We're all Muslims now

and black and sick and Asian and Jewish and gay and old and homeless and catholic and refugees and artists and women and prisoners and disabled and...

What has happened this weekend strips us all of a little bit of humanity. You don't notice the little bits being chipped away until you turn around one day and look for compassion and find there's nothing there.

Two things have been going round in my head all weekend. The first is Martin Niemöller’s poem:


First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.


Niemöller was a German Lutheran pastor interned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. He initially supported Hitler and his poem is an attempt to address the guilt he felt.

And the second thing is the Manics’"If you tolerate this your children will be next"

David Slack ‏@slack2thefuture says it much better than me, well he is a professional writer after all,
“Remember sitting in history, thinking “If I was alive then, I would’ve…”
You’re alive now. Whatever you’re doing is what you would’ve done.”





What are you going to do?

Friday Fun 22

There was nothing funny about Friday 13th November.

Given that we just can't get our heads around why anyone would do this, I think John Oliver's reaction on HBO is as good as any.

"If you are in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good fucking luck."




Vive la France

Friday fun 17

Posting the Chris Rock video a few weeks ago reminded me of one of Jon's favourite lines, "They brag about stuff a normal man just does. They'll say something like, 'Yeah, well, I take care of my kids.' You're supposed to, you dumb motherf*cker. 'I ain't never been to jail.' Whaddya want? A cookie? You're not supposed to go to jail, you low-expectation-having motherf*cker!".

Happy Christmas! Enjoy!

More books

Annual list of books I've read:

1. David Kynaston "Austerity Britain 1945-51" - think we've got it bad today? Think again!
2. Terry Pratchett "Wintersmith"
3. Andrew Martin "The Necropolis Railway"
4. Dorothy L Sayers "Whose Body?"
5. Terry Pratchett "Going Postal"
6. Tom Robb-Smith "Agent 6"
7. James Anderson "The Affair of the Boodstained Egg Cosy"
8. George Orwell "The Road to Wigan Pier" (Re-read)
9. A. W. Kinglake "Eothen"
10. James Anderson "The Affair of the Mutilated Mink"
11. E. R. Tobia "Jorge Lorenzo: The Story so Far"
12. Caitlin Moran "How to be a Woman" - love her journalism but actually found this book really rather depressing
13. Pete Comley "Monkey with a Pin"
14. James Anderson "The Affair of the Thirty-Nine Cufflinks"
15. Edward Said "Orientalism"
16. David Kynaston "Family Britain 1951-57"
17. Ben Aaronovitch "Rivers of London" - needing something to read on the train and thinking, 'I wonder if he's any relation to David?', I seem to have stumbled across a genre that's new to me: urban fantasy. And jolly good fun it is too, he's got me hooked (and it's hard to dislike an author who names one of his most alluring female characters 'Beverley' isn't it?)
18. Barry Hobson "Latrinae et Foricae: Toilets in the Roman World" - not only did they have indoor plumbing, they had upstairs loos!
19. Terry Pratchett "Snuff"
20. Hermione Ranfurly "To War with Whitaker"
21. Jon Ronson "The Psychopath Test"
22. Ben Aaronovitch "Moon Over Soho"
23. William Dalrymple "White Mughals"
24. David Sedaris "Holidays on Ice"

So many books, so little time...

'Ello, 'ello, 'ello...

I've never spoiled a ballot paper before. Indeed, I don't think that I've ever failed to vote, as I have too much respect for the men and women who fought and died to bring us universal suffrage in the first place and, later, to protect it from totalitarianism. But with the forthcoming elections for the police and crime commissioners I've made an exception.

If the government had a problem with the police authorities, why didn't it just change their powers? Why spend £75 million on a shambles of an election which is strongly predicted to have the lowest ever participation rate? Why spend up to £100,000 on salaries for each of these 41 posts? At a time when the government is supposed to be cutting publicly funded posts, when public employees from nurses to binmen have had their pay frozen for the last 5 years, do you honestly think that this is a good use of tax-payers' money? It will do nothing to improve accountability but will simply impose another expensive level of bureaucracy onto the system.

