Martin Bright

Congratulations to David Miliband on his appointment to head up the ACEVO commission on youth unemployment. He is exactly the right man for the job and may be able to effect more genuine change than he could have done as leader of the Labour Party. A good starting point would be Polly Toynbee’s column in the Guardian today, which urges the Coalition to turn its attention to the plight of young people.Her grim catalaogue of attacks on the young is indeed depressing: “Just when young people most need help on what school subjects to take, on BTecs, HNDs and apprenticeships, the government is replacing careers advice with an online service, with no one to question their choices and prod them forwards.

Iain Duncan Smith has given a detailed interview with the Spectator and the full-length version is online. Right now, beyond David Cameron and George Osborne, he has the most important job in government. There is some really interesting and innovative stuff here despite the unnecessary British jobs for British workers dog-whistle politics. IDS is right to talk about the riots being a pivotal moment for our society and “social bonds” are certainly something we should look at very closely. But he also needs to take another hard look at his Work Programme, which is being touted as the cure-all for Britain’s ills by government ministers.

I had a call from a researcher on the Jeremy Vine show this week to ask me to go on and talk about the riots. Would I be prepared to say that shopkeepers should not be closing their shutters early and that we should all be reclaiming the streets. I had a vision of being set up against a poor shopkeeper afraid of having his livelihood destroyed. So I used those words every radio and TV researcher dreads to hear: “I think it’s a bit more complicated than that.” I could almost smell his disappointment over the line. I explained that I wasn’t just a political journalist, I also ran a charity which had been running a pop-up shop in north London.

One of the most irritating aspects of modern journalism is the tendency to make spurious connections between unconnected phenomena. The non-existent links between Saddam’s Iraq and al-Qaeda is the most obvious and pernicious of these. Many conspiracy theories originate from making connections where none exist. So when I tell you I am about to connect the death of Amy Winehouse to the massacres carried out by a right-wing anti-Muslim extremist in Norway, I would forgive you for being sceptical. Both stories were running around my head while I was on holiday last week and I can’t stop thinking about them.

The excuse deployed by the police to explain their failure thoroughly to investigate the News of the World hacking allegations is quite persuasive: national security was a priority, and this seemed like something of a sideshow. During the first decade of 21st century, police officers found a new — and sometimes glamorous — role for themselves at the forefront of the battle against Islamic terrorism. Some politicians and journalists have always been impressed by rough, tough coppers. But these guys were on the front line of the war on terror. Dead impressive. For much of this period I was Home Affairs Editor of the Observer and I often heard politicians tell me how impressed they were by Andy Hayman.

How long will it take for journalism to recover from what has been done in its name by the News of the World? It’s possible to argue that our profession or trade, or whatever you want to call it, will regroup and find new ways of holding the powerful, the rich and the famous to account. Rat-like cunning is an eminently transferable skill as the 200 hacks laid off from Wapping this weekend should be able to demonstrate. It can’t be said too many times that this scandal was initially brought to the public’s attention not by the police nor by parliament but by journalists. There is no one more rat-like and no one more cunning than the Guardian’s Nick Davies. And I mean that as a compliment.

I have been accused this week of conducting a witchhunt against London Citizens/Citizens UK, the “citizens organisers” and darlings of the political class. It seems some people are quite content that this liberal institution has a trustee who supports Hamas. They may also turn a blind eye to concerns raised by End Child Detention Now about the organisation’s peculiar partnership with the UK Border Agency: The shrill cry of witchhunt comes from Independent Jewish Voices, the organisation set up to provide an alternative liberal outlet for British Jews. As it happens, my charity funds London Citizens via the Future Jobs Fund, so I would better be described as a “concerned stakeholder”, to use the fashionable jargon.

It’s always unpleasant to be libelled and particularly nasty to be defamed by supporters of totalitarian Islam. Journalists really shouldn’t sue, but sometimes it can get very frustrating, especially when the libel is obviously malign and ill informed. Over the past couple of weeks I have been examining the close relationship between London Citizens, the “community organisers” so beloved of the political class and the Islamists of East London Mosque and Islamic Forum Europe. In week one, we looked at London Citizens’ Deputy Chair Junaid Ahmed, who is a supporter of Hamas. Then last week we examined the reaction of  Jewish leaders who have signed up to London Citizens.

On Tuesday, I presented the Orwell Prize for journalism to brave Jenni Russell, who used the occasion to go public on her battle against cancer. She had not been well enough to apply for the award herself, but her son had selected her best articles and she was a worthy winner. Here’s the official tribute to her work: “Jenni Russell was the stand-out journalist in an outstanding field. Her empathy for the world beyond Westminster gives her writing an extra dimension often lacking in political insiders. There is an overriding humanity to her work, whether she is covering the death-throes of the last Labour government or the birth-pangs of the Coalition.

There was a really interesting piece in the Observer business section this weekend balancing up the value of degrees and apprenticeships. “A perception prevails, particularly among middle-class families, that choosing a path other than university is a mark of failure, a fact that concerns both employers and advocates for vocational education such as City & Guilds,” wrote Tom Bawden. This government (and indeed the last) was very keen to encourage young people to do an apprenticeship. But I wonder how many MPs went down this route or would encourage their children to do so? The Observer article followed comments earlier in the week from Jill McDonald, the appropriately named head of McDonald’s in the UK.

Nick Clegg's time as the country's darling was always likely to be fleeting. But poor Vince Cable was consistently feted as the man who got it right on the economy. But he has looked miserable from the moment he entered government. Why is this? I can't be the only politico to have heard Vince say before 2010 that he would never enter government with the Tories. Oddly enough, he was far more polite about them than he has been on the radio this morning. The whole point about two-party politics is that it is tribal and ruthless, although anyone who has crossed sword with the Lib Dems at a local level will know that they have their own version of brutality reserved for their enemies.

It couldn’t have been a more extraordinary bank holiday for news and spectacle. But now the fuss is beginning to die down it’s possible to compare and contrast the hysteria that greeted the Royal Wedding and the death of Osama bin Laden. There has been a certain amount of squeamishness about the “frat boy” reaction to the death of the al-Qaeda leader. But I have to say I find the celebrations at the death of the 21st century’s most notorious mass murderer far easier to comprehend than the astonishing outpouring of feudal deference for the heir to the heir to the throne.