Robert Hampton

When David Cameron told the Tory Conference in October 2011 that he supported marriage rights for same-sex couples, I wonder if he expected the reaction to be as vociferous as it has been? He didn’t just open a can of worms; he put the can in a microwave, programmed it for full power, and watched the sparks fly.

I will admit that – while I wasn’t surprised by the reaction of certain religious leaders – I was surprised that their views were allowed to dominate the debate, especially on TV and radio (that politically correct liberal media at work again, I guess). I was also surprised – shocked, in fact – at how vicious some of the anti-marriage commentary has been. Some comments have been reminiscent of the nonsense that comes out of the mouths of the religious right in America. I naively hoped that Britain would be above this kind of thing.

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Some good old fashioned anti-gay opinions were spouted at the weekend from a senior figure in the Church of England, because there is apparently no more pressing social issue in the world today than two men kissing. This time it was the Archbishop of York, who said in a newspaper interview that, while civil partnerships were OK, gay marriage should not be introduced in the UK:-

“I don’t think it is the role of the state to define what marriage is. It is set in tradition and history and you can’t just [change it] overnight, no matter how powerful you are,” he told the Daily Telegraph.

“We’ve seen dictators do it in different contexts, and I don’t want to redefine very clear social structures that have been in existence for a long time and then overnight the state believes it could go in a particular way.”

Dr Sentamu fled Uganda during the rule of Idi Amin, so you’d think he’d be a bit more careful about comparing people to dictators. If the Church wants to stick to its narrow definition of marriage, I think it is wrong, but in a free society it should be free to do so. However, it cannot enforce these rules against the wider population who are not bound by the Bible (or specifically, Dr Sentamu’s interpretation of it). They should be free to marry whomever they want.

I agree with David Cameron on very little, but I hope he pushes forward with the gay marriage consultation in the face of a backbench revolt. Or should that read “revolting backbenchers”?

So a new EU accord has been reached and the only member not interested in supporting it is, er.. us. Thanks to Dave, Britain has been left isolated. As the Guardian succinctly puts it: The two-speed Europe is here, with UK alone in the slow lane.

Cameron says the deal wasn’t in “Britain’s best interests”. It certainly wasn’t in the best interests of Dave’s political career – his decision appears to be squarely about pandering to the Tory right and the Daily Mail.

There’s a debate to be had on Europe and Britain’s role in it. There are plenty of ways in which the EU could and should be reformed. Unfortunately it’s quite impossible to have a sensible discussion when the country is run by a party of little Englanders and the popular press is full of exaggerated and just plain made-up scare stories about “Barmy Brussels Bureaucrats”. Any debate would be strangled at birth by daft comments about straight bananas and butter mountains.

Meanwhile, Nick Clegg (remember him?) — a leader of a supposedly pro-Europe party, continues to back the Prime Minister. Is there anything I can do, even as a meaningless symbolic gesture, to retract my LibDem vote in the May 2010 elections?

So, November 30th. It was, we were told, a national day of action by public sector workers, when the evil/heroic unions (depending on which newspaper you read) would succeed/fail in bringing Britain to a standstill (again, depending on which newspaper you read).

Merseyside, with quite a generous allocation of civil service workers, was poised to be badly hit, with dire warnings in the local press of CHAOS.

Did it come to pass? Well, the Mersey Tunnels were closed.

For me it was a normal day, apart from Liverpool city centre being super-busy as strike-affected schoolchildren and their harrassed-looking parents descended for some retail therapy. As I watched the crowds in the shops, I found it hard to swallow the Government’s line that this strike was damaging to the economy.

The Sun (spit) and Daily Mail (urgh) have delighted in demonising the unions. They portray them as militant, 70s throwbacks, not living in the real world. In a masterpiece of tabloid doublespeak, they tried to portray the strike as massively disruptive to the general public, while at the same time downplaying it as a “damp squib”. The right-wing press conveniently ignored a BBC poll showing 61% of adults supported the strike. Jeremy Clarkson was definitely with the other 39%.

David Cameron meanwhile, seems to be trying to turn the term “leftwing” into an insult, similar to the way “liberal” has become a dirty word in America. The Guardian carried an interesting article on this phenomenon.

As I understand it, the government have decided that the public sector pension plan is going to be unilaterally changed, so workers will pay in more and get less at the end of it. They’re not being greedy, they’re not asking for more – they simply want to keep what they already have. Some private sector workers complained that they don’t get such a generous pension. Well, that may be true, but why should public sector workers sink to the lowest common denominator? Instead, private sector workers should be lobbying their employers for better pension provision (maybe they should form a union).

No-one should be completely immune to the effects of the financial woes we find ourselves in. But why are public sector workers being singled out when the bankers who got us into this mess are still paying themselves massive bonuses? “We’re all in this together,” after all.

My favourite quote came, as so many of my favourite quotes do these days, from Twitter:

It’s an excellent point. Rules about child labour, health and safety at work, anti-discrimination legislation and countless other laws, have all come about thanks in no small part to union intervention. If you want to go back to a country where 12-year-olds were sent down coal mines, then by all means abolish the unions, but that’s not a country I want to live in.

London has experienced days of rioting in various parts of the city, there was disorder in Liverpool last night, while tonight Birmingham and Manchester are under attack.

From watching the near-continuous news coverage, I have come to a terrifying conclusion: our notion of “law and order” only works if most people behave themselves without intervention. Once you have a sufficiently large group of people with no respect for authority, the system breaks down and the police are easily overwhelmed.

