A week ago, Johnathon Freeland wrote an excellent piece for The Grauny, comparing decision making in the TV drama 24 with the post-London-bombing decision making taken by the Government. He essentially concludes that, with respect to terror legislation,

Almost all of the Blair proposals are… superficially appealing, but on closer inspection either flawed or unnecessary.

It’s well worth reading, and I would’ve blogged it last week had I been near a Pea-Sea, but I was not. But it’s still relevant, very well-written, and makes its arguments in a very convincing way.

It strikes me as odd that the lists published by France and Belgium should be mutually exclusive. One would think that they would use similar criteria to decide whether or not an airline was safe, and thus if it’s safe enough to fly over Belgium, then why not over France? And vice-versa? Surely one would expect at least some overlap?

The Observer has a fascinating report this morning that The Vatican has drawn up an instruction banning gay men from becoming priests, but not due to some worry over the morality of homosexuality, rather because…

the presence of homosexuals in seminaries is ‘unfair’ to both gay and heterosexual priests by subjecting the former to temptation

It’s certainly an interesting angle to take, and not entirely the one I personally would expect from the Vatican, who I would expect to ultra-Conservatively condemn homosexuality as a whole. It smacks of a church with an attendance crisis, which can’t afford to alienate anyone, trying to couch their moral objections in flawed logical arguments to make them more palatable to objectors.

But, from a purely practical standpoint, how on earth do they plan to screen for homosexuals before admitting people to seminaries? After all, if they can’t even manage to screen for paedophiles with any level of success, one really wouldn’t think they have much of a hope screening for gay men. Plus, as the Observer article points out…

Studies show that a significant proportion of men who enter seminaries to train for the priesthood are gay. Any move signalling that homosexuals will not be allowed to join the seminaries, even one couched in the arcane language of the Vatican, could reduce the number of recruits to the priesthood.

It will certainly be fascinating to see where this one goes, and whether it does get published or just quietly forgotten about; I would personally be surprised to see this published any time soon, especially by this Pope.

Charles Clarke’s new terror plans scare me. Let’s look at just one of the new powers:

Home secretary automatically to consider deporting any foreigner involved in listed extremist bookshops, centres, organisations and websites

The Government wants to have the power to deport any foreigner who it considers ‘extreme’. I can’t begin to beleive that any government would even suggest such measures – how can anyone seriously think that a government has the right to deport those who, essentially, it disagrees with? And, just to clarify, Mr Blair has already made it quite plain that we’re not solely talking about bombers and murderers:

We are dealing not with an isolated criminal act but with an extreme and evil ideology

This government wants to legislate against an ideology, not just the crimes which might stem from that ideology. Not only that, but we’re now allowing our politicians to use judgement laden words like ‘evil’ to describe sets of people – that’s just wrong, and further alienates the sizeable Muslim minority with sympathetic views. In fact, it doesn’t just indirectly alienate them, it actively does it:

Make justifying or glorifying terrorism anywhere an offence

If I sit here and try and understand the rationale behind terrorist attacks, and try to draw conclusions about how it is justified in the minds of the terrorists, I’m breaking the law. We’re being asked to continue an ill-defined ‘war’ against an enemy we’re forbidden to try and understand. Surely that kind of thing shouldn’t happen in a healthy democratic society? And whatever happened to free speech?

I’ve previously said that we’re bordering on the political situaition of Germany circa 1933, and the semantics are getting ever close: Hitler branded large groups of people (most noticeably the leaders of Czechoslovakia) as evil terrorists.

Besides which, in the age of global communication, does it really matter if the people attempting to incite terrorism are in a different country? The suspected nineleven hijackers were allegedly indoctrinated in Afghanistan, and that didn’t seem to harm the scale of their attack.

This is bad, dangerous, and unnecessary legislation which restricts our freedoms – including our freedom of thought – even more than ever before, and should be strongly opposed.

Mo Mowlam, one of the most popular members of New Labour, has died following a long illness due to a brain tumour. The former Northern Ireland Secretary’s biggest political achievement was the overseeing of the negotiations which led to the Good Friday agreement in 1998, but above and beyond that, she will be remembered for being one of the true characters of modern politics, charismatic and controversial in equal measure. She will be fondly remembered by many. There is a full obituary on the BBC site.

I’ve done The Indy and Channel 4 News, now it’s The Grauny’s Notes and Queries page. In response to the query ‘What is the best ever list of ‘best evers’?”, I wrote:

To find the best ever list of best-evers, we would first need to compile the best ever list of best ever lists of best-evers, or how could we be sure that our list of best-evers was the best ever?

So where to next? The Times? The Telegraph? Who can say? I’ve done the Mail too, but that was before the blog.

Okay, so none of them are really that impressive, but let me have my egotistical moment of glory. There’ll be a new post here at 9am tomorrow, because I’ve already written it and pre-published it. I’m not asking for too much, am I?

Yesterday, I blogged an Observer piece highlighting some of the unanswered questions surrounding the Stockwell shooting. Today, I’m blogging a Guardian report highlighting new leaks from the report into the shooting – leaks which appear to raise yet more questions about the shooting.