Why, Mr Cameron, have you stacked the dice against the independents who used to sit on the police authorities? You seem to have designed a system that will specifically lead to someone from a political party being elected. Do we really want our police run by political parties? Is the politicisation of the police really a good thing? The fact that Boris is the PCC for London should tell you all you need to know about the role's impartiality. The PCC will be able to hire and fire the chief constable, so what is there to stop a PCC of one political stripe hiring a chief constable who agrees with him – oh and it is going to be a 'him' because there are very few women standing for election. It's also very likely to be an ex-police or military person (or, God help us, a 'counter terrorism specialist' in our area) too given the large number of them who are standing – how 'independent' are they going to be? By contrast with the old police authorities, the police and crime panels what replace them will have limited powers of scrutiny: no more will we see the likes of the redoutable Gabrielle Cox who stood up to James Anderton during his worst excesses in Manchester - she'd now have to fight the PCC as well as the chief constable. At a time when boundary changes are leading to fewer MPs, are you trying to give a sop to them by creating another post that they can apply for? With a generous expenses system and pension package perhaps? Oh, hush my mouth for the cynical old tart that I am... Do you think that perhaps this massive case of 'jobs for the boys' could be seen as a kick in the face for the electorate who are already struggling with your austerity measures? (And lets not forget that the crash was caused by your mates in the global banking industry whose salaries have increased by 37% in the last 4 years – contrast to that pay freeze for us mere mortals mentioned above – but I digress...).

The government itself doesn't seem to want to take the elections seriously as, instead of offering candidates the free mailout to voters that is normal in real elections, it claims that it wants to save taxpayers' money (the mailout would have added £35m to the bill). Well, I think that the vessel named 'The Good Ship Waste of Money' has already sailed, don't you chaps? If you really believed that you were extending democracy you'd have had the courage of your convictions and taken the time to explain to people what they were voting for. Instead the government has just given us those bloody averts showing 'thugs' which are downright scary. Is that a valid electoral tactic these days, to terrify the vulnerable into voting in an election they don't understand? The adverts are also misleading by implying that voting for the PCC will make criminals think again. It won't. In theory, the PCC will have no role in day to day policing or 'operational decisions'.

Even the method of voting irritates me. The big parties despise electoral reform do they? They say that proportional representation isn't good enough for 'proper' elections but they're happy enough to use it in their tin-pot elections for mayors (set up by the Labour government) and the PCCs (set up by the Tories).

Will a voter turnout of under 20% really give any of the elected commissioners the legitimacy to hold the police to account? Home Secretary Teresa May thinks so, but that wasn't what the government were saying earlier in the year when Home Office staff voted to strike on a 20% turnout. Home Office Minister Damian Green blames us, the voters, in advance, just in case it all goes horribly wrong, and the gist of his comments are: 'if you don't go out and vote then the nutters will get in and you'll only have yourselves to blame'. But Mr Green, you've declined to inform the electroate about PCCs by refusing to sending them any information on the changes and making the boundaries so large that independents can't afford to canvass in them. Anyway why the fuck are we having these bloody elections in the first place? Because, Mr Cameron, in case you don't recall, it may have been a Conservative manifesto commitment but NOBODY VOTED FOR YOU. You're only in power 'cos Nick Clegg (and quite a few of the PLP) despised Gordon Brown more than you and Labour MPs were physically sick at the thought of having to cosy up to the SNP to make their coalition work.

So, that's why I spoiled my ballot paper. It won't make any difference to the outcome but it made me feel a little better and it's a while since I've had a jolly good rant. But in my darker moments I remember the Peter Cook film The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer where, once he has become Prime Minister, the eponymous villain subjects the nation to constant ballots and referenda until the exausted voters willingly agree to him abolishing democracy and becoming dictator. You have been warned...

Some sources:
FT, 'Bankers’ salaries up 37% in four years', May 2012
Guardian, 'Police and crime commissioner elections: who, what and why – Q&A', Nov 2012
BBC, 'Home Office staff to strike on eve of Games', Jul 2012

Friday Fun 16

OK, so we already know who won, but this is very funny anyway. Also worth watching just for the truly terrifying photo of Mitt Romney's extended family - all those kids wearing the same clothes reminds me of a sci-fi/horror story, I'm thinking 'Midwich Cuckoos' or 'Stepford Wives'.

Friday Fun 15

We've not had one of these for a while, so here's the Bard of Stanford in the Vale to make you smile...

