In my entire time on the internet I’ve never come across such unthinking, blind belief in stupidity as when I encountered the ‘born again’ Christians’ feedback to my complaint about Iris Robinson referring to gay people as an ‘abomination’. Following Iris’ lead, most of them attempted to legitimise their bigotry through modernising it via religious equality legislation, others chose the more blunt path of undisguised hatred for hatred’s sake.

Their compatriots in the US are also at it. The American Family Association has called for a boycott of McDonald’s by its members for being proactive in its support of diversity, specifically homosexuality:

McDonald’s Vice President of Communications Richard Ellis recently joined the board of directors of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC).

The anti-gay AFA claims that the multi-national restaurant chain is “refusing to remain neutral in the culture wars.”

Are you remotely clear about what that means? Me neither. Their website says it’s not about the hiring or treatment of gay staff, nor is it about gay customers. It appears to be about the diversity agenda itself, which will involve employers like McDonald’s joining organisations like the NGLCC, which will involve acknowledging civil partnerships and same-sex marriages (in areas they aren’t obliged to by law) and will see them promoting themselves at gay events like San Francisco Pride. This should be no surprise - they’re likely to take the same tack with age, gender, disability, race and of course religion.

And this is where their boycott shows itself for what it is. Corporations are never neutral, and the diversity agenda is not about one minority group’s untapped resources being brought on board at the expense of another’s. McDonald’s Chief Diversity Officer Pat Harris says:

“We treat our employees and our customers with respect and dignity, regardless of their ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or other factors.

“We support out employees’ personal involvement in organisations of their choice.

“We will continue to support our people and their right to live and work in an inclusive society.”

with the AFA responding, saying:

“We are not telling McDonald’s who they can hire to work for the company, nor are we demanding that they stop serving Big Macs to homosexual customers.

“This issue is about the world’s largest fast food chain allying itself and partnering with an organization that lobbies Congress to enact laws that we feel can be used to repress religious freedom or undermine the sanctity of marriage,” AFA said

McDonald’s retaliated saying:

“while one McDonald’s employee is affiliated with the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC), McDonald’s is in no way ‘aggressively promoting the homosexual agenda’ as suggested in the [AFA] newsletter.”

which drew this from the AFA:

“To refer to Richard Ellis, who is the vice president of communications for McDonald’s, as ‘one McDonald’s employee,’ as if he is a teenager flipping hamburgers, is disingenuous at best. While ‘aggressively’ is admittedly a subjective term, AFA believes that giving money to and partnering with a homosexual lobby organization is certainly an enthusiastic promotion of the homosexual agenda.”

Of course the notion of a ‘homosexual agenda’ is itself a homophobic one. To suggest that striving for equal rights under the law, in a society driven by the rule of law, not the superstition of scripture, is somehow a subversive agenda is completely ludicrous. What these bigots laughingly call an ‘agenda’, is the NGLCC’s lobbying programme. It makes no mention of gay marriage, but does follow Stonewall’s UK lead in seeking changes of the law in areas where rights are not equal, particularly where equality would improve the lives of LGBT workers, which in turn would improve business performance. We also return to the competition I’ve referred to in a previous post, of human rights colliding, and indeed the bottom line is the same. By insinuating that lobbying for gay rights equates to attempting to ‘restrict religious freedom’, the AFA is running a bogus argument and a poor smokescreen for homophobia. The point of equal rights is that they are based on the (obvious) presumption that we are all equal; campaigning for one right is not the presumption of rescinding another. There’s plenty of room, unless of course their ‘religious freedom’ were to involve the ‘right’ to bigoted behaviour based on thin air. Wouldn’t that be a surprise?

The NGLCC:

Is dedicated to working with members of Congress in a bipartisan manner to pass common sense legislation in the areas of LGBT equal rights and business parity for LGBT business owners. The NGLCC believes there is a need for fundamental changes in access to heath care, taxation, and general principles that will allow for more prosperous business.

The NGLCC regularly communicates with members of Congress through lobby visits, letters and congressional testimony to ensure the needs of the LGBT business community are being heard.

The AFA in contrast:

believe(s) in holding accountable the companies which sponsor programs attacking traditional family values. (They) also believe in commending those companies which act responsibly regarding programs they support.

AFA supporters receive a monthly letter about a specific issue with a recommended action such as sending a postcard or making a phone call. In addition, supporters receive the AFA Journal with news on various moral and family issues.

The same Holy Bible that calls us to reject sin, calls us to love our neighbor. It is that love that motivates us to expose the misrepresentation of the radical homosexual agenda and stop its spread though our culture. AFA has sponsored several events reaching out to homosexuals and letting them know there is love and healing at the Cross of Christ.

