect on their lives, they may not see that as part of the same phenomenon. But just as we can't assume they're stupid, we can't assume they wouldn't rage against inequality if they did encounter it, so construing them as anti-feminist, even if they label themselves that way, is rather misleading.

In other words, this notion that a great many women are rising up to say that they don't want to be equal and would rather spend their lives deferring to men just can't be substantiated by the evidence put forward it its support. So why is it circulating at all? There are a few possibilities. First up is sheer sensationalism: it's a simple case of man bites dog, where what is less likely, if presented as truth, gets more attention. Secondly, it's an example of fear porn - that is, people love to be shocked and horrified by reading about what is supposedly going wrong with the world, and the idea of a group turning on its own is easy clickbait. Thirdly, there's the possibility that it serves certain agendas - although most articles express horror at the "growing phenomenon", the idea nevertheless helps to trivialise feminist concerns, positioning them as outdated, elitist and out of touch with everyday reality. (It's also possible, of course, that all these factors are involved to some degree.)

Rather than getting angry at young women who are trying to do what's right with limited information, feminists need to be asking why this non-story has been inflated and passed off as something meaningful - and why it's happening now. At a time when worldwide movements to reduce violence against women are finally gaining ground but when things like access to contraception and the right to equal pay are coming under attack in parts of the Western world, feminist ideas that were once minority currency are gradually moving into mass circulation. We should all be on our guard against insidious attacks based on flimsy evidence. It is the story that is the problem, not the myth upon which it is based.

In the pit

Like everyone else, I've been following the unfolding story of the disaster in Soma, where over 280 miners died this week. I've watched twin media narratives unfold. One of these is the conventional disaster story, the attempt to convince viewers that there might yet be some hope, that it's possible a miracle could happen and someone could be found alive, despite the fact that's vanishingly unlikely in a case like this and the relatives waiting out there could probably do without the added pressure of being urged to clutch at straws. The other involves exploring the political background to the event, the failure of the Turkish government to provide adequate protection to miners. But this is part of a bigger story that they still seem to be missing.

That story is one in which each of us plays a role, at least insofar as we might be benefiting from the global economic recovery. Because it is on the backs of people like the Soma miners that that recovery is built. We don't hear a lot about it but mining is one of the key industries driving the recovery and, when one considers how others depend on it, it might be considered that most important. It may be people in offices coordinating shipments, brokering deals and buying and selling stocks who are shaping economic growth, but it is miners who are putting their bodies on the line, and without them we could all find ourselves a great deal poorer.

I don't say this purely to celebrate the people who do his job (though it would be nice to see more of them get adequate wages); I say it as a warning. Because we've seen this before - in gold rushes, in South Africa's uranium rush, in the horror of what happened under the conquistadors at Potosí. Although we depend on miners, they often have very little control over their working conditions. When society is hungry for raw materials, miners end up being forced to take risks. There isn't time to manufacture and distribute proper safety equipment, and many pit owners don't care. Less care is taken with geological surveys. Pits are expanded into territory that those involve recognise as treacherous. Poorly trained newcomers are sent into working environments they are not ready for (and in some countries, too often, they are children).

In this situation, we can expect to see more disasters like that at Soma. Most of them will be smaller, involving 'just' injuries or  small number of deaths, and will not make the headlines. Many will take place in areas that the international media pays little attention to anyway, but they will happen. It is imperative, therefore, that pressure be put on governments and industry to ensure good safety standards in mines, with regular unannounced inspections. This is as much an issue for the First World as for the countries where most of the accidents will happen, because as consumers of internationally sourced products, we all have a responsibility to those who are working on our behalf.

Mining is an inherently dangerous profession and we cannot prevent accidents, but we can work together to monitor them and we can stand up for the people on whom our global economy depends. The Soma accident isn't just a tragedy to watch on TV; it's a wake-up call.

Banking on the Pound

Yesterday's speech by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney received predictable responses on Twitter - passionately assurances, from both Yes and No campaigners, that their own cases were vindicated by it as he clearly agreed with them in full. Having watched this go on through the subsequent hours, I hope that I may be excused for sticking my oar in and asserting that, on the contrary, he agrees with me in full: I have long argued that this is a complex, nuanced issue with both positive and negative points.

