Peace or the Pipeline - War with Syria or Iran?

With the imminent safety of the British Sunday Times photographer Paul Conroy and the FCO’s necessitated use of the Syrian opposition and Free Syria Army fighters to insure his safe return, it is time to consider the government’s options regarding peace and stability in the Middle East.

It is becoming increasingly more likely that we will see Western troop’s yomping through the desert in the next 18 to36 months. But there appears to be two very different, some would say juxtaposed reasons for such a massive reversal of the government’s policy, ether way we can only fight one war – As fighting both would completely destabilise the middle east.

So firstly we have the Syrian question, how long can the western world ignore the massacres of innocent civilians authorised and implemented by a dictator who has no wish to stop, negotiate or compromise. Mr Conroy’s return will no doubt be a full and thorough test of the morality involved in none-intervention, it will be followed by a deep and explicit retelling of the horrors he has faced whilst in Syria and the western world will no doubt recoil at the telling of his experiences. As his first hand reports lead the news agenda in the coming weeks each and every one of us will be forced to stop and make moral account.

Syria is an issue of morality and issue of hart rather than mind, we as the British public will in all likelihood no longer stand for Mr al-Assad’s purge. But will the morality of the British public be enough to take the west to war?

This is the real question, the west will go to war but Syria as the moral conflict can not be the conflict of our generation, instead look further to the east. As long as Iran and Mr Ahmadinejad continue their posturing and menacing we must put the safety and security of our citizenry before the safety and security of the Syrian people.

The closure of the strait of Hormuz would cut the west’s oil supply and in doing so cause an enormous recession in an already unstable and unhealthy west. The threat to the oil supply cuts deep as it would limit the movement of goods and food and drive costs to unmanageable levels - in short it would cause another great depression.

So the question becomes more complicated it becomes a question of keep our troops to defend our oil supply and protect our interests or deploy all the assets we can to Syria because it is the immediate and tangible moral obligation?

To Hague or not to Hague that is the question?

With the creation of the international criminal court at The Hague by the allies shortly after the Second World War, the west believed it would enforce the precedent created at Nuremburg.

The Nuremburg trials were the first trials to indict principle figures of an overthrown national administration for crimes not only against individuals, but for crimes against humanity itself. They were an historic statement that would insure every despot and dictator knew the forces of law covered not only their subjects but themselves as well.

Nuremburg was the first step a trial not just because ethics demanded it but because the public wanted and needed to see justice was being done. During Nuremburg over 158 Nazi officials were tried before an international court and because of its precedent since 2001 twenty six individuals have been or are being tried at The Hague, charged with breaching the Nuremburg accords.

The Hague is the last bastion of justice for the forgotten; it and its mandate (created by the Nuremburg accords) remain one of the most important checks and balances in westernised world.

But what good is The Hague when it carries no force to implement its warrants outside of the westernised world. What good is The Hague to Africa and the Middle East were the dictator is common place and the despot not exactly rare. What good is The Hague when it only holds leaders to account after they have been overthrown and not before?

Never has a leader of a sovereign nation been held to account by any international court and this will ever be so. But it is not because the international court lacks the power to pursue them or that the international court is so underfunded and understaffed.

The problem lies in the idea itself, the voice of the people is why Nuremburg was recorded for broadcast in 1949 and why The Hague is televised today. Leaders of regimes guilty of committing war crimes require swift and decisive action. Allowed to live they may mount counter insurgency or even counter revolution but one thing is certain there continued existence will unquestionably lead to the destabilisation of the fledgling free nation.

Justice must be done against the adjutant and the adviser and The Hague excels at this. But because The Hague is a western court it does not report quickly or hastily. It will insure justice is done but will never force it. Justice takes time and time is something new administrations don’t have. New administrations that have been born out of war or rebellion must ensure stability and that their government stands separately from the old regime, but most importantly they must placate the people’s anger.

The the anger of those affected by a now defunct regime must be heard in its entirety which is why it is rare a rebellion or revolution can be concluded without the people themselves exacting the ultimate censure on their despot or dictator.

Weather the new administration likes it or not, they cannot restore confidence and security until the previous leader is censured, and well The Hague just takes too long.... 

The age of Misinterpretation

We have lived for the last decade in the age of information but as this new decade takes hold it is becoming clear we are now in the age of misinterpretation. With the rampant development and availability of technology we now live in an age where information (more specifically news) is no more than a few inches from our fingertips.

