And they wonder why people don't vote.

AS a general rule of thumb, I think we can all agree that promises made should be kept.

Marriage vows, appointments with the gas man, parcel deliveries, drinks with your mates - once you say "yes, I'll do that" I reckon you're morally bound to keep your word. Illness, bereavement and the ever-changing demands of a news editor are the only acceptable excuses for bailing, in my book.

So I'd like to draw your attention to the Conservative Party manifesto 2010, a very expensive and pretty-looking brochure which, like a tour operator or John Lewis recipe card appears to promise a simple and cheap way of achieving heaven on earth - only without the same recourse to the Advertising Standards Authority if it's not up to scratch.

I quote: "We will rebuild confidence in the criminal justice system so that people know it is on the side of victims and working for law-abiding people, not criminals... Prisoners will only be able to leave jail after their minimum sentence is served by having earned their release, not simply by right."

Then I'd like to point out the Crown Prosecution Service sentencing guidelines for fraud which is "fraudulent from the outset, professionally planned and either fraud carried out over a significant period of time or multiple frauds", which for amounts of between £20,000 and £100,000 should lead to jail time of between 18 months and three years; lower amounts carry at least one year's prison time.

And I'd like to know why, exactly, Eric Illeseley, Elliot Morley, David Chaytor, Jim Devine, Lord Taylor of Warwick and Lord Hanningfield were all released after serving just one quarter of their sentences for defrauding the British taxpayer to the total tune of £99,300.

I'd also like to know why the rest of the criminals in their fraudulent conspiracy - which the last time I looked included former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith who is now paid by the BBC to talk about porn, ex-Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws who snaffled £40k for his boyfriend and is soon returning to Government, Dishface's one-time adviser Andrew McKay and Baroness Uddin who swindled £125,349 out of us - have not been hauled in front of the beak.

When and if anyone is capable of answering those questions satisfactorily, I would then like someone to tell me how this quote from the Tory manifesto - "we will change the law so that anyone acting reasonably to stop a crime or apprehend a criminal is not arrested or prosecuted" - applies to the quite annoying but entirely-correct journalists who exposed a failed Met Police investigation into phone-hacking and are being harassed to identify on their sources as a result.

Manifesto promises which don't hold water are nothing new. The release of most first-time offenders after serving only half their sentence is commonplace and journalists always get the blame when they prove someone else has made a mistake.

Those are the facts of life, and I don't mind them too much.

But the stench coming out of Westminster at the moment stinks of corruption and self-interest at the highest levels, a political elite which think the electorate are too stupid to notice, and an absolute lack of the basic standards of socially-acceptable human behaviour.

Thousands of rules for us, and not a single one for them. Boo-hoo.

"You lot piss me the fuck off."

MY mum taught me swearing is bad, but I think it's sometimes the perfect way to express yourself.

So after thinking long and hard about something eloquent and meaningful to write about the riots, I realised there was nothing I could say that was better than this:

"She's working hard to make her business work and you go and burn it up. For what? Just to say that you're warring and you're a bad man? This is about a fucking man who got shot in Tottenham, this ain't about having fun and busting up the place. Get it real black people! Do it for a cause. If we're fighting for a cause let's fight for a fucking cause. You lot piss me the fuck off. I'm ashamed to be a Hackney person. We're not all gathering together and fighting for a cause, we're running down Foot Locker and thieving shoes."

Which pretty much sums it up. Stay safe, everyone.

7/7/05

SIX years ago today, during the morning rush hour, fifty-two innocent people were blown to pieces.

Dying alongside them were four British men who carried home-made bombs onto underground trains and buses and detonated them in the belief it would help their cause.

Around 700 people were injured. Some with just cuts and bruises, others using their own clothing as tourniquets after their limbs had been shattered, and hundreds more whose memories were scarred forever.

Many good people - police, doctors, nurses, firemen, bystanders, commuters - gave first aid and held the hands of the dying. The emergency services' radios did not work underground, and many were left to suffer, scared, alone and in the dark, without the help they should have had.

I was in central London on that day, but a long way from the explosions. I came out of a meeting and rang the office to say I was on my way back in, and was angry that my mobile kept dropping the call. It was only when I finally got through to the newsroom and was told "there's been a bomb, stay where you are" that I realised the telephone networks were under strain, and noticed the sound of sirens in the distance. I rang my mum to tell her I was fine and headed to the scene, and then the hospitals.

In the weeks that followed, four more men tried and failed to set off bombs, and innocent Jean Charles de Menezes was gunned down on the Tube by Security Services who wrongly thought he was a terrorist.

Reporters scrabbled to cover the story - to define the culprits, name the heroes, and find the words to explain. Politicians called for action although they could not say what and the police tried to find what had gone wrong. We now know that a private detective found - and maybe used - the mobile numbers of the victims and probably the bombers too, presumably with the intention of listening to their voicemails.

It has since been found that a series of failings by the Security Services had allowed those four killers to slip under the radar. It is difficult to know what any of us could have done over all the years of those men's lives to convince them that their hatred of their countrymen was unfounded; but obviously, somewhere, we failed too.

Six years on, the bombers have failed. Their attempt to bring terror produced astonishing heroism, created friendships among the survivors and their families, and did not stop survivors like Gill Hicks and Danny Biddle from walking down the aisle at their respective weddings, or Martine Wright hoping to enter the 2012 Paralympics, despite the fact their legs had been blown off. It made all those people determined to prove the world is still a bright and beautiful place.

If the men who detonated those bombs could see what they have wrought, they might have thought twice. Because they did not make any wars shorter, they did not stop any governments, and they did not prove their point.

All they proved is that the human spirit can triumph over pretty much anything.