I'm not a newcomer to this area of discussion; I've run three different kinds of business and I've written on business and financial issues for around a decade. And like it or not, this is a business issue, not an ideological one - those who get further than just lapping up the soundbites or shrugging their shoulders because maths is hard will be thinking carefully about how the decision could impact them financially before they decide which way to vote. They will be thinking not just about their domestic lives but also about the businesses they run and the businesses they work for. Even if they've already made up their minds about voting, many will want to work out how they can prepare financially for what is to come, how much work they will need to do to make adjustments, and what they need to take into account when preparing individual business forecasts.

In any situation of this type there are a lot of unknowns, but as Carney noted, something we can do is to look at other countries that have gone through the same process, and consider what happened to them. Doing so should reduce some of the panic that has attended the independence debate. The question is not - and, to serious minded people, never has been - about whether or not Scotland can survive on its own. What matters is whether or not it should, and whether or not it would be able to provide its citizens with a standard of living not simply adequate but satisfactory.

In asking these questions, we really need to examine two points that have been sidelined or distorted during the bulk of the debate. Firstly, there's the issue of currency use. We need to say goodbye to the nonsense that has been spouted about Scotland perhaps not being able to use the pound. Of course it will be able to use the pound. There's a very simple reason for this: the pound is a freely tradeable currency. Should it cease to be such, the UK (or what then remains of it) can kiss goodbye to its high credit rating. Naturally that isn't going to happen - so what really matters is not the cash we use (after all, we could always choose the bitcoin), but who is our lender of last resort.

This brings me to the second point - it would be unwise for any country already dealing with complexities of establishing itself as an independent force in the modern world to try and set up its own weighty central bank at the same time. But independence does not have to be established overnight. Again, if we look at other recent divorces between nations, we can see how this works in practice. If a currency is shared for a short period of time - five years is probably  good base estimate, but it should be flexible in order to take account of changing circumstances - this gives a new country stability when it most needs it. It will face limitations for the duration, being obliged to follow a similar economic direction to its larger partner, but this can be temporary. Introducing its own currency after that point is much easier and means it then has the freedom to determine its own direction.

So why is nobody discussing this option? In act, a few of the smaller political parties are, but it has been elided from the mainstream debate for two reasons. Firstly, the majority of those opposed to independence find it problematic because it makes the option of independence seem more viable. secondly, the majority of those in favour find it problematic because it requires the acknowledgement that independence would be complicated and some major elements would remain unpredictable for years after the fact. (The desire to make everything seem predictable and safe is a problem on both sides of the argument - it's politically expedient, of course, but hardly honest - there is no political arrangement without uncertainty - and the public are beginning to see through it). This is another illustration of the problems stemming from the media narrative of the referendum as a battle between polarised opponents, focused on sniping at each other rather than on elucidating the issues the public is anxious to understand. We badly need to open up public discussion of a wider range of possibilities where Scotland' political and economic future is concerned.

At present, many Scots find themselves dependent on putting their trust in one financial assessment or another based on how credible its exponents seem, without ever unravelling the details. Carney is to be praised for he clear language he used in his address, and this should be taken not as an opportunity for political posturing but as an opportunity to explore the pros and cons together, constructively, and invite more people in to the economic debate. If nothing else it is an opportunity for education that - whichever way the referendum goes - will benefit Scotland in the long term.

Best Exotic Politico Hotel

This week, First Minister's Questions in the Scottish Parliament opened with a bizarre exchange in which Johann Lamont challenged Alex Salmond over the cost of a 2012 trip to Chicago. There's a reason why this kind of politics is generally discouraged, with people being advised to play the ball, not the man. It's not just about being polite. It's that the ball can't kick back.

Lamont's criticism centered on Salmond's $2,000 a night stay at the Peninsula Hotel in Chicago. It just so happens that, like my many writers, I make part of my living from producing promotional copy, and I've written about the Peninsula Hotel. The reason it's so popular with celebrities, something Lamont ridiculed (she must wish Justin Bieber's latest bad-boy-honest publicity stunt had happened a day earlier), is that it has excellent security. Accommodating politicians in a place like this may cost more upfront but it cuts down on the cost of providing personal security, so it's not quite the waste of money it might look like. Sadly, senior politicians and celebrities do need security these days, and the cost of losing our first minister, even just in financial terms, would be considerable - not to mention that, with increased security, he's cheaper to insure.