Following the police murder, I claimed that

basic story is that a man under surveillance following the attacks refused to follow police orders, and so was shot five times at close range.

It now emerges that the man was not under formal surveillance, as no-one had bothered to identify him properly. He didn’t refuse to follow police orders, because he wasn’t given any. And he wasn’t shot five times at close range, he was pinned down and shot seven times at point-blank range.

And whilst I still think

We can’t go killing every Asian man in a big coat who doesn’t do as police ask.

It turns out he wasn’t even wearing a big coat, but a rather light and fetching denim number.

One of my many theories is beginning to look frighteningly close to the truth:

To my mind, it sounds like a policeman rather lost it, and shot the man five times in some kind of rage.

Steps must be taken to ensure that such a mistake is never, ever, made again – and if that means laws must change to make it harder for police to kill, then change they must. Someone somewhere once said that every time the police wrongly arrest someone, we lose a little piece of our freedom. How much, then, did we lose on 22nd July 2005?

Last Sunday’s Observer had an interesting piece highlighting some of the yet-to-be-answered questions about the Stockwell shooting, and correcting a number of the initial misconceptions (thanks to Corin for the link):

He wasn’t wearing a heavy jacket. He used his card to get into the station. He didn’t vault the barrier. And now police say there are no CCTV pictures to reveal the truth. So why did plainclothes officers shoot young Jean Charles de Menezes seven times in the head, thinking he posed a terror threat?

It’s worth reading, and the questions urgently need answering.

This week, as ever, there’s the annual debate on whether A-Levels are getting easier. It’s interesting to see that of the seven people interviewed by the Guardian, only the one outside of the education system says they are getting easier. So that’s an interesting observation.

Every time I read a story like this, it puts in mind a Guardian comment piece from last summer, which I have stuck on my wall. It surprises me that I never blogged it, but better late than never:

It has become impossible to deny. As many commentators have noted, standards are not what they were. The only conclusion is that the Olympics have been “dumbed down”. How else can we explain that, at each Olympic games, more and more medals are handed out? And how else can we explain that at each games, world records are frequently broken? These facts alone suggest that the events have somehow been made easier.

Of course, some officials will attempt to deny it. They will argue using such terms as “level playing field” and point to improved coaching and more intensive training methods. But do they expect us to believe that the so-called “gold standard” of gold medals are worth the metal they are cast upon? At one time, competitors faced far more rigorous tests, in a narrow range of traditional subjects such as Latin and chariot racing. Yet today’s young people are spoon-fed at every step, and allowed to opt for easier subjects such as beach volleyball and synchronised media studies.

To make matters worse, some entrants are able to “re-sit” their chosen events if they don’t get the result they wanted first time around. Take Ian Thorpe, the Australian swimmer. Last time, in Sydney, he failed to get a top-grade mark in the 200m freestyle. What does he do? He took his finals again – and this time, somewhat predictably, won a gold. Is this fair? How right that Tory spokesman Tim Collins should vow to stop multiple re-sits, saying: “Olympic athletes do not get a second or third go … if they don’t like the result.” Except the ones that do.

Things have got so bad, thanks to the glut of top results, that prestigious institutions such as Nike and McDonald’s are besieged by applicants for sponsorship deals, all clutching a slew of medals. How are these institutions going to be able to choose the best candidates to front their advertising campaigns? Take the badminton mixed doubles: Britain had failed to pass the semi-finals – until now, when it has gained a silver grade. At this rate of progress, by the 2076 Olympics Britain will win gold in every subject, a clear example of the “all shall have prizes” mentality. It is physical correctness gone mad.

However much I personally don’t think the exams are getting easier per se, there certainly are new A-Levels which are easier than some of the traditional options, and the A-Level standard clearly needs to be, erm, standardised across subject areas. However much anybody tries, nobody is going to convince me that the A-Level English Language and Literature syllabus is anywhere near as challenging as the A-Level Chemistry syllabus. I have a far more scientific than linguistic brain, sat both of the above papers, and yet still found the former infinitely easier than the latter.

Also, however hard the exams are, they are essentially pointless if they fail to divide the best from the very good. So what’s the solution? It would seem sensible to me for universities to institute their own tests, along the lines of the Oxbridge MVAT test, which would allow them to test candidates for the particular qualities required to succeed in a given course. Obviously, only those with appropriate A-Level results would be invited to take the tests. That way, university selection would improve, so drop-out rates would fall, and A-Levels would still have value despite increasingly well performing students.

Of course, that leaves industry in a bit of a pickle, but they usually manage to sort themselves out, and I’m sure they would in this situation. Besides which, students who tend to go straight into industry tend not to have the very-top results, which are the ones that are causing problems with differentiation anyway. So it possibly isn’t such a problem in that particular sector.

Maybe there’s a better solution all-round, but I certainly can’t see it. And I’m confident Ruth Kelly won’t, either.

Robin Cook, one of the few politicians to whom morals meant more than career, has died aged 59. He was, without doubt, one of the most intelligent MPs to have sat in the Commons in recent years, and an extremely skilled debater. He isn’t someone I always agreed with, but he’s someone I always highly respected. There’s a full obituary on the BBC News site.

Requiescat in pace