I am angry

I am really REALLY angry. I don't often voice my opinions on politics and such like (OK, Jon would differ with me there, so let's say 'in public'...), but I still get bombarded with other people's ill-informed cretinous musings on a daily basis: in person, through the media, etc. Why do people think I want to hear their bigoted ramblings? Why do people think it's acceptable to use casual racist/sexual/homophobic language in everyday speech? I honestly would like to go around thinking the best of my fellow human beings but, unfortunately, they show me on a daily basis that the majority of the British people should not be allowed to voice their opinions on ANYTHING. Because, even if they're discussing the state of their petunias, they'll immediately segway off into how their garden's less than perfect display either: is the fault of immigrants/gays/women; is down to too much rain which disproves global warming; is because 'they' stop us from using DDT to kill pests; is because we only have a fortnightly bin collection; is because next door's cat peed on it; is because the weather forecasters lied to us; is because of 'Europe'...

Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP, you STUPID people.

What has sparked this latest rant? Well, I think it's been on a slow burning fuse since the elections last year, because all of us trendy lefties knew that the Labour government was broadly shit and had let us down massively. OK, there were improvements in the NHS and taxes fell (yes, they did, don't just believe the crap on tax fed to you by your newspaper, get out there and check the facts for yourself, taxes were lower than under Mrs T and her cronies) but on the minus side they brought in student loans, let The City get out of hand and social inequality has got much worse, to mention but three. But we felt unable to criticise because they were Labour, so they must be good, right? Well, now the Tories are back and normal service has been resumed; we can let our critical faculties off the leash again. More immediately it's been caused bylast week's survey on how 23% of British people apparently think that immigration is 'our biggest problem'; our esteemed leader's speech on how 'Multiculturalism has failed'; Lord Carlisle's views that the UK has become a 'safe haven' for terrorists, etc, etc ad nauseum.

So, 59% of British people think that there are 'too many' immigrants and want them not to have access to the NHS and public services. They say that immigrants take jobs from British workers: BUT YET, at the same time, they want more foreign doctors, nurses and care workers. It's sooooo hard for me not to see this country as full of ignorant small-minded selfish bigots. The pond-life that are dragged in for these surveys... no I'll amend that, the pond-life that seem to make up the majority of the people whose opinions I have to listen to day after day, say that we live on a small, overcrowded island. No, we don't, have you flown over it lately? There's just acre upon acre of rolling countryside that isn't going to be built over any time soon. And now that the coalition government is shutting the economy down, there'll be loads of brownfield sites in towns and cities on which to build. Immigrants take our jobs do they? What, the ones you don't want to do, like: spud picking in Norfolk; wiping old people's bums; giving people good service in cafés; cleaning for less than the minimum wage; coming round to fix my plumbing and not ripping me off in the process? But, when your granny does need looking after, you'd rather we got a nurse or doctor in from a country that can ill-afford the draining away of its medical staff to do it? Perhaps you think they'll be cheap.

They don't like immigrants, but who's going to pay for the pensions of the pond-life in years to come? The way the state pension was set up a century ago, all the money your parents paid in went to pay the pensions of the people who had already retired. My payments are helping to fund the Caribbean cruises of those currently retired. But, as the population ages, there will be a higher proportion of retired people to workers by the time we retire: who's going to be paying the National Insurance needed to pay our state pensions then? Yes, those immigrants.

The quote, “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity”, has been attributed to many people over the last century, and I've got to say that this survey just feeds my prejudices that the majority of the British people are stupid – and selfish. I firmly believe that anyone who reads a newspaper other than the Guardian, Indie, Telegraph or Times should not be allowed to vote, and should preferably not be allowed to speak in public, except to say 'hello, nice day' or 'can I have a pound of potatoes please?'. The red tops, tabloids, call them what you will, peddle malevolent anti-social trash that their ill-educated dullards of a readership swallow whole and regurgitate as ill-informed anti-immigrant, anti-'benefits cheat', anti-Islamic bile (but I'm not completely sure that the 'quality' 'papers are necessarily any better, so I think the criteria on which I'd judge whether people were fit to vote would need to be refined further). These 'papers pander to the innate selfishness of the white working and lower middle classes, with their myths of 'someone's getting more than you and they don't deserve it'. Once we thought that the working class voted Labour because they wanted a fairer society. As soon as Thatcher came along and offered them cheap council houses it became clear that they had simply been voting Labour because they thought they could get more for themselves and stuff everyone else and were happy to change allegiance when a better offer came along. Fairer society? Stuff that if it means helping a woman and her child fleeing war in Sierra Leone; if it means contributing to an aid budget that helps people in poorer countries, so that they stay there and don't have to feel like they need to travel half way round the world to escape being starved, raped and brutalised; if it means funding parenting classes for single mothers so that their kids don't grow up into anti-social yobs; funding ex-offender schemes to help them become employable and not go straight back inside.

