Dave's Speech to the CBI

Anyone playing Dave bingo with yesterday's CBI speech would be pleased with the full house they got by the end of it.

"1 million more private sector employees" and "the deficit down by a quarter" received a repeat airing, despite both getting a comprehensive debunking.

"Choice" and "competition" in schools get a mention. Less planning and policy direction from the centre will, somehow, provide for the sorts of skills employers are crying out for. It's almost as if the last 30 years of business-facing education didn't happen.

"Tackling red tape" reverses the legal requirement to take into consideration the effects new policy will have on society's poorest, most vulnerable, and most at risk.

"Tough decisions" was there to make up the numbers too.

As ever, Dave showed absolutely no understanding of the real economic difficulties facing Britain, let alone how to go about addressing them. Telling your ministers to have a growth mindset and, embarrassingly, referring to your government as a "Growth Cabinet" will not make up for gaping policy deficiencies and an excruciating record on the economy.

It was as you pretty much have come to expect from the front bench: a desperate package of spin and wishful thinking. 

Half-way through the Parliament, the Coalition are looking more tired than Blair or Brown ever did.

One Nation and Europe

EdM's One Nation in Europe speech today at the CBI conference formally marks an interesting shift in Labour Party positioning on the EU. I say interesting because for too long Labour has ceded this political ground to the right. Defending the EU as is may have attraction for some, but having little to nothing to say about wasteful spending (the Strasbourg-Brussels merry-go-round, anyone?), questionable subsidies, and the democratic void that lies at the heart of the European project is no way to defend the EU from those who would like to see British withdrawal to the margins.

EdM's speech begins by locating the roots of Euro-Scepticism in the ongoing generational shift. For a brief period when Britain was lobbying to be allowed into the European Community, the EEC personified a liberal internationalism, of Western Europe putting aside centuries of bloodshed and transcending national antagonisms (that it was, among other things, a creature of Cold War exigency can be left for another time). But this gloss has well and truly worn off, and its legitimacy is imperilled by powerful centrifugal forces.

Right now, though not every EU member state is signed up to it, the union is identified with the Euro, which in turn is linked inextricably with unceasing economic crisis. Years of negative press about the Eurocrat gravy train and French farming subsidies have taken their toll. And, not least, the largest wave of immigration modern Britain has ever seen, our media has indelibly associated EU membership with open borders, foreign criminals, and increased competition for jobs. Rather than fighting shy of the material basis of Euro-Secpticism, EdM believes it needs tackling by arguing a new case for Europe.

The first point of defence is an old point: the inextricable links between Britain and the continental economy. The dependence on the markets next door go without saying, and EdM is clear those relationships are absolutely crucial to the One Nation economy he wants, not least because it's Britain's place within the single market that attracts overseas capital, particularly from the IT and advanced manufacturing sectors.

The second of EdM's arguments are about Britain's place on the world stage. He says collaboration across the EU allows for greater successes in combatting terrorism and crime, and addressing climate change. There is also the expansionary dynamic, part and parcel of which is a civilising tendency that combines economic cooperation with liberal democracy and the rule of law. Candidate states' rights to the market come with the responsibility of undertaking political reform.

So much for the grounds for staying in the EU. But what solution to the siren calls of the right?

It's the economy, stupid.

The EU's greatest failure is the driving of austerity throughout Europe. Therefore the uses of its budget has to be fundamentally rethought. With 1.5% of the EU's economy comprising of agriculture, yet consuming 40% of tax payers' cash, there is a clear argument for the redeployment of resources to infrastructural projects in key growth sectors. Hence why the centre left should not automatically nod through budget increases. And who can disagree with looking how money is spent and deploying it more effectively?

Then turning to what it might be like if the UK was to leave the EU, he quite rightly points out that while Britain could participate in the single market like Switzerland and Norway do, resources would have to be expended on lobbying member states for changes that could benefit British economic interests. It would also mean the exclusion of Britain from global trade negotiations where the EU sits as a powerful bloc alongside the USA and China. The only unique selling points Britain would have for international investors would be low grade manufacturing and a safe haven for tax dodgers, should the exiteers get their way.