What really makes this unfortunate for Lamont, however, is nothing to do with Salmond - it's all about the Labour Party. Let's stick with Chicago. In 1999, Tony Blair stayed in the Conrad Suite in the city's Hilton hotel, another place known for the excellent security, which is partly why it has been used by the likes of Frank Sinatra, John Travolta and Cher. The Chicago Hilton charges upwards of $7,000 a night for this suite.

Far be it from me to attack Blair for this, even if I can't see why he'd need 24 hour butler service. The point is, accommodating famous politicians is expensive. If Lamont herself becomes First Minister one day, she may find herself in the awkward position of having to find a cheaper hotel and security deal for herself. Thursday's conversation may come back to haunt her. She would be wise to do her backtracking now rather than letting this fester.

Burning Chromosomes

Amid all the recent Skeptics related flap about sex and gender, one thing has stood out to me. It is the assertion that people's  'biological sex' is obvious because of chromosomes. This is a dubious statement for many reasons, but prominent among them is this: of the numerous people I have questioned after they made this statement, all of whom have described themselves with confidence as either male or female, not one has been able to tell me with certainty what their own chromosomes look like.

Let's think about that for a minute.

Considering this, one friend told me that he'd be prepared to make a bet. I respect that position - it's not hard to guess the likely outcome - but it misses the point. The argument that sex is obvious because of chromosomes implies that we are looking at chromosomes and then deciding what sex somebody is (generally referred to as 'gendering' them).

This is patently not what we are doing. We are, as a rule looking at secondary sex characteristics or aspects of presentation (or, in the case of babies, genitals) and deciding, on that basis, what sex category to place people in; then, on that basis, we are making an assumption about what their chromosomes are likely to look like.

Ergo, unless the first we see of someone is a cell under a microscope, chromosomes play no role in what is 'obvious'. They may play a role in confirming or contradicting that later on, but it's rare.

Perhaps what is intended here is the advancement of the idea that sex can always be clarified by chromosomes. This relies on a very dogmatic view of sex in a context where scientists and doctors are far from reaching a consensus (sex can be defined by a number of characteristics that don't always neatly line up), it runs into problems when it comes to individuals with variant sex chromosomes (not super rare) and it plainly doesn't fit with our social reality.

When we look at someone's chromosomes, we may well find that they're not what we expect. Some kinds of intersex people have bodies that look completely male or female whilst their chromosomes might lead you to expect the opposite; to claim that they are 'really' gendered by their chromosomes is to dismiss at a stroke their whole life history. Not only does this render the notion of sex pretty much meaningless (lots of us don't reproduce anyway* but sex has a huge effect on how we interact), but any competent biologist will tell you that genotype does not equal phenotype, for a host of reasons, and phenotype is no less biologically 'real'.

Although many intersex people are identified at birth, many don't find out until much later in life (it's reasonable to suppose that a fair number never know at all). Every now and then a story hits the papers, usually with a lurid headline. A fifty year old man has found out he's really a woman! they tell us, except of course he has done no such thing. If he has always felt comfortable with his male identity, with a body that looks the way it does, he's not likely to change that because of a curious medical detail. His family, friends and workmates may raise eyebrows at the unexpected news but they won't suddenly see him differently. He'll still just be this guy, you know?

If you are minded to dismiss somebody as not 'really' male or female because their chromosomes don't match their appearance, you had better (a) actually know what their chromosomes are instead of basing bullying on a guess, and (b) give serious thought to how you would feel and behave if you discovered your chromosomes were not what you expected. Would you really change your lifestyle completely? Would you start thinking of the life you had lived as false, of yourself as fake? Are chromosomes that important to you?