Multiculturalism has failed has it? Look at the ghettos in France, the racism in foreign football, the fact that every non-white foreign sportsman who comes over here says how nice the British are to them. The UK is one of the better integrated western countries, depressing as that may sound to those of us who grew up with the race riots of the '70s and hoped that improved education and tolerance would have brought about some sort of multiculural utopia by the 21st century. The places where multiculturalism is perceived to have failed and where the far right parties get the biggest share of the vote are the areas that are less racially mixed, that are mostly white. This is the fear-factor at work, promulgated by incautious ill-informed speeches like Cameron's. Previous data, as well as the survey mentioned above, have shown that the more we mix with other races or immigrants, the more positive we feel toward them. So, he thinks that sections of our society threaten it's laws and cohesion by, for example, believing that homosexuality is evil; protesting outside theatres showing plays they disagree with and threaten violence to the audience and participants; they withdraw their children from school because they object to the national curriculum; they pick and choose the sections of their holy book to support their hateful views; they burn the texts sacred to other religions; they threaten violence to members of the medical profession carrying out legal procedures – Muslims? Oh no, sorry, I was talking about evangelical Christians, my mistake. How about improving deprived areas, rather than decimating them, to ensure that all the people in those areas, black, white and Asian can fulfil their potential? How about improving all schools to give minorities and the white working class a leg up, rather than pouring money into 'free schools' for the already sharp-elbowed middle classes? Oh, and thanks Lord Carlisle; removing people's human rights will make us all safer will it? Well, I don't want to live in a country where citizens can be put under house arrest without being given a reason. Or does it make it OK if they're a different colour? I don't notice many far-right activists being given control orders. Internment didn't work with the IRA 30 years ago and it certainly won't work now. You'd hope society would move forward over the years not regress, wouldn't you?

Oh, and don't think that I'm just baiting the white working class. The sudden appearance of the 'squeezed middle' and their almost pathological whining is obscene. The fact that the top 25%* of earners will lose their child benefit in 2 year's time is NOT a case for national mourning. All the articles around this topic just served to show one thing: that being a 'benefits scrounger', 'benefits dependent', 'sponging off the state', having more children than you can afford to bring up on your salary, is a bad thing unless it's being done by the middle classes. The trotting out of case studies in the broadsheets focussing on the families of headmasters with 4 children whose poor ickle wifees will suddenly have to get a job because they're losing £2k of benefits a year was, frankly, pathetic. If you claim to be an intelligent person who can't make those savings from your existing income, or get a part time job of 6.5 hours a week (yes, that's all it would take and I bet you can fit that in around play school can't you?), well, I pity you, I really do, and I question whether you should be having children in the first place 'cos you're obviously TOO STUPID. The whole furore around this issue showed that the middle classes do not believe in self-reliance and have become a mob of selfish, whingeing ponces who would much rather continue to sponge off the state and allow the burden of the coalition's cuts fell on someone else, preferably the poor.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not supporting the government. The whole panic around the deficit and the cuts needed to deal with it is deeply damaging for the country. I'm a dyed in the wool Keynesian and firmly believe that we should be pumping money into public works to get the economy moving. But, if there are going to be cuts, why shouldn't the top 25% of earners shoulder more of the burden than the bottom 75%?

Are you a bit sulky that you earn £35k and you're going to have to start paying 40% tax on the amount that you earn over that figure? Aw, diddums, just think that the upcoming tax changes will mean that 500,000 people who currently earn less than £7,475 will no longer have to pay tax. But that's not going to make you feel better is it, because you're a selfish git. Can you imagine earning that little? It probably wouldn't keep you in holidays for the year, would it? But some people actually do try to live on that. Unfortunately, it does also mean that all those poor ickle middle class women doing their 6.5 hours a week to make up for losing their child benefit will also not pay tax, but the world isn't perfect...

I can't believe how people can spout complete crap that they know nothing about and not realise how ignorant they are. After the election one woman said, “We must be the laughing stock of Europe because of the time it's taken for the coalition to come together!”. (That's the stock in phrase of these bottom-feeders, 'laughing stock of Europe'. I can never understand why, because most of the people spouting it are anti-European so why should they care what the Europeans think?). Until recently the Dutch held the record at over 200 days to form a coalition government, with the norm being more than 20 days – so the 5 days of negotiation at Westminster begins to look like our lot weren't really trying. One BBC commentator said at the time that, in Europe, the electorate would be extremely suspicious of a coalition coming together so quickly, because they'd suspect that the politicians had been cooking something up before the election. So, any chance of these people thinking, or checking facts, before letting their gobs flap open? I'll not hold my breath...