In the old days news came from one of two sources, our daily papers or our rolling news channels, most people would no longer extol the virtues of ether of these media sources. The belief that they are just not fast enough to respond or active enough to be accurate is widely accepted, but at the same time the emergence of social media and the resulting real time information it produces means we are left without the full picture.

How many of us on the morning commute investigate the storeys of the day may it be via twitter, facebook, blogs and news websites; on our ipads, iphones or our blackberrys? Recent studies suggest in excess of seventy percent of us are whole reliant on the information the internet provides. 

The thing we don’t think about though is how big a picture we actually receive from these sources. With the average Briton losing interest at around the 483rd word, we now get our news in snippets rather than in swathes. Small bundles of immediately relevant data.

The idea that more people are becoming actively involved in their environment is a wonderful thing, but without the guidance and encouragement of our daily papers or our news channels are we really seeing the issues as a whole?

Communications specialists are beginning to realise very quickly the honest answer is No. It has become, because of the availability of instant and individually relevant news, a sheer impossibility to inform and keep the public informed of the evolution and causality of the issues.

This is not the fault of the individual or even the governing classes, it is merely the modern age. We must develop new techniques that allow us to feed complex and elongated issues to the public in the manner they want, but in an age where story and issue development can no longer be laid out clearly to the majority, how does the government keep them informed?

Gone are the days of lies and spin not because it’s not effective but because it is no longer practicable, instead the truth and the blog are the future. No longer can we rely on the journalist and the paper it is time for a shift towards the blogger and the online paper (and the interactive media it brings).

Communicating ideology or even just the issues of the day must be done in this age of misinterpretation with video and with pictures but we lay on uncertain ground. Democracy in this country must be held accountable, how though when it is no longer afforded an active or plausible method of right to reply.

Time and technology will and is creating new methods for governments to explain themselves but that is the fundamental issue. Time! Active accountability is possible right now through both the old and the new forms of media, but active response and reply is not.

The public have all the forms of new media at their disposal but the government does not. We live in a “democratic dictatorship” as Disraeli once put it and because of this the government are struggling to respond to a new age and a new era where everyone in this country can have a loud and active voice in their countries governance apart from those chosen to govern.

I suppose the result of this pondering would be an unsurprising conclusion, modernity and technology will transform the way this country is governed but until the process is complete; the voice of the many must not have too much effect on the decisions of the few.  

The defence of the realm

We talk constantly of the Ministry of Defence and making sure our armed services receive all the funding they require. We send our boys off all over the world to keep the peace and to ensure democracy, but that phrase has two sides to it.

We can no longer ensure the defence of our realm with the might of our army and our services alone, extremism as an idea is nothing new to the British public but its causalities and forms have changed since the days of terror in London.

To defend this sovereign sceptered isle and its mother of all democracies we must begin to assess the protection of its citizens in their homes and in their communities. To do this we need new policies and a return to some of our older values, it has become all too clear over the last few days that morality and discipline have all but vanished from British society.

The Government wishes to talk of these riots as an affront to British society and as totally unacceptable, these things I would never dispute as causality should for the main part remain an irrelevance in regards criminality.

We have heard a lot about policing and maintain order in this country by “consent”. This has been the British way since Robert Peel (which is why the police have the nickname 'Bobbies')created the police force in 1829 and it should always be thus. How many countries can claim to have an unarmed police force for example?

But consent only works when the public respect, and to a certain extent, fear the law. For generations we have lived in a country where if a parent or for that matter child was stopped by a police officer they felt a certain amount of disgrace. I am not saying we should fear the police but that we should be forced to respect them.

We live in a society where the powers and judgment calls of the average police officer have all but been removed in favour of other less direct methods. We must take this opportunity to re-empower our police officers with new legislation on low level crime and far more freedom for the police to deal with low level criminals.

A new low level crime act consisting of: on the spot anti-social behaviour fines, on the spot compulsory local community service orders, low level truancy fines, legal protection for police men against nonsense human rights legislation that interferes with the process of policing, active naming and the shaming of low level criminals, new powers allowing police officers to apprehend youths and take actions outside of the court room, giving magistrates courts the ability to suspend benefits going to low level criminals including EMA (or its replacement), a know their name policy for local police men.

All of this combined with new powers for PCSO’s to create an effective and functional two tier policing system and a return to imposing and substantiated police uniforms. Returning discipline and morality to the streets is not an easy task but it must be and remain a priority for the government. Although what I am suggesting gives the police an unprecedented amount of power and the ability to stand as judge and jury against low level criminality, it will restore the ever lessening balance between the criminal and the police.