There is a parallel here with many people's approach to sexual orientation. I have had many conversations with men who tell me they would never feel attracted to a man (by which they usually mean a male-bodied person; and so on, for other categories of sex and orientation). Not wouldn't want to sleep with, which is entirely their prerogative, but wouldn't feel attracted to. I find this odd because when I first notice somebody appealing I'm not usually looking at their genitals or peering at their chromosomes under a microscope. YMMV. I usually notice things like their curves, their (ahem) secondary sexual characteristics, and how they move. Despite my many years of living and working in trans and intersex circles, I have no magical power to perceive either the private anatomy or the gender identity of a fully clothed stranger. Simply considering the statistics, I'm sure I must have been attracted to some people where one of both of those things in fact defied my expectations.** Attraction is not a thing we control and, in most contexts, it's really not a thing we need to worry about that much. After all, we cope with other instances where otherwise cute people turn out to have characteristics that are deal breakers (for instance, I know a fair few people who refuse to sleep with folk who vote Tory, and they don't break down in tears if they discover they've accidentally lusted over one).

Sex, gender and sexual orientation are complicated things. Unless we're monitoring discrimination or planning to get intimate with someone then they are also, as a rule, none of our business. We don't need to impose dubious scientific definitions on them or get our knickers in a twist trying to reconcile the inherent fuzziness of
biology with a compulsion to neatly index everything. There is variety everywhere in nature - without it, evolution wouldn't work - and any truly scientific approach must acknowledge that. So in the end, it doesn't hurt science to respect people's lived experiences. In this situation at least, there need be no conflict between good science and good manners.


* One definition of sex used in biology holds that females are those individuals in a species who produce larger gametes than other members (males). It would work fairly well except that a significant percentage of individuals in most species, including humans, don't produce any gametes.
**This isn't to suggest that cross dressers set out to deceive people. I start from the assumption that, like me (when not in professional wear) they dress to please themselves, not because they're sleazily determined to seduce me. Others might want to give this approach a try.

Giant Size Television Thing

Following Jamie Oliver’s latest ill though out tirade, it really is time to call time on the giant size television thing.  There are many ways to attack the poor (as the current Westminster government has shown us) but getting in a flap about the size of their TV sets has to be one of the stupidest.

Let’s start with a simple question: when was the last time you saw a small television set? These days, if you’re going to buy one at all, it’s going to be large. It is also, most likely, going to be cheap. We are far from the days when televisions were a luxury item. One can buy them in supermarkets now for less than some people spend on their weekly food shop. They’re also cheap to run when compared with the old cathode ray models, averaging about three pounds a week. That’s pretty good for a box that keeps the kids entertained if you’re working the long hours that most poor people do, or if you’re looking for a job.

Televisions are even cheaper second hand. They have a very low resale value, so if you lose your job, selling your television won’t help you much. The chances are you will have to part with your internet connection, if you had one in the first place (many poor people still don’t) as internet access constitutes a much larger ongoing expense. This means your television will become your main form of access to news. There have been rulings against bailiffs taking televisions in payment of debt, as they are considered essential for keeping people informed about the world. If poor people are forced to get rid of them, that’s a pretty effective way of barring them from any engagement with public life. Losing access to information about current affairs (bearing in mind that many avoid the expense of paying for a daily newspaper) makes it difficult for them to exercise their democratic rights.

To say that poor people should not have access to television is also to say that they should not have access to entertainment. It means their kids will experience social isolation and have difficulty fitting in at school, with a potentially negative consequences for their education. It means that older kids who probably also have few books or toys will have nothing to do but hang around in the streets, and we all know the kind of problems that can lead to. It means that those adults who cannot look for work—who are poor due to illness or disability, or who are full time carers—are deprived of something that can help fill their time. Bear in mind that these are, by and large, not people with the means to buy books or musical instruments or to make regular trips to the cinema or theatre. Television may be all they have.

So why is the possession of a television whilst poor now the subject of so much disapproval? It’s pretty simple: when we go inside the poorest people’s homes, whether directly or via a camera (whose observations we probably see on our own television sets), the TV is generally the only thing we see that looks like it might be worth anything at all. Think about that. There’s usually no computer, no sound system, no attractive furniture, no sports equipment, no art. These are people with next to nothing. Picking on the television is the only effective way to pretend that they are hanging on to some kind of meaningful resource, thereby depriving others. It’s simple propaganda.

Jamie Oliver, who would not be successful himself without television, should know better than to go along with this kind of lie. How are his crusades to change people’s eating habits going to reach their targets if not through their TVs? Yes, it would be better if people engaged in more active pursuits, but that’s not an option for all of them.  Yes, it’s tragic that many are reduced to living life simply as spectators, but the real problem there is lack of opportunity—depriving them even further will not help. We should not be looking at people in desperate situations and asking what they still have that we might take. We should be asking what we can give, how we can increase their opportunities, how we can help them to connect with the world more effectively and thereby improve their own situations. We should think about the roots of the word ‘television’ and try to see a little further ourselves.