On the question of an in/out referendum, EdM is against one for pragmatic, economic considerations. A drawn out campaign in all likelihood would put investors off Britain until its mind was made up - a point even the saner elements of the Tories seem to acknowledge. EdM also offers a pragmatic approach to the repatriation-of-powers rhetoric Dave has occasionally indulged, though all his absurd Little Britain posturing on the EU's stage has actually damaged the national interests he claims to be protecting.

EdM's speech strikes that curious passive-assertive tone peculiar to his policy-lite statements on Labour's direction-of-travel. If you were being ungenerous, you could accuse him of opportunism. One, because it provides political cover for Labour's voting with the Tory Europhobic right against increases to the EU budget. And two, it allows EdM to pick his battles on Europe in the future. By critiquing spending in this way, he has staked out a territory for himself that Dave will have to pass through in his attempts to placate his lunatic fringe.

But there's more to it than positioning inside the Westminster bubble. More widely, EdM has signalled an opening for Labour thinkers to recast the relationship between Britain and the EU. It is an opportunity to look at how the EU can be positively reformed. I for one would like to see moves to greater democracy and transparency - the EU began and has continued as an elite project, but now requires popular input if its present legitimacy crisis is to be positively resolved. I also think pushing a review along the lines of zero budgeting as advocated by Stella Creasy and the folk associated with In the Black Labour can go some way to undermine popular notions of EU waste. Though I would measure worth not by narrowly-defined costs but by Public Value.

All this is more than a chin-stroking exercise for policy wonks and bloggers. EdM is serious about the One Nation schtick. It is his vision-thing; a hodge-podge of Disraeli, Blue Labourism, the post-war social monarchy, Wilson's white heat of technology and Blairism at its most dynamic, forward thinking, and multicultural. While there is certainly room in its tent for trade unionism and left leaning, redistributive predistributive policies, it is ultimately a vision in the process of becoming, of working out how to address core and swing voter alike. By effortlessly annexing One Nationism from an increasingly sectional Tory party, EdM has a new base from which to cleave into the soft Conservative vote - those who took Dave's liberal Toryism at face value, the traditional true blues who feel a sense of patrician obligation to those unfortunate enough to be at the bottom, and those attracted to the Tories out of unease over the EU, immigration, and so on.

It is therefore not without accident that EdM's first One Nationist pronouncement was on an issue on which the right is strong and the centre left is weak. Do not be too surprised if over the coming months we see further interventions on matters Tories, UKIP'ers, and others on the decomposing right believe is their property.

OutRun for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis

If you were a car-mad boy growing up in the 80s, chances are you quite fancied a Ferrari Testarossa. Alas, unless you were stinking rich, you would never see one outside of car shows or American telly. That is, unless, you regularly frequented an amusement arcade.

In 1986, Sega's OutRun made a massive splash in the coin-op racing scene. The sit-down cabinet's faux-Ferrari modelling stood out. But the "realistic" hydraulic features that shook you about with every twist and turn in the road was only part of the appeal. Using Sega's pioneering 'super scaler' technology (debuting a year earlier in Space Harrier and Hang-On), OutRun was faster, smoother and better-looking than any other  arcade racer by a country mile. And like the Testarossa itself, the handling was a dream.

With a smash of this magnitude, OutRun was converted to virtually every home computer and console out there - the Spectrum, the Commodore 64, and PC Engine, for example. Alas, Nintendo had to wait for a version until after Sega had exited the console hardware market.

OutRun first made its way to a Sega console in 1987 when the Master System got its very respectable conversion. It found a home on each of Sega's subsequent machines, but it was probably the Mega Drive version that proved the best-selling and most widely played.

Released in the European region in Autumn 1991, the Mega Drive's was as faithful a conversion as the hardware allowed. You race your Testarossa against the clock across five different landscapes. As you reach the end of the stage, you have to choose between a fork in the road. The left path is easier, the right path more challenging. This makes for some variation and the possibility of setting personal bests over multiple tracks. There are also five endings in total, which add a scintilla of re-playability.

