"It is putting people off working with children, knowing that they have to be checked for previous offences against children. Why can't we be left to use our intuition?"
Off the top of my head I can think of a couple of reasons.
This isn't a civil liberties issue, it isn't "political correctness gone mad", it is a necessary precaution. I've yet to hear a decent argument to the contrary.
With David Davis gone, this is an opportune time to reacquaint ourselves with the top Tories in Britain today. Here they are in all of their glory:
David Cameron- Conservative Party Leader: educated at Magdalene College, Oxford.
Boris Johnson- Mayor of London: educated at Magdalene College, Oxford.
William Hague- Shadow Foreign Secretary: educated at Magdalene College, Oxford.
George Osborne- Shadow Chancellor: educated at Magdalene College, Oxford.
Dominic Grieve- Shadow Home Secretary: educated at Magdalene College, Oxford.
It's not what you know, it's who you know. Of the 28 members of the Shadow Cabinet 13 went to Oxford (5 at Magdalene) and a further 6 went to Cambridge.
Is this important? I think so. I think it paints a very clear picture that the Old Boy's Network remains firmly in place in the Tory party. They talk about reaching out to the aspirational, they position themselves to appeal to the occupiers of the centre-ground, they patronise the working classes with talk of social mobility. But they remain very much the party of the few and for the few.
They are besting the sitting Government in arguments over the NHS, over child poverty, the abolition of the 10p Tax Rate, fuel prices, heating prices, food prices and other issues that worst-off members of society. It is a triumph for spin, for the power of the Sun and the Mail to affect the opinions of the majority and it is a testament to the betrayal of the Labour Party's core voters that the New Labour project continues to be.
The Labour Party should be the party of the many. If they aren't, who will speak for us? Who will care what happens to the people of Liverpool or Newcastle or Hull or Hackney if not their chosen representatives in the supposedly left-wing party. Let's be frank, it won't be the boys from Magdalene College, Oxford will it?
Probably early for a post-mortem, but even David Davis's grandstanding won't damage the Conservatives sufficiently to rescue the Gordon Brown train-wreck we're seeing unfold. A Labour Party that has simultaneously alienated its natural left-wing support and also the centre-ground voters it needs to secure victory and has responded with a bid to woo right-wing voters with its 42-day detention bill, is beyond hope surely? So, at what point did it become apparent that the Government had lost its way?
The leadership procession that was achieved by ensuring that anyone who dared stand or vote against the overwhelming favourite knew that they were finished should Brown win?
The cancelled election to give Brown a mandate when his nearest advisers suddenly stopped telling him that it was in the bag?
Copying the Conservatives' inheritance tax policy, thus handing them the initiative for the first time and missing the opportunity to appeal to define the terms of the debate along the lines of 'party for the many vs party for the few'?
Allowing the publicity over David Cameron's "unscripted" Conference speech to obscure the fact that he didn't actually say anything?
The handling of the Northern Rock crisis revealed a fear of making the best available decision until all inferior alternatives had been exhausted?
The disastrous abolition of the 10p tax band allowed the Conservatives to undermine the party's core support without even needing to offer an alternative?
The ridiculous Crewe and Nantwich campaign that showed the party to be so out of touch that they suddenly appeared unelectable?
For me, it was the Inheritance Tax fiasco. That was an own-goal so spectacular that I can't think of a precedent. With the global economic downturn and the general weariness that always faces a long-standing encumbent as a backdrop, this was going to be the most difficult election to win since at least 1992 anyway. And yet just two weeks after Ed Balls was privately advising Brown that he was about to win an election that would finish the Conservatives as an electoral force forever, Brown and Darling were contriving to represent themselves as redundant in the face of these bright young things on the bench opposite. If I hadn't seen it wouldn't believe it.
The way that Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith have clung to their plan for extended detention (now reduced to 42 days from 90 in a kind of political closing down sale) is perversely admirable. Like those mad inventors who just will not be told that their combined fridge and tumble dryer will not sell, Brown has ploughed ahead in spite of almost limitless opposition from everyone but his most loyal Cabinet acolytes and a few Police Chiefs. They're hardly going to mention that they've never yet needed these powers, are they?
Well, he has blundered through the first hurdle in his bid to move UK law to the top of the draconian measures league table. But in truth it is a pyrrhic victory. So misbegotten is the concept that he has been forced to bully and bribe his Parliamentary colleagues to get it through. Following the £2.7 billion compensation package for the abolition of the 10p Tax Rate, he has been open to charges of bribing the electorate. To add the charge of bribing the DUP with £1.2billion in order to push this legislation forward to its inevitable failure in the second chamber is mind-bogglingly incompetent.
Brown was faced with a choice: back down and say you have listened to advice and are acting upon it, or press ahead at any cost. He chose to win the battle and lose the war. Whatever the qualms about his time as Chancellor (and I happen to prefer splashing out in an attempt to improve the lives of the vast majority to squirrelling away money to boost Corporate giants faced with a profit reduction when the wheel turns) no-one can be in any doubt now that he was far better suited to that than to strategic political leadership.
Doing just enough to avoid losing your job as you limp along toward an inevitable electoral massacre isn't in the interests of the Labour Party Gordon. But it's clear that the interests of the Labour Party or the people that they purport to represent stopped being a concern for you quite some time ago.
I spoke earlier about the hapless political manouevering of Gordon Brown and his advisers. Contratrily I'm quite happy about the rash decision of David Davis today. His motivation is clearly to undermine and destabilise the Government further, but the outcome will hopefully be the end of the misbegotten 42-day detention plan and possibly Brown himself. And he's putting the boot into 'Call Me Dave' at the same time. It's about time he took a hit.
The Lib Dem decision not to oppose the Tory candidate at the resultant Haltemprice and Howden by-election also increases my suspicion that in a hung Parliament (and that's a long-shot at best) they'd go blue. Clegg and Cameron look like peas in a pod to me.
Harping back to a recurrent theme on this blog, Labour have to accept they're losing the next election and start trying to do the right thing rather than the populist thing. They should legislate with the freedom that a relegated team plays football.
It suddenly occured to me reading Andrew Collins' excellent blog. The "Roulette" advert wasn't filmed by Lee McQueen and Claire at all, it was made using the outtakes of the advertisement for Beast aftershave that Stallone does in Rocky II.
Grrr!