Rape jokes: still not big, still not clever

Over the past 24 hours I have been working with my charity, Trans Media Watch, to try and ensure respectful coverage of Chelsea Manning's decision to come out as trans. The fact we've known about the matter for some time didn't really help; we always knew that when she went public the story would be huge, and it has been very hard for us to keep up. Although we're very pleased with how some media outlets have responded, we've also seen a lot of really nasty stuff, some of it in supposedly professional publications and, of course, a lot of it on social media.

What has stood out about the social media stuff - and some of the comments in national newspapers, before editors got to them - is the number of jokes focused on prison rape, and the number of people who seem to find them hilarious. Rape jokes on the internet may be nothing new but the striking thing about these is how many have come from people (mostly men) who just a few weeks ago were up in arms about the abuse many women suffer online. The disconnect is remarkable. These are people who generally seem to think of themselves as the good guys, even as feminists. They would probably be horrified at the thought of making rape jokes about non-trans women. But because Chelsea Manning is trans, she's seen as fair game.

The issue here isn't simply about how Manning's gender is understood, about when she is seen to 'count' s female; it's about why people think that should matter. To put it simply, rape jokes about a man wouldn't be funny either. Avoiding this kind of behaviour isn't simply a box-ticking exercise to make a good impression on influential women. It has been assumed to represent a genuine understanding of how horrific rape is, or at least an appreciation that the subject can be traumatic to others, and the ease with which Manning has been targeted reveals that, in some cases, that simply isn't there. When people make these jokes about Manning, it becomes obvious how hollow that pretence of sympathy was.

There are no doubt people who have made such jokes, or laughed along with them, as a reflex action, without any examination of their import. It's time for those people to think about how they come across. There are others who have approached the subject as gallows humour, who have understood and have aimed to use humour to expose horror. This always has its place, but it needs to be done with great caution in a context where there's already so much carelessly brutal stuff going around.

There's another aspect to this, and that's that rape jokes aimed at women, ugly as they are, tend to be intended to shock. By contrast, much of the joking about Manning has been giggling, conspiratorial stuff, as if it were no more than a little bit of naughtiness. There's a sense that it's socially condoned, or that people expect it to be. We all need to speak out against this. The developing dialogue about abuse hurled at women online must expand and account for the fact that sexual aggression is just as unacceptable no matter whom it refers to.

I would hope that responsible internet users can unite on this. I don't like to think what it says about our society if we can't.

Counting the Cost

There are several reasons why I don't think campaigning for a report button on Twitter is a good idea. Chief among them - yet barely addressed - is the fact that this is fig leaf politics. It's enabling business leaders and politicians to wriggle out of a much bigger problem, which is this: who is going to pay to fix our broken society and why should women and minorities pay for the cost of leaving it the way it is?

First of all, let me clarify that I am not without sympathy for those who have been hurt by threats made against them online. Whilst I think we need to exercise caution in policing slurs, a threat that places somebody in a state of fear and alarm (or which a reasonable person would assume could do so) would, in other circumstances, be considered a crime, and I don't see why it being made online should be seen as making it less serious. I should note that I've received any number of rape and death threats in my time and I have generally laughed them off (most are, all else aside, terribly badly written), but that's me. I'm not easily intimidated in that way, but we don't say it's okay to go around shoving people in the street because the stronger ones won't fall over. I note that most people saying everyone should laugh this off are not members of those groups who can expect to be threatened in person on a frequent basis. Many women and members of minority groups experience that daily; they may find it hard to brush off online threats if they've been raped and assaulted in the past.

That said, I also have some sympathy for certain kinds of trolling - not the sorts that terrify people but the sorts that aim to provoke people for socially or politically important reasons. We have always needed contrary voices in order to enhance public discussion. Often it is only through this kind of provocation that radical perspectives come to be heard at all, and even if some of it seems inept, our society is richer for it. Furthermore, there are groups out there whose very existence is seen as provocation. I worry for the future of my charity if a report button happens because I know there are people out there who would constantly report it as being offensive simply for advocating that trans people have a right to decent treatment. It wouldn't matter if each instance of complaint was dismissed; if it happened frequently enough, we would not be able to communicate using Twitter. The same could go for any number of socially and politically focused organisations, and indeed for feminist advocates who attract the ire of certain groups of men.