“Journey’s End“

Journey’s End indeed, this season finale being RTD’s swan song on the ongoing series, and what a contribution this man has made, even just this week. The amount of media interest and fan speculation has dwarfed even that of series 1. And certain theories from last week were entirely correct, if a little out of sequence. Ten splits the regeneration energy off into the hand, refusing to regenerate himself. Fully reunited with his companions he asks Rose what’s really going on because her world is running ahead of this one - she’s seen the future. She remembers the stars going out, but far more important is she acknowledges that all the timelines converge somehow in Donna, and the surprises continue when the Daleks try to destroy the Tardis - not only does Donna manage to syphon off the regeneration energy, but she causes a second Ten to emerge from the hand. So far so figured out - the Darkness involves the stars going out, but who is Donna really and what’s to become of Ten and his alternate? For that matter why did the Tardis door close itself on Donna when Davros tried to destroy it?

Martha reveals the Osterhagen Key as a doomsday device, and Sarah Jane reveals her own - a warpstar, which can destroy the Crucible world engine. And they need to, because Davros’ Crucible, his world engine, powers a reality bomb, which he plans to use to destroy everything, starting with the stars. It looks like he’ll succeed too, with the companions all transmatted into the Crucible before they can detonate their weapons. And another theme is formally addressed here too, with Davros noting that the Doctor fashions ordinary people into weapons - Rose into Bad Wolf, Jack into an immortal, but Donna into…what? With all the companions and Ten and his alternate trapped and reality’s time running short, she reveals her place in Dalek Caan’s prophecy - part of the threefold man - the Doctor himself. In manipulating the regeneration energy she took on yet another aspect of Ten (his mind) and defeats Davros. Dalek Caan was indeed mad, but his prophecy all along was to destroy the Dalek race once and for all. No more for Steven Moffat to play with there - RTD too is done.

The Crucible is destroyed, the planets are restored, as is the Earth. Sarah Jane leaves back to her own spin-off for good. Jack leaves back for Torchwood, as does Martha, and it appears Mikey too. And this is where the episode falls flat on its face in agony. Rose, Jackie and Ten II go to Rose’s parallel world. And with Ten II physically human, with his human limitations, such as a finite lifespan - he offers everything Rose ever needed from Ten but he could never provide. Rose could use her ‘dimension cannon’ to continue leaping between universes, but Ten explains Ten II needs her to evolve him to the extent that she’s already evolved him - from angry, battle-weary Nine to the rounded character of now. And when Ten II tells her he loves her, she like a sap kisses him, acknowledging that he is in every other respect a precise copy of Ten, and they are left to live out their lives happily in the alternate reality. Rose and her family appear to leave once and for all, not complicating matters for Stephen Moffat either.

And then there’s Donna. The aspect of the Doctor she absorbed is killing her and he has to remove it. But to do that he must expunge her memories of their ever having met. The strange heartbeat we hear had been explained - that was Ten II - he admitted it - but no explanation is offered for how the timelines converged around her. Was it fate? We still don’t even know the true purpose of the attack on her in ‘Turn Left‘. Donna was (remains?) independently powerful since birth, and we are shown key sequences with the ring she’s wearing looming large - most importantly when she absorbs the Doctor’s essence. And was it just me or did it flicker at the very end? It’s an awfully big ring, and a woman lifted an awfully big ring from the Master’s corpse in ‘Last of the Time Lords‘ - a ring which still hasn’t been accounted for.

We know what Donna’s ‘loss’ was destined to be, as well as what she was destined to become, but it was also said outright that she already was ’something new’. I’m convinced Donna and the Master are still in play, presumably fodder for RTD’s true final word on Who. Irritating as hell, but the endings were clumsy as anything too. Rose settles for a xerox who really isn’t anything like the original, and she still hasn’t got over her feelings? Gah. How convenient, and how demeaning of a character who’s shown so much potential. And yet again Jack’s role is perfunctory. I’m not sure why Barrowman’s still bothering. The edge the character had at the outset made him interesting - whilst he is pretty and engaging, he’s now far from interesting. The theme of time going the way it’s supposed to has run through this series, but it’s far from clear whether it’s complete. Some component subplots seem (as with ‘Bad Wolf’ in series 1) to have been ham fistedly delivered - why Rose didn’t just reveal herself to the Doctor instead of Donna in ‘Partners in Crime‘ remains confused - did she just know (as in ‘Turn Left’) the way things were meant to be? Being in the future in the alternate universe wouldn’t explain that. Or was her last minute insertion into that episode an editorial decision (again as with ‘Bad Wolf’) to catch the die hards off guard, and generate attention for the series? I have to assume the latter, given that there’s no way Rose can reasonably be used again under RTD’s stewardship.