The other key innovation that put OutRun in pole position at the time were the musical options. The arcade offered three tunes to choose from: Splash Wave, Passing Breeze, and Magical Sound shower. The Mega Drive version goes one better and offers an additional ditty, Step On Beat. The three original BGM compositions rank among some of the most memorable early video game music ever. I didn't go into any trendy bars along Miami's Coconut Grove in 1983, but I'm pretty certain their in-house bands would have sounded something like them.

And that's OutRun in a nutshell. By the standards of today the gameplay is, if course, completely dated and superficial. The problem with Mega Drive OutRun is that it really wasn't up to scratch upon its release. Coming out three years after the Mega Drive's Japanese debut and five years out from the arcade, it was simple, bland, easy, and lacked in the lastability department. This was a problem shared by the franchise's various iterations. Other Sega arcade conversions that preceded it, such as Super Monaco GP and Super Hang-on beefed up the cartridges by adding optional career modes that provided additional levels of play. It's a mystery why Sega didn't do that here - a rush-release to up the software library pre-Christmas? Whatever the case, I paid a fiver for my complete Mega Drive copy about six months ago. I would have felt very cheesed off if I had forked out £39.99 for it in 1991.

As an average racer that attracted mediocre reviews in the magazines of the day, why does OutRun remain one of the better loved Mega Drive games? There is the nostalgia for the arcade, of course - and Sega's 16 bit conversion was the closest a home system had come to the original at the time. The music too is a passable interpretation (though my personal favourite remains the C64's rendition).

But there was more than that behind its success. What OutRun did, and was perhaps the first video game to do, was sell a lifestyle. Despite being designed and published by a Japanese company who based all the tracks on European landscapes, and starring the top-line product of an Italian luxury sports car manufacturer; OutRun has always struck me as a very American video game.

In the early-mid 80s, American car culture had a big in with popular culture. Tom Selleck was tearing around sun-kissed Hawaiian beaches in his Ferrari 308. The Hoff and KITT were fighting crime and bringing wrong 'uns to justice, and the General Lee was doing repeated stunt jumps over Hazzard County's many creeks. These in turn rested on a flurry of mid 70s-mid 80s American films based around cars and chases.

In American culture, the car has both been a status symbol and a passport to (masculine) individual independence. The road itself is a highway to a better place, and promises opportunity. But more than this, it is the journey down that road that matters: the freedom and adrenaline rush that comes from pushing 200mph in defiance of convention and traffic regulations is a very individual experience. OutRun wraps all this in a stylish package by adding the Testarossa and a glamorous blonde travelling companion. Also, it is more than a coincidence that for a European landscape, the game's starting level is suggestive more of Magnum PI than the Spanish Riviera.

If you like, OutRun is an aspirational video game. It does not matter that a micro fraction of a percentage of young men and boys who played the game would go on to own a prestigious sports car, let alone a Testarossa. It drew together and embodied then-current popular cultural themes around cars, individuality, the outlaw, and conspicuous consumption. In short, OutRun was more than an arcade simulation of fast driving. It was cool.

Police and Crime Commissioner Shambles

Words don't exist in the English language that adequately describe the mess the government made of the Police and Crime Commissioner elections. For a flagship policy, I cannot think of anything the Tories have done that quite matches the amateurishness that has accompanied its implementation. The national leaflet that was supposed to go out explaining the policy and powers of a PCC was not delivered to large swathes of Stoke-on-Trent (and, I presume, the country). The usual mechanisms supporting elections, like Royal Mail-delivered mail shots and party election broadcasts were not used. And calling the elections smack bang in the middle of November was unbelievable stupidity from the stupid party. In fact, the only way this shambles makes any sort of sense is if you ask whether Dave wanted his centrepiece reform to fail.

Well, if the Tories set out to treat this exercise as a very public inquiry into how low a vote can go when you starve it of publicity and hold it at the beginning of winter, the results are in. And what a farce they reveal.

In Northamptonshire, there was little evidence of a Corby by-election bounce with a PCC contest turnout of 19.5%. The same was true of Greater Manchester and South Wales policing areas, with only 13.6% and 14.7% of voters turning out. Or, thinking about it, perhaps these results have benefited from a by-election bounce!