Ultimately, though, what worries me most is that a report button - and similar approaches elsewhere - will allow a symbolic gesture to shut off debate in a really important area. Adding a button does not guarantee that Twitter, or any other organisation, will devote any more resources to following up complaints, or doing so promptly. Facebook has report buttons and yet remains notorious as a home for groups discussing rape and violence. Adding a button or clicking a button will not make the problem go away, it will just boost corporate PR.

Worse than this is the political jumping on the bandwagon (and here I do not include politicians like Stella Creasy who have been campaigning on related issues for a long time). This is a boost for David Cameron's equally ill-thought-out internet porn filter scheme. It allows politicians to look as if they care about violence against women without ever putting their money where their mouths are. If Cameron gave a damn, he wouldn't have taken funding away from battered women's shelters.

Here's the crux of the problem: misogyny wasn't invented by the internet. It may sometimes take more exaggerated forms there but the real reason it's becoming a political issue is not that there's more of it, it's that women are able to raise their voices, en masse, in protest. Projects like Everyday Sexism have helped to demonstrate the scale of the problem, online and off. Men who used to keep their hatred within all-male groups are now expressing it where women can observe it, and are having to contend with the fact that women don't like it. Hence all the nonsensical attempts to drown out women's voices in the name of free speech.

Ever since our society started to recognise that women are human beings with a right to expect the same opportunities in life as men, our society has been heading towards this confrontation. We have reached a point where it is no longer possible to ignore the aggression that many women routinely face from many men. We need to have a social solution, a cultural solution, a political solution - and there will be no persuading women to return to the meek days of accepting their fate. But what really makes this frightening for politicians is that we need an economic solution.

Every debate about dealing with misogyny stops short when it comes to finance. We are at a point where we don't need hand wringing and sympathetic speeches, we need serious investment. We need the police to be adequately funded to follow things up every time a credible threat or rape or violence is made, every time a woman is groped on a bus, every time she faces sexual harassment in a workplace that fails to take action. Restricting follow-up to high threshold cases isn't good enough. It isn't good enough because there is a cost to all this freewheeling abuse and right now women (along with other targeted groups like gay people) are bearing all of that cost themselves. Ultimately, the question must be why our society thinks it's okay for half its members to bear the whole of this cost rather than everyone paying their share, fairly, through the tax system, through government action to tackle the problem.

The same applies when it comes to child protection. We get endless soundbites and new schemes to encourage reporting. We don't see the organisations things are reported to getting anything like adequate resources for follow-up. Once again, one group is left to pay the price, in suffering, of society's failure to put its money where its mouth is.

The real reason very little is done to tackle misogynistic aggression is that it's so endemic the cost would be huge. That's a tough thing for politicians to take on, but what they need to understand is that the cost of doing nothing is also huge. Those who are paying it now will not put up with that forever. They are voters too, and politically, they are waking up to this. They will not be placated for long by being given buttons. It is time for real action.

Protection Racket

The latest wave of moral panic around protecting children has inspired David Cameron to announce that, from the latter part of this year, all ISPs will be required to use a opt-in system where users only get access to adult content if they register first. Aside from the general unworkability of this, his evident cluelessness about the technical issues involved and the massive concerns about state control of content that it raises, there's another important point that needs to be addressed, and that's that in some cases, it will do the very opposite of protecting children - it will leave them cut off from resources they desperately need.

It was in the early 'nineties that I first became aware of what filtering out 'adult' content actually means. At that point I was helping to maintain a safer sex advice website and I was shocked when we were told it was being blacklisted by several search engines which deemed it pornographic. There were no images on the site apart from logos and everything was written in a very plain style, with nothing intended to titillate (rather than getting people excited we wanted them to stop and think). But there were those words, 'sex' and 'sexual', and there was some discussion of taboo body parts, and that was enough.