The acting this episode was good where it mattered. Tennant shone as Ten and Ten II (whose ending wasn’t his fault), and Tate excelled as ever, although Freema Agyeman seems to have taken a step backward since series 3. I liked Ten II imprinting himself on Donna - apparently it was scripted that Ten spoke Estuary English instead of Scottish because he imprinted himself on Rose (the first being he encountered post-regeneration), and this is a nice final acknowledgment of that talent. I’m also glad Gallifrey wasn’t one of the stolen planets, and although I’m appalled at the (apparent) final word on Rose, I’m unsurprised that ‘Bad Wolf’ really was just two words, the power of which Rose has established and exploited before. But even there, what was it about Donna’s invoking the words (Rose pointedly not doing so) which caused such a powerful reaction by the Tardis? I wish RTD weren’t channelling Chris Claremont quite so well - sometimes long-term plotlines need to end definitively. Rose’s did, but Donna’s didn’t, nor has the Master’s, nor has this episode’s or even this series’.

These are my photos from last weekend’s Salute to Israel parade and festival in London, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel. It was a very good natured event, with a large attendance from a healthily diverse crowd. It also attracted some significant counter-protests by pro-Palestinian demonstrators, some photos of whom I’ve also included.

You’re also very welcome to look at the photos in larger form on my Flickr photostream. London Mayor Boris Johnson’s Director of Arts, Culture and the Creative Industries Munira Mirza hasn’t wiped out all the cultural events she and/or her boss might disapprove of (this, for the easily offended is a continuing reference to the Rise Festival’s being stripped of its relevance on political grounds) , so hopefully along with Pride tomorrow there’ll be many more events like this to come.

Maybe Ireland was right to slam its door on the Lisbon Treaty and didn’t even realise it. Maybe really nasty issues of race are bubbling away in the EU, as the credit crunch bites, and then as history has always shown, people start looking for scapegoats. I’ll just demonstrate France and Italy, given recent stories; the British Home Office is institutionally racist, so you’re welcome to check the stories I’ve written referring to it for your evidence there.

Italy’s repression of the Roma is verging on the borderline terrifying. Whilst the parallels the Independent tries to make with Mussolini and Hitler are probably over stretching the issue, what the new Berlusconi government (where the neo-fascists run free) is doing should concern us all:

The Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, a leader of the rabble-rousing Northern League – close allies of Silvio Berlusconi on the government benches – has explained his next step in his assault on the “emergenza di sicurezza”, the “security emergency”: fingerprinting all Gypsies.

It was the only way, he told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday, for Italy to guarantee “to those who have the right to remain here, the possibility of living in decent conditions.” For this purpose the Roma – those with Italian nationality and those without, EU citizens and those from outside the Community – will all have their fingerprints taken. And the rule will even apply to Gypsy children – for reasons that to many of Mr Maroni’s supporters must have sounded obvious: “to avoid phenomena,” as he put it, “such as begging”. The new measures, he said, were indispensable “in order to expel those who do not have the right to stay in Italy”.

Giovanna Boursier, an Italian journalist, found one small camp where the count had already taken place on the furthest southern outskirts of Milan. “There is not even a bar where one could ask the way,” she wrote in Il Manifesto, “but once you scramble up a hill you see the roofs of the huts. There are about 10 of them, along with the caravans, dotted around the outskirts, under flyovers and high-tension wires. Around 40 Roma lived here.”

They told her that the police arrived at dawn, woke everybody up, surrounded the camp and flooded it with lights and then went from home to home, demanding identity documents and photographing them. All the residents were Italian citizens. It made no difference. “This wasn’t a census,” protested a Roma called Giorgio. “This was an ethnic register.”

And there’s no crime data to back up the moral panic about Roma. None. Instead a La Repubblica journalist says:

“Most Italians make no distinction between Italian Roma and those who arrived from Yugoslavia during that country’s break-up. And many Italians think that ‘Rom’ is an abbreviation of ‘Romanian’ – and since the arrival of Romania in the EU there has been a large influx of Romanians. People conflate these separate things. There have been crimes committed by Romanians – and people confuse these with the Rom, and the Rom end up being blamed for everything.