Oh, and our holiday in Syria? I'm seriously pissed off by this being met with looks of horror, as if we've just suggested holidaying in Helmand Province. Syria is simply one of the few countries in North Africa and the Middle East that DOESN'T go, "Oooo, American money! Gimme, gimme, gimme! Would you like me to bend over further Mr President to make it easier for you to shaft me - and is there anything you'd like me to suck whilst I'm down there?". The regime in Syria is no different from the ones in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan, but people are quite happy to spend their long weekend in Marrakesh and, until this week, their Nile cruise and week at Sharm, or their trip to Petra. And it's sooooo much better than the ostensibly democratic regime in Turkey, but we're happy to have our cheap beach holiday there, aren't we? People happily flock to the all inclusive resorts of Mexico whilst the country implodes under the weight of its poverty; where kidnappings and mass killings are rife as the drug barons fight it out amongst themselves and with the army. So we'll have no more of the face-pulling when I mention my holiday plans, shall we?

Victoria Beckham is reported to have said that she's never read a book. Shut up you moronic stick insect this is NOT SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF! You have children, is this any way to encourage them educationally? 'I don't have time', she says, but I bet she can find time to watch prole-fodder TV. Your every move is followed by thousands of impressionable teenage girls from deprived backgrounds, is this any way to encourage them to strive to improve their lives? When all evidence shows that improving the educational attainment of girls improves their lives and the lives of the families they go on to have, you're telling them that it's OK to limit their reading to fashion and gossip mags? Limit their aspirations to having nice hair and nails and then some record producer will magically fall out of the sky and whisk them away from all this? If your next child is a girl is this all the aspiration and encouragement she can hope for?

Oooo, that feels better. I'm beginning to see why people off-load like this. Now, is there anyone left to offend? Let me think... Oh, yes... voting rights for prisoners are a good thing and should be brought in as part of their rehabilitation process and, whilst they're at it, the government can improve the education of prisoners to ensure that they can read and understand the political literature that'll be pushed through their door once they're released.

Paternity leave should not be extended, unless it becomes 'carers' leave and is available to everyone, not just breeders.

Get rid of parent and child spaces in supermarket car parks or, better still, move them to the very furthest edge of the car park so that the spaces near the store aren't clogged by 4x4s and chav-mobiles and so that the fat gits and their offspring can get some exercise whilst lugging their readymeals and 2 litre bottles of cola back to the car.

Get rid of the universal state pension. Why should someone who was at school with me and went on to become a brickie, or got one of those fantastic council jobs you hear people like Digby Jones wapping on a about, empting bins or wiping granny's bum in a care home (yes Digby, if those public sector jobs and pensions are so fucking good, why aren't more private sector CEOs queuing up to do them?), now have to wait until they are 67 to get their state pension, when we're paying state pensions to Paul McCartney and Richard Rogers (I have nothing against these people, they are simply examples of the extremely rich)?

I like Joey Barton and El-Hadji Diouf and think they're just nice, misunderstood boys.

Now that I can't think of anyone else to offend and I probably have reduced my Christmas card list by about 90%, I'll leave you with this thought: every day I thank whatever bit of sanity that's left in the political system, and you should too, that we don't live in a country where angry middle aged women can routinely get access to guns. Especially not those nice shiney black self-loading pump-action ones, oooooooo...


*A gross annual salary of £31,759 gets you into the top 25% of earners. If you earn above £44,881 you're in the top 10%. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8151355.stm

The Reckoning

When we went on our 'trip of a lifetime' to Egypt in January 2009, we were chatting to the taxi driver who had taken us to Deir el-Medina and he was asking, "Where are all the tourists?". We thought that there were lots of tourists around, but he said no, that there were usually many more and that the Egyptians were earning much less as a result. We heard the same question from a tout later in the week. We explained that we had been 'credit crunched' and that people were afraid of losing their jobs and were saving their money.

This sparked a conversation about food prices, as wheat was beginning to rise in price and at home the 500g of pasta that had cost 33p the January before was now 75p, the 70p loaf was now £1.34 and cheese had risen by 20%. These price rises were something that most of us in Britain could shrug off, but in countries where such staples make up a fair proportion of the diet and where most ordinary people had 2 or 3 jobs to try to make ends meet; what would happen, we wondered, when these price rises hit whilst coupled with less income coming in?