It's not the case Tory areas saw a turnout edge over Labour areas either. Tory Essex, Hertfordshire and North Yorkshire racked up massive returns of 12.8%, 14.1%, and 13.2%. But there were a couple of strange results, again, thanks to the turnout. Dyfed Powys saw the closest straight Tory/Labour fight go to the blue corner with 50.86% of the vote (turnout 16.9%). In Suffolk, Labour *won* the popular vote on first preferences, but after distribution it went to the Tories again. But most remarkably, Bedfordshire went to Labour's Olly Martins on a 17.7% turnout. Could repercussions from Nadine's antipodean antics be to blame?

It's difficult to say. In fact, because of the feeble levels of participation it is very hard to read anything into the results at all. Except for two things. The election of 12 independent candidates off the back of 22.4% of the popular vote is worth pausing for thought. Certainly, there is something about the character of these elections that favours independents in ways few other contests do. If you are rich enough to clamber over the outer ditch of the £5,000 deposit and then scale the wall of recruiting to and resourcing a campaign over a police area, the message that policing should not be left to the politicians goes down well. It rubs along nicely with the myth that British policing is "non-political" and that an independent would keep it that way. It also taps into the widespread anti-politics and anti-party sentiment that now has sunk deep roots in British political culture. Far from writing independent success off as a flash in the pan, their results should be taken as a wake up call by parties in general and Labour particularly. When we talk about "reconnecting" and "reengagement", we have to mean it if we want to reverse this trend.

The second is the meaning of the turnout. This was not your standard 'I can't be arsed' second order election, it was something more. Large numbers did not receive literature of any kind, be it party political or otherwise. Quite rightly, as the parties hadn't bothered to address them they, in turn, weren't going to support them. Matters were not helped by the government's ghost PCC leaflet either. There were also large numbers of active boycotters - more than I have seen in any other campaign. When was the last time you say thousands of spoiled ballot papers? Again, this wasn't the common 'you're all the same' refrain, it was a deep disagreement with the PCC position. Partly because of "non-political" arguments, but mainly due to the immense waste of money the whole exercise represents in a period of supposedly-necessary austerity. It didn't wash with the people, and the majority chose not to dignify it with their endorsement.

All this brings me nicely to Staffordshire. Despite the Herculean labours of our candidate Joy Garner and those of her county-wide campaign team, the lessons and experiences of the above apply here. As I am a gentleman, it's not above me to congratulate Cllr Matthew Ellis on his win. But with the lowest PCC turn out in the country (11.6%) and the support of 6% of eligible voters across the county, our new Staffordshire Police and Crime Commissioner is literally a man without a mandate.

Needless to say, Labour will be scrutinising him very closely and that also means you, dear reader, won't be seeing the back end of him any time soon.

1,000 Posts

I can't Adam and Eve it. This post is literally the thousandth entry on this here blog! Now, that's a lot of bullshit.

So, by way of a celebration I've delved into the archives and dug out the ten most popular A Very Public Sociologist posts of all time. OF ALL TIME. What lucky people you are.

In reverse order, they are:

10. Top 100 Tweeting Bloggers 2010
9. Chris Bambery Resigns from SWP!
8. Melanie Phillips: Marketing Bigotry
7. Top 100 Worst Blogs Poll
6. Top 100 Dance Songs of the 90s
5. The UK's 100 Worst Political Blogs
4. Top 100 Dance Songs of the 00s
3. Raoul Moat, Gazza, and the Media Circus
2. Tommy Sheridan on Trial
1. The Perfect Vagina

Folks certainly like their lists!

Thanks for everyone's comments on and offline about this place and what gets posted here. Time, motivation and energy permitting, I hope it won't be another six years before the blog passes the 2,000 milestone.

Police and Crime Commissioner Elections

Zombie Regeneration

Zombies are not good for much. They're stupid, psychotic, and cannot be domesticated. Did I mention they smell really bad too?

But they are a profitable foil for the film and video game business. And, according to this innovative regen idea from Detroit, zombies could be an answer to that city's urban blight epidemic.