“Security was the over-riding theme of the general election, which is why this conflated Roma-Romanian theme became so big, and a part of the left is very timid about confronting the problem. The security emergency itself is a myth: there has been no increase in the number of rapes, for example – in fact, the number has declined. But when a single case occurs it is splashed on the front page of certain papers for a double reason: it increases the climate of fear; and it damages the centre-left, which is perceived as being weak on security.”

Italy’s Roma paranoia spilled on to the world’s front pages on 13 May, when a woman in a suburb of Naples called Ponticelli alleged that a Roma girl had tried to steal her baby. The community erupted in fury, and thugs belonging to the Camorra crime syndicates threw petrol bombs into the local gypsy squatter camp, driving out the inhabitants and burning the place to the ground. Suddenly there was no avoiding the fact: the Italian hatred for the Roma had taken a dramatic new turn.

But the origin was an ancient fear, rooted not in fact but legend. Mr Bellu said: “There is nothing in police records to support the idea that Roma have stolen babies. It’s just a legend. But one that still has people in its grip.”

It’s scary stuff. Vincenzo Spadafora, head of UNICEF in Italy said:

he was “seriously concerned”, adding that the government would be acting in a discriminatory fashion “unless it fingerprinted every child in Italy”.

Silvio Berlusconi’s government is introducing a series of measures aimed at reducing crime, for which immigrants are increasingly being blamed - including thousands of Romanian Gypsies who have entered Italy since Romania joined the EU last year

A former head of the Union of Jewish Communities in Italy warned the fingerprinting measure set a dangerous precedent. “You start like this then you move on to the exclusion from schools, separated classes and widespread discrimination,” Amos Luzzatto told La Repubblica. Recalling Italy’s fascist past, he added: “Italy is a country that has lost its memory.”

But (Roberto) Maroni insisted the scheme would “give greater guarantees to those who have the right to be here to live in decent conditions”.

It sounds like blaming the persecuted poor for their own persecution and poverty doesn’t it? But Maroni’s not alone in the EU in trying this tactic. Sarko’s at it again too.

The maverick right-wing leader hopes to draft an EU strategy on asylum seekers and refugees which would see an end to amnesties for illegal immigrants, a right for governments to detain individuals for up to 18 months, compulsory Europe-wide ‘integration contracts’ to be signed by new arrivals and a ‘blue card’, based loosely on the American ‘green card’, for highly qualified migrants.

Make no mistake about it, this is Sarkozy playing to his base. No amnesties for illegal immigrants? Setting an EU time limit for detention without charge which would make Britain look like a liberal democracy? ‘Integration contracts’? Eh? Is that Sarko blaming immigrants for a ‘refusal’ to integrate rather than being unable to integrate? Sounds a bit familiar, that. Remember 2005?

The violence has isolated the country’s tough-talking anticrime interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, whom some people blame for having made the situation worse with his blunt statements about “cleaning out” the “thugs” from these neighborhoods.

He regularly conflates law and order with immigration issues, whilst ignoring the fact (as does Berlusconi) that the people who ‘fail to integrate’ are largely second generation nationals. Getting French nationality through birth on French soil is no longer automatic, but the law and order problem in this context in France is not down to new immigrants who ‘refuse’ to integrate - it’s down to poverty and inequality of opportunity for non-white French nationals and residents. Why blame new arrivals?

The Bolivian leader, Evo Morales, said they (the EU proposals) did nothing to combat discrimination and racism.

And he’s right - it’s the point Sarkozy prefers again and again to sidestep, whilst disguising it for cheap political gain:

The French leader stated on an earlier occasion that one of the things Europeans expected from the EU is to shield them from globalisation’s negative effects – but France’s protectionist streak is unlikely to be welcomed unanimously by all other 26 member states.

He has also opposed the European Commission’s position in global trade talks and recently publicly criticised EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson for pursuing a trade liberalisation deal that he said would lead to a one-fifth cut in agricultural production and a reduction in farm exports, while “a child dies of hunger every 30 seconds.”

This is not about France wanting to alleviate child hunger. This is about a set of protectionist proposals with racial undertones - a platform he’s already used to get elected. ‘Shielding Europeans from the negative effects of globalisation’ will inevitably  involve racial undertones, because it isn’t commonly understood that headline-grabbing crime waves (which again paralleling Italy are conspicuous by their absence) or semi-skilled job competition is driven by white Northerners. This is about setting up a narrative of convenience, and even though the ‘integration contracts’ have now been abandoned, ’illegal’ immigration is still conflated with asylum seeking, leaving economic migration labelled as an activity relegated to specific social classes and races. Morales and his fellow South American leaders realise this:

Uruguay’s leader Tabare Vazquez said: “Nobody emigrates for fun, they do it out of necessity.”