Well, 2 years later, I think we just found out.

My Hero

I don't have many heroes because most people in the public eye are as flawed as the rest of us, or more so. I suppose Clive Stafford-Smith comes close or Hester Stanhope, but I think Camila Batmanghelidjh probably encapsulates who I would like to be if I were a better person.

Brought up in an amazingly wealthy Iranian family, Ms Batmanghelidjh and her siblings were at school in England when the revolution happened and they lost touch with their parents. With the help of her school she managed to get asylum and then worked in nurseries to fund her way through university. For some reason she'd always wanted to work with disadvantaged children and did that as a psychotherapist, first working with the children the wealthy and then working with the sort of kids who get referred to Social Services.

In 1996 Ms Batmanghelidjh set up Kids Company to help the children we ignore until they get into the headlines of tabloid newspapers as the victims, or perpetrators, of violence. Around the same time one prominent comedian was developing his catch-phrase of, "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" and, whilst I remember him eventually slapping an asbo on anyone who couldn't run away fast enough, I recall him doing precious little about the last part of that phrase. Disadvantage (not just financial poverty, but poverty of expectation, a lack of family support, poverty of ambition) and the other myriad causes of crime and social disaffection, was not tackled on a national level. Throughout the period since 1996 social inequality got worse, with the richest and poorest moving further apart (IFS Report), whilst social mobility has also declined (Sutton Trust/Guardian) - so if you're born on a sink estate in Doncaster, you're more likely to remain there.

So, thank goodness someone decided to do what she could to help these children. When the crimes they commit reach the headlines we are rightly disgusted, but the backgrounds they come from should really turn our stomachs. She works with children who have been the subject of abuse and/or neglect since infancy, whose parents often have their own mental or substance dependency problems and cannot/will not care for them so that the parent-child relationship is either reversed, or the child goes 'feral'. One story: "She tells me of a boy who came to her aged 12. He had already stabbed his stepfather for attacking his mother. Both were crack addicts and the boy, always fearful, slept with knives under his pillow. He was a terrifying, angry child, she recalls. But she persisted: “I’d follow him around and sit next to him and say ‘You’re too cute to frighten me!’” Gradually his story unfolded, the beatings, neglect, the gun put in his mouth by a junkie. But what kept the boy coming to Kids Co was that it understood his mind, his urge to switch from victim of violence to perpetrator, how only torturing and persecuting others gave him mental relief." (Timesonline). Now aged 22 the young man is at college, studying for a professional qualification.

This story is by far not the worst: a quick Google will bring up the life-histories of other children that she's told to various newspapers. Is it any wonder that some of these children will turn to abusing others to re-capture a sense of power or respect that is missing from their lives; or will join a gang because it gives them a surrogate family that's probably less abusive than their own? Many years ago I read one report in which Ms Batmanghelidjh estimated that up to 40% of the children on some London housing estates were 'lost' - not in school, not contacted by Social Services, no GP, left to fend for themselves. What happens to these children as adults? What sort of families and relationships do they go on to have? Of course with many of them we know that they end up in the criminal justice system, or their children end up in care, but what about the rest? What effects is the abuse they suffered in childhood having on the next generation and on wider society?

The great thing is that many of the children themselves self-refer to Kids Company, or bring in friends that they think are in trouble. They realise that their lives shouldn't be like that and they find help. Of these, 96% return to education or employment and there's an 88% reduction in crime (Independent) - back to that phrase of "tough on the causes of crime" again. And that's why it's important that we don't leave the most disadvantaged in society to fend for themselves, because the effects end up permeating through society as a whole: your car gets broken into to support someone's drug habit; you're frightened to walk down a street because of the gang on the corner; crime ends up being the only job for the kid who can't read or write (illiteracy rates of those who end up in prison have changed little since the turn of the 19th century). With cuts in public spending which are going to hit services to the disadvantaged most, sadly, people like Camila Batmanghelidjh will become more important. Isn't it sad that in the 4th richest country on the planet we still have a level of people whose lives are so blighted, with a blight that infects future generations?

If I were a better, braver, more patient person (or liked children) I'd volunteer for such work myself, but I'll have to content myself with making donations to charity and looking with awe at one of my heroes. I do also envy her dress sense, 'larger than life' character and the entrepreneurial spirit that enabled her to establish her various ventures. After all, (to misquote Caitlin Moran) someone with 'Batman' in her name can probably do just about anything!