The Loan Shark's Charter

In July of this year, then junior business minister Norman Lamb unveiled a new Code of Practice aimed at protecting people from getting trapped in cycles of unceasing debt. Targeting payday loan companies (legal loan sharks to you and I), he said, "payday loans should only ever be used as a short-term financial fix, not as a long-term solution to financial difficulties. I would urge people to think carefully before taking out a short term loan and to consider affordable alternatives such as their local Credit Union."

All very sensible. All very agreeable.

But there's a problem. In the 2013/14 financial year, the government will effectively be giving £3bn to the richest people in society. Far from those with the widest shoulders bearing the biggest burden, the government will lighten the load by handing every single millionaire in the land at least £40,000.

As the right are so fond of telling us, there's no such thing as a free lunch. The aperitif the Tories will be serving their rich friends (and, in a number of cases, themselves), is to be funded by taking £3.1bn from low paid workers, children, and disabled people. It just goes to show the Tories aren't against wealth redistribution in principle; they only have a problem with it when it goes from the better off to the most needy.

One aspect of their drive to punish the poor for being poor that hasn't attracted a great deal of attention are their plans to localise the 'Social Fund'. For those not familiar with it, the fund is a pot of money to help the very poorest meet one-off expenses. It covers cold weather payments, maternity grants, funeral grants, furnishings, community care grants, budgeting loans, and crisis loans.

The two kinds of loans available are an example of the social solidarity a society needs to function. Both are determined by the needs of the applicants, and repayment schedules are drawn up individually in relation to their circumstances. In the course of my work, I've encountered low waged workers and benefit recipients who, thanks to a crisis loan, were able to keep the wolf from their doors. It has acted as the kind of safety net even Tories sometimes acknowledge is necessary.

As of next April the government are abolishing crisis loans.

In their drive to localise some benefits (Council Tax and Housing Benefit being the most visible examples), the Social Fund is also going to be handed over to local authorities. With a hefty cut.

In 2010/11, the Social Fund budget was £287m. In 2011/12, they aimed to slash that sum by 36% and after that administer year-on-year reductions of between 2.3% and 2.7%. By 2015, the government hopes to have withheld some £443m from Britain's most impoverished people.

Along with the cut, the Social Fund will be de-ringfenced. There will be nothing stopping councils in wealthier areas junking the scheme altogether and diverting the money to Council Tax cuts for top rate payers. The meagre funds might also be raided by councils who are harder up and struggling to balance the budgets.

But worst of all, not only will the attack on the Social Fund cause anxiety and misery for those at society's sharp end, it could drive tens of thousands into the arms of illegal, high-cost moneylenders. In short, the abolition of the crisis loan and cuts to the fund (on top of the bedroom tax, cuts to benefits, and smaller tax credits) is nothing more than a loan shark's charter.

With such policies in the pipeline, it makes you wonder why this LibDem-supported Tory government took the trouble to try and portray itself on the side of "vulnerable borrowers".

The Year the Town Hall Shrank

BBC Four's The Year the Town Hall Shrank is hard-hitting, powerful stuff. As a profile of Stoke-on-Trent, it is unflinching and uncomfortable. The fate befalling those on the end of austerity is deeply upsetting. As a critique of the ideologically-motivated cuts imposed on councils by central government, it's damning. Yet for all that, there is something unsettling about The Year beyond the tough subject matter. And last Thursday night's episode, which prominently featured the BNP, exemplifies it.

"We have proven people will vote BNP in large numbers when the conditions are right" Michael Coleman, the "brains" behind Stoke BNP intones as we catch up with them in the lead up to last year's local elections. And, for once, Coleman was right. A few snatched words shared by Dave, a refuse collector, sums up the attitudes of that pissed off section of Stoke's working class who, at one point, had returned nine fascists to the Council chamber. He and his family were traditionally Labour voters and always supported the party at general election time. But he had started voting BNP locally because they considered themselves patriotic (but not racist), didn't like the idea of immigrants getting housing when his son couldn't get onto the Council's waiting list, and were frustrated with the local authority.