They’re only partially right - all migration is not undertaken out of necessity, but in the French-led EU it would be the Southern, majority non-white economic migrants who could be criminalised for it.  ’Protecting from crime’ or ‘protecting from globalisation’, it’s still scapegoating by race.

It’s far from just Iris Robinson, but let’s remember what she, as Chair of the Northern Irish devolved assembly’s health committee said. After boasting that her pet ‘ex-gay’ psychiatrist could ‘fix’ gay people from being gay, saying:

“I have a very lovely psychiatrist who works with me in my offices and his Christian background is that he tries to help homosexuals - trying to turn away from what they are engaged in.”

She’s now decided she said no such thing. Apparently those words didn’t actually mean she believes that homosexuality is a mental illness which can be ‘helped’, and her words were ‘twisted’. Looks to me as though the pressure’s getting to her, not just because she’s become a liability to her First Minister husband Peter Robinson, but because her health committee was increasingly at risk with a police investigation hanging over her. Still, she has now said:

“Will the minister agree with me that there are some people who are in their teenage years sexually confused and that they could do with help in terms of practitioners assessing them with talking therapies to help them realise exactly what they are, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual?”

And in that there is a kernel of truth. Although it’s far from just people in their teenage years who sometimes need help, and teens are far more in need of acceptance and respect for who they are, than psychiatry. Having the freedom to be who you are without being told your ‘lifestyle’ (whatever that is) is an ‘abomination’ (whatever that means) is far more important. Her repositioning is welcome, although it does still appear that in her desperation to backtrack she’s still left her woeful ignorance exposed, and is more likely than not trying to disguise her genuine ‘ex-gay’ agenda as respectable when it is nothing of the sort.

Her friends in the intolerant Christian wing are continuing to obsess about ‘abomination’. The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) has condemned the formation of the Foundation of Confessing Anglicans (FOCA), formed at the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon) in Jerusalem last week. Reverend Richard Kirker said:

“Christians should respect and show unity, despite their differences. The world has no need for more division. We should be a family; no-one can gain from such a split.”

FOCA sure disagrees:

Great swaths of Anglican provinces, including Africa, South America and Asia, are furious with their counterparts in the northern hemisphere, accusing them of being in thrall to contemporary culture, with the ordination and consecration of gay New Hampshire bishop Gene Robinson acting as a turning point. The creation of Foca is a schism in all but name.

Outraged over the “false gospel” being promoted in the west, Foca pledges a return to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, ignoring 21st-century additions and interpretations. It will train its own priests by sending them to hardline theological colleges such as Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and Oak Hill, London, and will insist on more orthodox practices in its churches.

FOCA was undermined however by a challenge to the Archbishops of Nigeria and Uganda, over the persecution of gay people in their countries. Ian Baxter from the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement brought up the example of Prossy Kakooza (whose failed asylum application in the UK is the subject of a previous post) as someone who had experienced persecution for her sexual orientation. Not a single African primate spoke out against anti-gay violence. Indeed:

(Archbishop )Akinola did not condemn these acts. Neither did the other African archbishops. (Archbishop) Orombi said he had never heard of people being tortured because of their homosexuality, that when he learned about incidents – from the western media – he was at a loss to understand why he had not heard of them. He refused to accept that persecuting and torturing gay people was done openly in Uganda.

It took Archbishop Peter Jensen of Sydney to make a condemnation against all violence, but as Riazat Butt points out, in a clear parallel with the Iris Robinson incident:

It was clear they failed to grasp how homophobic rhetoric from the pulpit led to violence and intimidation.

Stephen Scott identifies the parallel with Iris Robinson:

“I would challenge Iris Robinson to a head to head debate on this, whether on radio or television or wherever. I would challenge her over what she’s said. If she’ll come face to face with me I’ll let her know what it’s like having to live in fear every day because of such views and people making such comments.”

Bishop Gene Robinson, about whom much of this oncoming schism is about, said:

“And so you and I, especially if you are in the LGBT community, you and I need to toughen up. And we need to expect suffering.”

He’s right. Homophobia is far from dead. Iris Robinson dresses it up as justified in the age of equal rights for religions, the Gafcon Bishops as ‘defending tradition’, and founding a post-colonial settlement. But make no mistake, this is the repositioning and attempted legitimisation of bigotry for a more secular and equality-driven age. And on both counts it represents a near obsession with what two men or two women do in bed, on the face of it hardly an important enough matter for dividing a religion or risking a political career. But hey that’s belief for you, which doesn’t stop this:

Some bishops and others have been presenting a different Christian gospel, expressed in disobedience to the teaching of the Bible, and continue to persecute and harass those who resist and object.

being as nonsensical as Iris Robinson’s claim to be on the receiving end of a witch-hunt.