When I got angry about this, a colleague suggested that I look into the status of another site I wrote for, which was aimed at young LGBT people and had no sexual content at all. Sure enough, I discovered this was blocked too. And it wasn't just because certain terms ended in '-sexual' - further research showed that some search engines blocked on the basis of words like 'gay' and 'lesbian', as a matter of course.

Two decades on, much has improved. It's probable that most ISPs will have the sense to keep general LGB sites accessible, at least once the problem is pointed out to them. These sites can be a vital resource to young people facing daily hostility at home or at school. But what about trans people in the same situation? It is, sadly, still the case that the most heavily promoted sites using the terms 'transsexual' and 'transgender' are pornographic. Search engines have got savvy about this but a lazy ISP will find it much easier simply to deem everywhere with those terms 'adult', leaving vulnerable young people without anywhere they can find support, community or access to vital health information.

If the proposed filters come into operation, it is probable that every site on safer sex will have to fight to remain accessible, and the evidence shows us that it is young people who are most in need of the information these sites carry. Furthermore, it will be harder for young people facing sexual abuse to access support online. I can remember how I felt when Childline started, how I wished it had been there for me. There are now lots of places that offer children help but lots are needed, as not every child will be comfortable with the same set of options and not every child will look for help using the same kind of search terms. How many would end up disappearing due to the language they used?

Even when it comes to images, there are entirely appropriate reasons why, sometimes, children should have access to images of genitals. In some cases they're an appropriate part of conversations on safer sex; in others, they're important to helping young people feel comfortable about their bodies and recognise the diversity out there. They are particularly important for young intersex people trying to come to terms with bodily differences that doctors and family members may simply refuse to discuss. It is much better for young people to be able to access educational and support resources online than to rely on peer gossip or take a chance on trusting an adult to give advice when they are in a very vulnerable situation. School advisors and so on are not an adequate substitute because thy often lack training on trans and intersex issues.

By restricting access to legitimate resources, internet filters put already marginalised young people at even greater risk. Yes, online predation is a danger, but so are in-person abuse, bullying, isolation, unplanned pregnancy and lack of access to appropriate medical support. Among the few things research tells us about child molesters in general is that they seek out children who are poorly informed about sexual and bodily issues, and who lack confidence. Internet filters could easily make children more vulnerable in this way, too.

Of course it's possible that any successfully introduced filter will take account of these problems and invest the resources to make sure support and information sites are not affected. Given the history of this area, however, I'm not holding out much hope. Whilst I doubt Cameron's proposals will easily find solid form at all, it's important that we have this conversation, because current discussions are ignoring the complexity of child protection issues and ignoring the fact that the internet provides services that the state itself is failing to provide to certain groups. Any curtailment of access to information must be approached with extreme caution and this matters at least as much when it applies to children as when it applies to adults.

Time After Time

As both the Catholic Church and the Liberal Democrats reel before fresh allegations about abuse an institutional failures to investigate abuse allegations, I have to ask, didn't we go through all this just a couple of months ago with the Savile scandal? Whilst I never seriously expected the revolution in attitudes that many people talked about then, even I have been astounded by quite how quickly important lessons have been forgotten.

There is – quite rightly – hesitation about discussing some of these issues just now. The accusations against Cardinal O'Brien and Lord Rennard have thus far been untested in a court of law and we should always give people the benefit of the doubt in such cases. But hiding behind this is another issue with much wider-reaching potential consequences, and that's something that isn't being discussed aggressively enough. Why do we tolerate, again and again, the failure to investigate? Why is so much airtime devoted to people saying “He was a very nice man who wouldn't do that sort of thing,” and so little attention given to the other side of the story?

Being generous, we might say that there re some things so horrific people don't want to talk about them, or don't know how to do so; or we might suggest that these discussions are avoided in order to reduce the stress caused to those who have been abused. The balance of reporting and comment by some institutions, however, suggests something else. Several people have already noted that Nick Clegg's vague statements about having heard something but not having evidence is already reminiscent of that hideous line from the Savile scandal “We had no evidence – only the women.” Similarly Newsnight, so superficially contrite after its failures in the Savile case, couldn't be apologist enough when discussing the Pope's resignation, doing nothing to challenge guests who dismissed allegations about the concealment of child abuse as some sort of mild unpleasantness. Everybody loved the Pope, they said, showing again that footage of people running after his car in Edinburgh which had the sound cut out if it to suggest said people were fans, when they were actually shouting in protest. Literally silencing voices of dissent.