Restoring order to the streets with tougher legislation and police empowerment is one thing but it will not solve the problem on its own. We need to also consider education and deprivation in our communities. After fifteen years of a labour government we still have a very small uptake of apprenticeships when we compare them against when we had technical collages. I do not for one minute suggest that the riots in London can be explained as “protests against a lack of education and jobs”, but what I will say is we live in a country where we are currently failing to provide the right jobs and the right education for those who either can’t or are unable to pursue academic subjects.

In a country where even today our service sectors prefer a candidate with a degree what hope do those without one stand of finding employment, we must provide those who do not or cannot gain academic qualifications with alternative skills or risk consigning them to a social underclass and in doing so create a forgotten education.

Mr Gove talks of Academies and of extending the scheme further. Yes they work but the scheme needs to be pushed further still.  Academies are having a fantastic effect on education levels in deprived areas but when one in three students arrive there unable to communicate properly let alone read or write, it may be time to accept that we need an education system that concentrates both on academic leadership and providing the basic skills to ensure those who can’t or won’t pursue it are not forgotten and left to fester at the very bottom of the pile.

Education and legislation will not work on their own. We must see reform of our social services as well, the government must again empower our social workers to take action without the threat of negative consequences.

It must ensure that case workers are given the time and the training to make real and long lasting differences to families in need. Most of all we must simplify the system. Put an end to multi-agency involvement and get back to a situation where a single case worker is empowered to channel benefits, assistance, government held information and any and all support necessary to any one they deem in need. A single lead case worker with real power and the ability to make judgment calls will insure the process of helping those families. 

With this three pronged approach we can not only tackle the underlying causes once and for all but also ensure that in the cases where positive action is ineffective the full force of the law becomes not only a resource but also a functioning deterrent.

This is how we stop extreme behaviour on our streets not just with force and more power to the police but with a combined effort to both provide hope and a working future for those that have been left behind.  

Metropolitan Police as Clean As Their Whistles?

Well as I’m sure you have all been informed by the BBC, Both Sir Paul Stevenson and ‘Yates of the Yard’ have resigned in relation to the Metropolitan Police investigation into corruption.

Having met and worked with both of these gentlemen, I am horrified by the loss of Sir Paul who was and remains one of the finest police officers this country has. The loss of Mr Yates on the other hand is long overdue - a poor quality policeman with a long and appalling record of misjudgement and carelessness.

Whether or not ether of these men has substantiated links to the current crisis or to the ongoing corruption investigation is a complete irrelevance. The Metropolitan Police are responding in line with quality advice and will in all likelihood continue down the path of severing its links both viable and vicarious to this scandal.

There is a lot of talk by both the BBC and other media outlets in relation to “the crisis at The Met”. Having advised over the years all the government bodies involved in this ongoing scandal I believe the Metropolitan Police is not in crisis. The ‘Met’ has a strong and well thought out strategy to quietly and quickly remove any person who could be seen as involved, may they be guilty or not, and thus remove its self from this ongoing storm.

The removal of Sir Paul and of Mr Yates is the beginning of a clean up but not a clean sweep. The current corruption scandal in all likelihood goes far deeper than any of us realise and the public must understand that it is not in the interests of London or the country to pursue the underlying issues vigorously in the public eye.

The Gentlemen’s resignations and I am sure the many others that will follow, will allow the Metropolitan Police to ‘be seen to be’ dealing with the crisis. These actions are in the public interest and I’m sure we will find that their involvement is quickly removed from the news agenda.

Once the Met no longer has to defend itself to the media, it will have the ability to deal with the underlying problems without interference and without degrading the British police force’s reputation any further.

An investigation must be held and that investigation must in turn be held to account, but ‘vox populi, vox dei’ is not the answer.

We have a democracy in this country and to deal with all of these hugely substantial issues we must allow Parliament to lead us in this matter, especially when one realises that the reason this issue exists is because the media has had massive control over the establishment. Although it may seem the media is being tamed, you don’t have to look very closely to realise it is exerting more power right now because of this scandal than it did when it caused it.

The media is protecting itself and hiding its guilt by attacking politicians like Mr Cameron and civil servants such as Sir Paul. It is time the underlying issues were dealt with properly in line with the law instead of by media pressure forcing the hand of government officials.

We have already lost one good, honest and honourable man to this scandal and I imagine we will lose several more before the final judgement is out. 