Set one hour after ‘Casino Royale’, with a great director Marc (’Finding Neverland’, ‘Monster’s Ball’, ‘The Kite Runner’) Forster, I can’t see how this could go wrong. October 31st in the UK and one week later in the US.

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“The Stolen Earth“

So Ten is killed by the Daleks eh? I guessed as much.

The Earth is stolen by Davros and transported into the Medusa Cascade along with 26 other planets, which the Doctor discovers operate as an engine when aligned correctly, when he visits the Shadow Proclamation for assistance in finding the Earth. The purpose of the engine isn’t revealed, nor is the reason for retaining the severed hand, and yes, I noticed that Donna still has something on her back (how much of this is really happening?). In revealing his presence to the Doctor, Davros calls himself Lord and Creator of ‘The Darkness’, which remains unidentified (and just how does Rose know about it?), whilst his Daleks invade the Earth. Davros is allied with Dalek Caan, who escaped New York in ‘Evolution of the Daleks‘ through a second temporal shift, except this one went right into the Time War itself, and he saved Davros. The Doctor says that’s impossible because the Time War is ‘time locked’ (the talent for seeing things as they are, should be and will be from ‘The Fires of Pompeii‘), except Caan has succeeded in breaking the unbreakable rules, and it’s driven him mad. Davros cloned the new Dalek race from himself, and it’s subjugating mankind.

Mankind in turn hasn’t been without help. Captain Jack and Torchwood, Sarah Jane and Luke and Martha and UNIT all work to find the Doctor, without whom they and the Earth are lost. Helpless, they’re contacted by Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister (they all know who she is), who has developed a sentient technology to contact the Doctors’s former companions simultaneously. She appears to pay with her life, but she succeeds in reaching them all. All but Rose - why? Rose meanwhile is walking around London with a really big gun, and rescues Donna’s mother and grandfather. Using Harriet Jones’ technology, they manage (all but Rose) to contact the Doctor who has also been trapped in the Medusa Cascade. They all converge on the arriving Tardis, and Rose gets there first. And in his rush to meet his lost love, Ten is killed by a Dalek. Regeneration time, but what will be the outcome?

A patchy episode, trying to juggle far to many ideas at the same time, although the formal crossovers with the spin-off series are very welcome, if a bit ham-fistedly written (a typical RTD failing). The big deux ex machina is a bit painful - Harriet Jones’ motivation is sound, but her timing is awfully convenient, and getting the technology from Mr Copper’s foundation (he of ‘Voyage of the Damned‘) is similarly awkward. Also the reused locations are an eyesore - the Shadow Proclamation in the same location as the finale of Torchwood’s ‘Dead Man Walking‘ and UNIT’s New York branch in one of the Adipose Industry’s offices from ‘Partners in Crime‘). But these are small quibbles, and I was genuinely moved by the Doctor and Rose’s brief reunion. There seems to be no way out of Gwen and Ianto dying. There seems to be no way out of Sarah Jane dying too, and there appears to be no way out of Ten regenerating into Eleven, or is there? What is ‘the Crucible’? What is the ‘Osterhagen key’? What is the purpose of the Doctor’s severed hand? What is ‘Bad Wolf’ really all about, and what’s the world engine really for? If Caan was able to re-enter the Time War, what’s to stop another player following suit? And who is Donna really? Very little revealed this week, and I don’t believe for a second that most of what we see is what is really happening. Something’s still on her back after all…

I’m going to guess: Ten’s regeneration goes wrong and causes the severed hand to generate a second Ten (and ‘prime’ Ten will regenerate as himself, which ‘The Doctor’s Daughter‘ has shown he can do), whatever’s on Donna’s back might still be an entity feeding off altered timelines - last week’s conclusion might have been both a red herring and a hint, which could make this the parallel reality which many have theorised since ‘Rose‘. Maybe she just has the Master’s ring. One player - Rose? Donna? Maybe one of the two Tens looks like they’ll go back in time and end the Time War properly. Given the constant tragedy affecting Ten and Rose, I’m guessing Rose will go back and undo even her’s and Nine’s first meeting, by restoring the timeline into how it should have been (hence the possible entity still on Donna’s back having something to feed off now ). Gallifrey will be restored, as will the other companions (Jack no longer immortal?), but the Bad Wolf will end up heroically giving Ten back what he needs even more desperately than her. Who’s been systematically blocking her though, and why?