Stoke BNP's 'Activist of the Year 2010' Mickey White hailed from a similar constituency. As Coleman observed of him, Mickey was "typical of new BNP members - disaffected, betrayed, can't get work, struggling to get anywhere with his family, sees no future for mainstream politics, and is looking for something new". While Mickey certainly has "issues", he talked about the appeal of the BNP and how they made sense of his everyday lived experience. At home, surrounded by his family, he observed how at his dad's workplace it was "the foreigners" who were getting all the overtime as the expense of "British blokes". I imagine spending 18 months on the dole has reinforced his perception that local working people were losing out. Mickey then holds up a couple of anti-immigrant tirades from The Sun and The Mail that "prove" what's going on (so much for their disavowal of the political consequences of their poisonous "journalism"). And at the same time, Micky looks up to Coleman, an admiration that borders on hero worship: "I respect everything he says and does. He speaks the truth".

The Year tries to get at Coleman's motivations too. Parked near a Mosque as worshippers file in for prayers, he is asked "what do you see?" His answer is revealing: "I see the future of our country. I see a group of people who are well-organised, have money, and the support of the regime under which we live ... this was an English working class community. I don't like it. I fear it." Coleman voices similar sentiments about the new Mosque planned for Normacot, a sign, he says, of "an occupation by a body of foreign people".

Unlike Mickey's path to nationalism, or the soft support evidenced by Dave, Coleman's commitment to the BNP is inseparable from a paranoid, racist loathing of anyone who does not pass his white British litmus test. As we have seen of late, his bigoted commentary on the summer 2011 riots got him in hot water with the law. Unsurprising considering that, by his own admission, the BNP want to "stir up and agitate".

Unfortunately for the BNP, for all their campaigning (do they always go out leafleting dressed in trousers and matching blue shirts?), for all their grand standing and claiming to be Stoke-on-Trent's authentic voice, the people of Stoke spoke and returned Labour with a decisive majority. Not one BNP councillor retained their seat. And for Mickey, who appeared to believe he was going to get a seat in the multi-member Baddeley, Milton and Norton ward, he limped home with a feeble 3.4%.

While I am a firm believer in giving fascists enough rope to hang themselves, there is much to criticise in their portrayal. Unlike The Year's treatment of Council Leader Mohammed Pervez (pictured), who is often depicted as bewildered and on the receiving end of Blast Film's sharp questions, neither Coleman nor Mickey were challenged on their beliefs. They were offered the opportunity to explain where they're coming from without criticism or contradiction, whereas Pervez was not afforded the same privilege. As we Big Brother fans used to say back in the day, the BNP got a 'good edit' while the producers had it in for the Council Leader.

The biggest problem is the perspective adopted by the documentary itself, which reminded me of the Allegra Stratton affair. Stoke is treated as 'the other' to the burgeoning dynamism of the South East. There is constant talk of derelict factories, joblessness, public sector-dependency, immigration, and economic uncertainty. You are left with the impression the city is one giant council estate full of dilapidated buildings and benefit claimants. There is nothing about new schools, the new hospital, new housing, and the stream of ongoing regeneration projects. It is a place of irrepressible misery and irreversible decline.

But in contrast to the South East, at the same time Stoke is an earthy place full of honest folk. Via the focus on the BNP (who, at the time of filming, only held five out of 60 seats), the film panders to the fascination sections of the metropolitan elite have with our homegrown fascists. They are to be poked at, laughed at, be appalled at. Yet, the BNP here serve as a marker of working class authenticity. They are a sign working class people are thick and mired in bigotry. By confirming themselves as the liberal intelligentsia's exotic opposite, their privileged position as opinion formers and decision makers is assured to their satisfaction - they know best. As American activists are fond of saying, Blast Films really should have checked their privilege.

Nevertheless, this is compulsive viewing for all and not just the handful of Stokies who follow local politics in The Potteries. But just remember whose eyes you are seeing this through.

Abuse Allegations: Media and Power

Guest post (courtesy of Twitlonger) from @catherinebuca. 