The BBC's initial line on Cardinal O'Brien was similar. There was a huge emphasis on his good work and a focus on how unfortunate it was that he should be accused of unpleasantness (which it certainly is, if the allegations are untrue, but hardly in proportion to the suffering of others if they are not). But the worst came from the Cardinal himself, dismissing historic child abuse with the line “It was a different time,” as if there were, at some point in our recent past, a time when somebody might have inadvertently assumed it was okay to rape a child. In fact, the time when those alleged (and some proven) incidents occurred was much like our own, right down to the preference for covering it up, making it look as if it has all gone away.

It doesn't go away.

Last month I was told by a specialist doctor that I may very well be correct in identifying the abuse I experienced as a child as a factor in triggering the illness which keeps me housebound today. Autoimmune diseases are significantly more common in child abuse victims. So are more obvious things like PTSD which can, in some cases, be equally crippling. So are anger issues that often lead to the breakdown of relationships in adult life. So are difficulties in communicating that make it difficult for survivors to find steady employment, make them vulnerable to prejudice like that displayed in the Daily Mail's hatchet job on poor Steve Mesham – and make it difficult for them to pursue those responsible. For some, it gets better. For others, the damage never goes away. The pain never stops. Why, then, did Cardinal O'Brien think it was okay to talk about things happening “long ago” as if that means we should forget about it?

Simon Wiesenthal said that we should not dismiss historic crimes because that sends a damaging message – not simply that if one evades justice for long enough one can get away with them, but that we, as a society, are prepared to tolerate all kinds of horrors once the pursuit of justice become socially or politically inconvenient. This was true in the 1940s when he began his work and it's true today. It is a different thing from saying that we should not forgive. Forgiveness has its value, but we cannot forgive when there is no repentance – we cannot simply sit back and pretend it never happened and look away as it happens again.

Cardinal O'Brien, whether inspired by contrition or convenience, has at least had the wit to resign. Indeed, there are many who argue that the Pope's surprise exit was similarly motivated. Nick Clegg, meanwhile, won't let go of the shovel, digging himself a deeper hole with every utterance. He doesn't seem to understand that this isn't about the principle of habeas corpus – it's about whether or not those lower down on the social ladder have access to justice at all. The proper thing to do now is to stop trying to explain what happened and support an independent investigation, which must be conducted in as transparent a manner as possible.

I hesitate to single out the LibDems for this kind of criticism because, though they are the ones under the spotlight just now, they are hardly the only political party to have had difficulties around such issues. I have written here before of the problematic attitude of some Conservatives towards rape and sexual harassment. I don't know what the Labour Party is like these days but twenty years ago, when I was a member, I encountered individuals there who were notorious for their wandering hands, a problem routinely ignored by those higher up. It would surprise me if any major party were exempt from such problems. Abusive individuals will always be there. The issue is what organisations – and society at large – do about them. When I talk to other people who have experienced abuse, they frequently tell me that they told someone at the time, or that people advised them later that they'd had suspicions. By and large, abusers don't operate completely unseen. They get away with it because other people choose not to look. We need to start challenging that.

The media has a very particular role to play here. Institutions like the BBC need to stop cosying up to establishment figures, acting as if they couldn't possibly do bad things. One of the ways abusers escape justice comes down to people refusing to believe bad things about their friends. Friendship means giving people the benefit of the doubt. It can mean supporting them emotionally if they are distressed to find themselves the target of allegations. It should not mean assuming that they are beyond reproach. The simple fact of the matter is that anybody can hurt others, and the ability to achieve a respectable position in politics or to become a religious leader is meaningless.

Justice, if it is to have any meaning, must apply universally. The assumption of innocence must apply to everyone – not just the accused, but also their accusers. It is not acceptable to write off confirmed institutional abuse as a little late unpleasantness. Those who have done harm, whether directly or through concealment, have a duty to put it right, not least by approaching it with honesty – and until they do so, they don't deserve anybody's respect. They certainly don't deserve to be accorded moral authority.

Joseph Butler argued that God created the conscience so that we can tell for ourselves whether something is right or wrong. It is time certain people stopped hiding behind rulebooks or fellow politicians and started analysing theirs.