This world is weird. Not only do a few hundred nutty puritans decide that two men kissing is so offensive that they have to complain that it’s ‘inappropriate’, but:

A mother who wanted to give a birthday cake to her son featuring a photo of him as a baby was forced to have it censored because it showed his bottom.

I want to stress that he’s 21, yet the staff at the Asda where she tried to get the cake made said it would be ‘pornographic’. Excuse me? Has the world actually shifted on its axis? That makes no sense whatsoever, but it’s hardly an isolated incident and it illustrates sociologist Frank Furedi’s new report ‘Licensed to Hug’’s claim that British society no longer trusts adults to interact with children.

Dominic Lawson suggests that this mentality went out of control after the 2002 Soham murders, but it was prevalent long before. Remember newsreader Julia Somerville getting arrested for getting photos developed of her daughter having a bath? Complete madness on the face of it, but Alan Levy, QC said at the time:

“This tests the law as to what we consider indecent. What it must really rely on is common sense. If you are taking naked pictures of a seven-year-old, which seems older than usual, you are playing with fire - not because you are necessarily doing anything indecent, but because it might be construed that way.”

Does this then presume that there needs to be common sense on both sides of this question? Lawson is quite right in implying that the main danger of going down the path of having to security check literally everyone who might have unsupervised contact with a child, is that we deny our own judgment, our own responsibility for risk assessing who is a danger and who isn’t. And Tim Gill points out:

I think people want communities where, by and large, trust is assumed – where children naturally have everyday encounters with a diverse group of adults, and where they in turn grow up feeling confident and capable, and that they have a place in the wider world. So we should be very wary indeed of systems that foster mistrust, anxiety and fear and that over-regulate interactions between children and adults.

And his implicit other point is equally valid - that we aren’t teaching children and young people to risk assess with any amount of skill themselves. However, a CRB check on Ian Huntley would have stopped him getting the job which gained him the trust of the two girls he murdered. But most children are most in danger from people they already know - chiefly family members - normally far removed from the Criminal Records Bureau. Lawson adds:

They (CRB checks) have increasingly become a sort of badge of reliability and even respectability, taking over from the normal human processes of judgement, intuition and common sense.

Indeed. And they of course won’t pick up anyone who might already have been guilty of abuse, yet not convicted of it, and Frank Furedi reminds us that:

The alleged protective effects of a system of vetting are largely illusory. Aside from the fallibility of record-keeping and technical systems, vetting takes into account only what somebody has done in the past. The most sophisticated system in the world cannot anticipate how individuals with a clean record might behave. Thus, the CRB provides little guidance about people’s behaviour in the future.

He goes on to say:

The most regrettable outcome of the new child protection policies associated with vetting is the distancing of intergenerational relationships. They foster a climate where adults feel uneasy about acting on their healthy intuition and feel forced to weigh up whether, and how, to interact with a child. Such calculated behaviour alters the quality of that interaction. It no longer represents an act founded on doing what a mentor feels is right - it is an act influenced by calculations about how it will be interpreted by others, and by anxieties that it should not be misinterpreted.

And that’s how we get to the stage of tourists getting threatened by police for taking photographs involving children in public, where a mother of a 21 year old gets told her photograph of him as a baby is ‘pornographic’, and where we now have the Independent Safeguarding Authority on top of the Criminal Records Bureau. From next October

Instead of just having their records checked, all teachers, nursery staff and youth workers will be required to register with a new agency, the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) at the cost of £64.

Ministers have also decided that thousands of other adults should pay for the ISA ‘seal of approval’ including, most recently, parents who have overseas students to stay under school exchange programmes.

In total, 11.3 million adults will have to be vetted, according to the latest estimate from the Department for Children, Schools and Families and contained in the new report.

This is just ridiculous - it’s a moral panic freed up to the point of paranoia. I agree with Furedi that this is borderline insanity. The benefits of keeping what few Ian Huntleys there may be remaining, who pose a significant and measurable threat to children and young people, are surely outweighed by the yet deeper institutionalisation of this alienation between generations. Even Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, the Executive Director of volunteering charity CSV says:

“CRB checks are already reducing people’s willingness to volunteer through their intrusion and delays. Checks of any kind are only part of the process, moreover, most child abusers have no criminal record. Eternal vigilance is needed to protect vulnerable people.”