The news isn't Schofield or Watson or Newsnight or people talking on the internet; the news is why children have had their complaints of abuse ignored, and are still having them ignored. The news is if, how, why and by whom investigations into these alleged crimes have been circumscribed. The news is what kind of power circulates in society in order to protect certain people no matter their crime.

This is nothing but distraction.

I felt like what happened yesterday with Schofield and C4 News was something of a tipping point, or at least it represented a very important moment where the power to question was put in the hands of regular people instead of just the powerful. Well it seems it was a very important moment, but for all the wrong reasons. It's been jumped upon by those it suits, so that they can regain control of the terms of debate, and start putting the media and the internet and the free flow of information on trial, instead of the people who will continue to exert their tight control on that information.

"Silly people, down there flapping around gossiping on the internet; we important people know best, your moral judgements are flawed, stop talking about this, let us handle it in our own way, don't listen to the media...trust the power."

When the news about Savile took off, everyone asked how it could have been allowed to happen. People were angry that a culture of secrecy, hidden power and the ability to abuse that power existed to such an extent that so many voices were quietened, or erased completely. That power wasn't just Savile's. It's quite an abstract concept and therefore very difficult to pin down just what exactly is meant by 'power' in this context. We tend to look to specific people who may have been in direct control of actively suppressing his and other abuses - and those people do no doubt exist - but that power is more pervasive, and exists as less concrete things: it's in the narratives our media tell about what our morals are as a society; it's in the loose and often informal networks of relationships between people who have the power to shape everything from policy to laws, from the type of programmes we watch to the stars we venerate. It's in the relations we have with each other, and the ideas that circulate and are reinforced by the conversations we have, and the ways in which we react publicly and privately to displays of official power. It's something that is so diffuse and intangible that we often jump from one tangible and easily identifiable thing to the next, trying to stick a flag in exactly what the cause of the problem is. Trying to question what myriad aspects come together to create a society that could let something like that happen and go unpunished is, undeniably, incredibly difficult. And understandably so.

And it's exactly for this reason that we need to cast a critical eye on what is happening right now. We look back, with the benefit of outraged and righteous hindsight, at how power - the complex kind - colluded to silence the victims of Savile, and helped create the culture that allowed it, and we ask how, why?; and we're rightly frustrated. But are we really too close to what is happening now that we can't see the same is in danger of happening again? And that we are each of us complicit in it as we let the terms of the debate be controlled by those it suits, and allow the focus be put on the media, on people like Schofield, Tom Watson, the BBC, and seemingly the whole of the internet (the parts not endorsed by 'the establishment'). What Schofield did when he handed the list to Cameron was give a voice to everyone who feels frustrated by the lack of accountability the government and others enjoy. What he did wasn't 'irresponsible' - it was exactly what we want our politicians to face. We want to be able to question them precisely on things, rather than having to put up with the sanctioned questions that get asked by our media outlets (sanctioned not in the sense that the government explicitly tells them what they can ask; but sanctioned in the sense that there is an unwritten code that is woven through public life, a code that is constituted by the various processes of that complex power I talked about earlier). It is precisely this lack of access to any kind of accountability that breeds the rampant discussions that happen online, with their inevitable missteps and false allegations along the way - because when those in power shut down the lines of communication and close ranks, our need to get to the truth doesn't go away, we simply now have lots of tools at our disposal to try to get to it for ourselves. And we will use them, something that is hardly surprising.

As we watch the tone of the news programmes and the things our politicians are talking about shift today and in the coming days, we simply must remember Savile, we must recognise what is happening. The lines of communication are being further shut down. The story is being taken into the controlling hands of the very people we want to be holding accountable. And we are letting it happen, by shifting our focus as well, to discussions of whether Schofield was 'out of order' thrusting the list into Cameron's hands, whether people are right to float names around online, whether we should even be allowed to talk about it at all. Because that is what this current turn in events comes down to; the question of whether we should be allowed to ask what happened, or whether we should sit back and wait for those in power to tell us what is important and what isn't.

And all of that is even before we get to the point of all the abuse victims' voices that are, once again, being silenced and erased, which suits some people, I have no doubt, very, very much.