The chickens are coming home to roost. For decades, social issues have been left to fester, leaving us with areas of high unemployment and high crime, where many people exist without any purpose or direction in life. This situation has been perpetuated by successive Conservative governments (who simply didn’t care) and Labour governments (who cared deeply, but failed to get to grips with the problem).

Now to compound the problem the Government is pushing through vicious budget cuts: not just to front-line services like the police and fire brigade, but also to services like youth clubs and other community organisations. And then they act surprised when it blows up in their faces.

Tough-sounding soundbites from Theresa May and David Cameron won’t solve this: it requires long-term thinking. Unfortunately this sort of thinking is not favoured by politicians and their friends in the tabloid press. We will see demands for the return of National Service, calls for water cannons to be turned on the rioters, and wails about the Human Rights Act. The actual root causes will not be addressed, and the problems will be stored up again for next time. Repeat ad infinitum…

Wow, what a difference a week makes. The News of the World is to publish its final issue this Sunday after continuing hacking revelations, a Twitter outrage and an advertiser boycott.

You can argue (with some force) that this is a symbolic gesture; a stunt to try and draw a line under the affair. That may be so, but to suddenly close a profitable paper which has published every Sunday for 167 years is a massive step and one which News International won’t have taken lightly, even if the “Sun on Sunday” (or whatever) is waiting to fill the gap.

This shouldn’t be the end of the matter: there are still lots of questions to be answered. What about the allegation that police officers accepted bribes? Doesn’t David Cameron have too cosy a relationship with News International bigwigs? Shouldn’t the decision to allow the BSkyB takeover be reconsidered? Why is Rebekah Brooks keeping her job when staff at the News of the World (most of whom weren’t even working there when the hacks took place) are being sacked?

My parents used to get the News of the World until a few years ago when they switched without explanation to the Mail on Sunday. Is Captain Cash still in it? I liked that part.

What a year 2010 was! It had twelve months, each consisting of at least 28 days. On some of those days I made blog entries. Here are the highlights.

I began the year in January fretting about an alleged Crystal Maze remake starring Amanda Holden. This story fortunately turned out to be utter bollocks. Ginger people again proved that (yours truly excepted) they have no sense of humour or perspective. Britain experienced a deluge of snow, and Merseyrail impressed everyone by soldiering on throughout, a feat which they would surely repeat next time we experienced awful weather… right?

I finally joined the Wii owners’ club, just as the console stopped being cool. My rekindled love for video games did not result in me getting rickets. I also celebrated my first Twitterversary and cautiously welcomed the iPad.

I also took time to blog at length about a US comedian no-one has heard of over here, illustrating my post with YouTube clips which have now been removed for copyright infringement.

In more serious matters, the Haiti earthquake occupied people’s thoughts as a humanitarian catastrophe unfolded in the devastated country.

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Canary is a new play by Jonathan Harvey, playing at the Liverpool Playhouse until 15th May before going on tour, taking in Hampstead, Cambridge and Brighton.

(minor spoilers follow below)

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Welcome to the latest in an occasional series of “Hampo pretends his opinions matter”, this time talking about a potential coalition between the Liberal Democrats and one of the other parties.

Please bear in mind that I don’t like the Conservatives and I believe that David Cameron is wrong on many issues. Some of the Tory policies (repealing the ban on fox-hunting, for example) are downright awful. That said, I’m not a big fan of the current Labour party either, largely thanks to their relentless attack on our civil liberties.

The ideal situation right now would have been a landslide victory for the Liberal Democrats, with Nick Clegg ensconced in 10 Downing Street ready to lead Britain into a new Golden Age (THAT WOULD REALLY HAVE HAPPENED). A Hung Parliament (most disappointing porn movie ever) means that unpalatable solutions have to be considered, and I believe that a Con-Lib coalition is the best option for now. DON’T HATE ME!

The main reason is simple mathematics: whichever way you look at it, the Conservatives won the most votes and the most seats. Labour were second and the Lib Dems a distant third. A Lib-Lab pact would essentially be the two losing parties ganging up to stop the first place party from forming a Government. Excellent for the soon to be Brown-less Labour party, but not really brilliant for democracy, and it may result in voters deciding to punish Labour and the Lib Dems by voting Tory next time. Given that a new election can’t be too far off, and David Cameron was reportedly short of a majority by just 16,000 votes this time round, that can’t be good.

I’m not naive, I believe that whichever alliance is eventually forged, it can never be more than a marriage of convenience and will not last very long before one of the parties pulls out the rug from under the other. Still, we may get some long-overdue electoral reform out of it. Nick Clegg and his team have a big choice to make, and none of the options are particularly wonderful. It’s good this politics lark, isn’t it?!

If, like me, you’re still confused, the Telegraph has helpfully set out where the policies of the three parties overlap.

As I write this, we are looking at a hung parliament and everything is still very much up in the air as the various parties attempt to form a coalition.

The big disappointment from last night was of course the Liberal Democrats, who only increased their vote share by 1% compared to 2005. They failed to make any significant gains, and their comedy candidate, Lembit Opik, lost his seat. There will be a lot of analysis of what happened. I think that the third debate and the final week of campaigning didn’t go too well for the Lib Dems and caused them to lose the momentum. I also think that a lot of floating voters decided to back one of the big two at the last minute, possibly due to tabloid scaremongering about the consequences a hung Parliament.

David Cameron cannot possibly claim that this is a roaring success for him, after failing to win a majority against a deeply unpopular Labour government. His campaign has not been particularly brilliant and his “big society” idea seemed to scare everyone who managed to understand it.

If you went to bed and missed the excitement, don’t worry: I have a sneaking suspicion we’ll be having another election before too long.