The days of common sense, teaching kids to risk-assess and indeed relying on ‘eternal vigilance are out of the window with New Labour, whose solutions here are yet again authoritarian. Furedi says:

“While you do not yet need a licence to parent your own children, you certainly need a licence to interact with anybody else’s. Before they can be counted on to lay a positive role in children’s lives, adults today have to be in possession of a piece of paper showing they are not likely to be a malign and dangerous influence. Implicitly, the licensing of adulthood undermines its authority. Adulthood no longer possesses authority over children — it requires the legitimation of a security check.”

I wish his analysis were wrong.

The world is changing. We have just marriage on equal terms in California, we have an equality bill in the UK (although it must surely only represent a start, given that 70% of businesses in the economy won’t be covered by it), and even Ireland is instituting a civil partnership bill. It’s a relief that legislatures, executives and judiciaries everywhere are acknowledging the benefits of diversity, and that actually enforcing equality benefits us all - just look at Sweden.

Unlike Britain’s proposal, Sweden has mainstreamed specifically gender equality into all policy making since 1994, rather than instituting just pockets of equal rights legislation. And Norway’s Gender Equality Act requires:

…that all publicly appointed committees, including the cabinet, should be made up of at least 40 per cent men and at least 40 per cent women. This rule was extended in 2004 to state-owned companies. Then in 2006, the government legislated to impose an extraordinary ultimatum on Norway’s public limited companies – either have a minimum of 40 per cent of women on the company board by 1 January 2008, or be closed down. Despite the dire prophecies of economic catastrophe, the law has come into force without driving out any major company.

That’s not to say that the UK couldn’t go down that route, particularly looking at the two year gap between public and private implementation in Norway - we can only hope. What is already proposed however puts Boris Johnson’s behaviour as Mayor of London to shame. His Director of Policy, Arts, Culture and the Creative Industries Munira Mirza, when justifying the removal of the Rise festival’s anti-racism remit, said in justifying her strategy:

Although the event was supposed to be inclusive and attract people from ethnic minorities, the GLA’s own research (conducted while Ken was mayor) shows that 65%-70% of attendees in the last two years were white. That is disproportionately whiter than the population of London. It seems reasonable to conclude that the political baggage and relentless sloganeering was actually putting people off. And no doubt many individuals and families who did come on the day were there primarily for the music or a nice day out.

Except that’s patronising rubbish. Surely the entire point of an anti-racist festival is not just an inherently political one, but an educational tool too, one which would disproportionately target white people. I suspect Daniel Martin is right when he says:

Emphasising “cultural diversity” over overt anti-racism probably fits in more with the narrative Johnson wants to put across - one that implies that racism in London, and so in Britain, is not such a problem anymore. But that view, of course, is wrong.

Indeed it is. Mainstreaming anti-racism, anti-homophobia, anti-gender discrimination works, it doesn’t put people off and it is successful with authorities who have the guts to try it. Failing to do so only emboldens the haters like BNP GLA member Richard Barnbrook:

Labour Party supporters and various other anti-British elements were given a timely reminder today that the days of public money being used to prop up their Marxist ideology have gone.

Curious that he and Mirza should both complain about a ‘political element’ neither of them likes, and alarming how Mirza & Johnson’s laid back approach - hoping that the mere existence of anti-discrimination legislation is enough (Johnson himself was quite open about this in his appearance at the Stonewall ‘gay hustings’ before his election) - plays into his hands. Good for Harriet Harman for at least pushing a normally timid government, afraid to make radical decisions, down at least the slip road leading to the road of mainstreaming equality. Hopefully Johnson and Mirza will realise the failure of their strategy before it does real damage, particularly with it being at odds with the direction of national policy

Sebastian Rocca, Executive Director of the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group (UKLGIG) has branded Home Secretary Jacqui Smith as ‘offensive and ill-informed’, following her outright refusal to institute a moratorium on deportations of lesbian and gay asylum seekers to Iran. Her continuing insistence that gay men and lesbians who are ‘discreet’ face no danger at the same time both justifies Iran’s persecution of gay people, and isn’t borne out by the facts. Rocca continued:

“Being gay is not just about sex, it is about being able to express who you are, walking the way you like, not having to change the tone of your voice, being able to talk about the things that interest you, be that interior design and not football.

“Asking gay men to go back to Iran and be “discreet,” that is persecution in itself.”

He said that the Home Secretary had not thought about what discreet means in this context.

“If you are a gay man and you go back, you have to get married to a woman - it’s not acceptable to not be married.

“If you do not, that is one of the reasons why they can decide not to employ you or rent you an apartment - they will ask questions.

“I had a case where they keep refusing to get married and their family sent them to a psychiatrist.”

Mr Rocha added that being “discreet” is effectively someone to be alone for the rest of their life.

“We have an obligation to protect lesbians and gay men,” he added.

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