It’s been a struggle trying to hold out for an incipient signs of common sense on the part of the British public in recent weeks, but just when it seems all hope is fading, up they pop and announce that two-thirds of them oppose the state funding of faith schools.

I’ve long argued that state schools have no business being in the business of indoctrinating children into a particular religious faith and that its time that the requirement that state schools have religious assemblies and mandatory religious education lessons was consigned to the dustbin of history.

Religion still has its place in the national curriculum of course, as one component of the overall ‘humanities’/’social sciences’ curriculum - I’ve no problem with kids being taught about religions and being encouraged to understand them as one strand of ideology amongst many but I draw a clear line between such teaching, which teaches about religion in a secular context, and actual religious instruction, which is what you get in many Faith schools.

It’s time that RE was booted of the curriculum in state schools once and for all to be replaced with…

…well, at primary level I’d advocate the teaching of basic philosophy, logic and critical thinking for starters - lets enough kids to think for themselves not force-feed them ideologies which actively discourage such thinking in favour of ‘blind faith’. There’s no need to go overboard, I’m not expecting 10 years olds to produce critiques of Plato or Decartes, but at least they can be taught the basic successfully - as happens in, certainly, some schools in France. Religion would play some part in this new curriculum but you’d be teaching kids about the works of Aquinas, Augustine and Geoffrey of Occam, not ramming parables down their throats.

Once we get to Secondary level, the subject matter can be broadened out to encompass a wider range of social sciences but with a stong focus, especially from 14-16 in teaching civics and government - if we’re so worried than young people are turning their backs on their key democratic rights, such as the right to vote, then surely the answer must be to teach them those rights and their value while they’re at school. I would have thought completely obvious.

That leave only the question of what to do about people who would still want access to religious instruction through the state school system - who want their kids brought up in a specific faith.

Well on that score I have no particular objection to the state providing funding for such teaching as long its takes place outside the main school day and it become a matter of choice for parents whether to the take up such schooling or not for their kids.

That, for me, means that you don’t fund faith schools at all, what you fund is faith-based out of school clubs in local communities where there is a clear demand for such activities. If a state school wishes to provide a local venue for such a club, then fine, no problem with that, but it could just as easily be based in a community centre, Church, Synagogue, Mosque, Gurdwara, etc. as well - its up to the local community to decide whether there is a need for such a club for their particular faith and where best to base it, and up to parents to decide whether to send their kids along to it or give it a miss.

Ooh, looky here… that would be a bit of ‘parental choice’ wouldn’t it.

Neil at the Brighton Regency Labour Party blog makes some interesting points on the subject of the relaxation of licencing laws and the ‘curse’ of ‘binge drinking’, questioning the current received wisdom that longer opening hours will inevitably lead to more problems.

While he makes some good points he, like the majority of commentators, seems to miss a key factor in the whole equation of copious-quantities-of-alcohol + young-people = breakdown-in-social-order and that’s the contribution made to the problem by the development of large-scale ‘entertainment districts’ in larger towns and cities and the demise of the local pub.

Binge drinking, alcohol-fueled violence and political concerns about its consequences are nothing new at all in Britain - check the history books for everything from the ‘rake’s clubs’ of the 18th Century, the most notorious of which was the Hellfire Club to the gin palaces which were a feature of city life, especially in the poor quarters of London, throughout most the 18th and 19th centuries.

This is not a new problem at all.

What is new, as I alluded to a couple of paragrpahs ago, is the development of large-scale ‘entertainments districts’ in many towns and cities - about 15-16 years ago I worked in a night club in Birmingham City Centre for just short of 12 months while I was at university - the classic student weekend job routine.

At that time, where I worked was pretty much what amounted to the main ‘entertainment district’ in the city - 3-4 bars, the same number of nightclubs, a casino and few pretty ropey fast-food restaurants.

That was the basic pattern of things in those days, pubs and club dotted around the city centre in very small clusters, limiting the number of people you’d find in any one area.

Today we have Broad Street - near enough a mile long drag of pubs, clubs and restaurants with odd hotel here and there - Birmingham’s premier Saturday night money pit which drags in people from across the whole city, gets them utterly shit-faced and then dumps them on out on the street together en masse.

You’ll find pretty much the same thing in any decent-sized town whereever you go, one or maybe two streets which, over the last ten years or so, has been turned over almost exclusively to the pursuit of the noble art a relieving young people of the money in return for copious quantities of alcohol and a free ride to A&E at the end of the night - and all with the connivance of the entertainment’s industry and local councils who were concerned only with maximising the amount of money sloshing around the ‘local economy’ on a Saturday night without any real thought for the consequences. In some places, like Birmingham, the council has even had ‘regeneration’ money from the government to set the whole thing up.

It’s not a difficult equation - take several thousand people, get them pissed out of their faces and then put them all in the same location and you’re guaranteed to have public order problems.

What did these people expect?

I’m not saying this is the only cause of such problems but it is one factor in this whole situation which seems to be largely ignored - its all very well seeing councillors popping up on the TV to complain that young people out on Saturday night in the centre of town are acting with all the decorum of Attila the Hun and lecturing bar owners on how they should shoulder some of the burden of the increased costs of policing and take responsibility for their customer’s behaviour, but lets not forget whose planning policies created these districts in the first place.

There’s more to this whole situation that simply bad behaviour by young people or too-liberal licencing laws which is why we shouldn’t allow this current debate to be used a cop out by those who’ve also played their part in creating this situation.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission will complete its report on the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes by Christmas, an inquest has heard.

But the report will not be published until all legal and disciplinary proceedings in the case are complete.

In other words, we’ve more chance of getting to the truth by waiting for Ian Blair’s post-retirement memoires than we have from the IPCC’s deliberations.

Here’s how it goes:

The IPCC report will not be finished until the end of this year.

This will then go privately to the Met and the Home Office who will decide whether any matters should be referred to the CPS for possible criminal charges - add three months on for that decision.

If it is referred to the CPS, they will then need to instruct another Police Force to carry out a criminal investigation into the circumstances of the shooting - add another six months - after which the CPS will have to decide whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed to trial - another six months again.

Then there’s the trial itself - anything from six months to a year during which time the matter will be sub judice.

Only after all that - assuming they’re not out time by then - would the Menezes family have a shot at civil litigation - which would add another 6-12 months on anyway.

It’s also going to be the case that the Met will not start any serious disciplinary proceedings against officers until an criminal trial(s) are disposed of and quite how long such proceedings might take is anyone’s guess as, if things run true to form, anyone who might face a disciplinary will, by then, have developed some sort of ailment - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - which means they’ll be unfit to attend any such proceeding until…

…well, until they’ve had time to rack up enough in the way of additional pension contributions to make retirement from the Met on ‘medical grounds’ a viable option.

What we’ll be left with in, at best, a junior officer or two in the frame for a bollocking over minor mistakes while all the command officers, including Blair himself, will be safely out of the way and retired on nice fat pensions before the shit get anywhere near the fan, let alone hits it.

That’s modern day Britain for you - fuck justice, we have bureaucracy at its best.