The Fourth Council Estate

Power in this great nation has always been a finely balanced thing. The freedom of the press should ensure that politicians are bound by their words, actions and deeds, but the question we have to ask ourselves is what happens when the fourth estate takes that freedom and corrupts it?

Every major newspaper in this country (possibly not The Guardian but evidence suggests The Observer did) has at some point used dishonourable methods to acquire the private information of individuals. This in itself is not necessarily the cause of the fall of the fourth estate, but rather this was the beginning of the fall. Dishonourable methods have lead to illegal means and, as the information commissioner in his 2006 report “What Price Freedom” informs us, nearly every paper has engaged in illegal dealings of personal information.

Although the Murdoch empire has become far too powerful, it is being used as a scapegoat by those other media establishments who are also guilty of using the same tactics. Whether they may be illegal or merely dishonourable, one has to ask how this situation was allowed to continue? How was it allowed to progress from dishonourable and downright dodgy to clearly being on the wrong side of the law?  With no MP, Minister or Prime Minister being willing or able to put in place the checks and balances that could stop the fourth estate overpowering the political class or assaulting the freedoms of this country’s citizenry.

The leader of the opposition may have called for new laws, new controls and the end to media empires but if Mr Murdoch’s empire survives this they will not forgive or forget Mr Milliband’s attacks. Mr Milliband is taking a massive risk in assaulting the press in such an aggressive and reckless  manner and although parliament is currently in agreement on the need for action, he forgets to easily that he needs the press just like everybody else.

Media in this country cannot effectively be controlled by parliament. No matter the outcry at how close they are to the political class, the fourth estate must always and will always have a very unsettling relationship with politicians. This in itself is a necessity. The need for a blurred line between journalists and the political class has been known since the creation of the lobby press over a century ago and the more we push the politicians away from the press the less informed and involved the average voter will become.

Although the necessity for said blurred line will in all likelihood never completely diminish, the need for distance, and increased distance, is incredibly important. We have created and must maintain this new level of separation. No individual should ever again be allowed to exert private control over prime ministers or politicians. Mr Milliband is right on this issue, but where he his wrong is that separating journalists and editors from their political acquaintances is not a good thing.


Newspapers will always have agendas as long as voters have beliefs and ideologies. Those agendas exist to reflect those ideologies. Mr Milliband ignores this at his own peril. If he cannot foster the support from left wing papers, let alone those on the right, he may find himself in an even weaker position at the next election. After all the Daily Mirror is one of the worst offenders, committing more than twice the number of known dishonourable and possibly illegal activities compared to the News of the World. 

Wading Through Hell

Rebekah Brooks (nee Wade) has become as I’m sure you are all aware, the latest casualty of the current media crisis. Although her resignation is a massive step forward for News International, one must ponder what she or for that matter News International actually gain by it.


For the last twenty two years Ms Brooks has been an integral and irreplaceable part of News International. The power and experience vacuum created by her departure will in all likelihood remain an issue within the organisation while it comes to terms with its reduced influence and market share. Although News International has gained a considerable reprieve from the immediate media pressure, Ms Brooks departure gains them nothing other than time.


There is a concept called "the blast person". This is the principle that upon an organisation being critically effected by a news agenda the "blast person" is positioned to absorb the negative media and remains in that position as the news agenda continues to build pressure upon their organisation. When media pressure is no longer sustainable the "the blast person" takes the ultimate sanction and resigns or is asked to resign. The result of this action is ultimately to protect those above them and deflect "the blast" away from their superiors and the organisation as a whole.


This concept is a valid one, if it is capable of ending the organisation’s involvement in the news agenda. In the case of the News of the World and News International a single "blast person" will not be capable of removing the organisation from the agenda but will instead prolong and diversify it.


News International is in the middle of a single agenda multi-faceted news cycle that will continue being fed by legal proceedings and numerous government investigations. The loss of a major asset (Ms Brooks) may in the short term allow news international to separate itself from the immediate furore but it will not have the desired result of restoring faith in the organisation or its media outlets.


It is my honest belief the best course of action for News International would have been to suspend Ms Brooks along with any other journalists or staff who could be seen as vicariously guilty and for news international to ask a member of the house of lords to oversee a measured investigation into the gross misconduct that has been alleged. This may sound long winded considering the level of enquiry already placed upon them but Mr Murdoch has failed and continues to fail to deal with the underlying issues of restoring trust in his organisation and his family’s involvement in that organisation.