It's fair to say that, depending on where you live in London, you can't spit without hitting a betting shop. Most people frequently do (spit, I mean). No wonder TB is on the rise. Opinion seems to be a little divided as to whether the risk to public health is real or theoretical. But theoretical or not, I'd like to walk the street without the risk of getting gobbed on every 5 seconds. Why is it that some people can't take two steps without sharing the contents of their mouth? (and don't tell me it's a cultural thing because I see people of all nationalities doing it). All sorts of people are spitting everywhere, in every direction in every minute of every day.

Anyway, let's fight one battle at a time and the battle for today is the one against betting shops. The Government recently rejected the proposal to put betting shops in their own planning class (a recommendation put forward in the Portas Review). MPs David Lammy, Dianne Abbott and Cllrs Nilgun Canver and David Schmitz  are a growing league of politicians who have something to say on the subject.

To get to my nearest bookshop I have to catch a bus and a tube, whilst the local betting shops are a mere gobshot away in a variety of different directions and yet, the Government sees fit to reject the idea of making it harder to get planning permission. I mean what do they think? 'Oh, the poor plebs look like they need a a little help getting out of poverty. Let's throw another betting shop at them and see how they do, that'll solve the problem. Come to think of it they haven't quite reached their spit quota yet so while we're at it let's send some people down there to gob all over them so that they all catch TB and die. We'll have them all swimming in sputum by Christmas but let's send them some armbands so it looks like we're actually doing something to help.'

Why should these shops be able to set up wherever they like in vacant pubs, restaurants, cafes, bars or takeaways without applying for planning permission? Why not make them jump through a few hoops? Could it be that the councils don't want to deal with the extra paperwork?

By comparison, as a homeowner of an ex-council flat you have to ask for permission from the council before you even change the colour of your front door. Just to upset people even more they paint it some inexplicable shade of brown, the likes of which I have never seen on any paint chart. It is a hue that wavers somewhere between a skid mark and very very cheap chocolate. You have to get the nod of approval before you put in double glazing, for example. I practically have to ask for planning permission before I vomit my disgust down the toilet bowl after reading the overly boastful local council newsletter. We couldn't have that kind of thing entering the communal environment could we? No No No. We are restricted in ever new and inventive ways. Here are just some of the signs of prohibition that are plastered across London boroughs.

My children can't play ball games, feed the pigeons, ride their bikes, but it's quite alright for them to slip on a patch of mucus and fall headlong into some geezer stood outside the local bookies counting his change who's so juiced up to the eyeballs that he thinks his 2p profit is actually a tenner in disguise. I've got nothing against having a flutter every now and then but if betters had to pay bus and tube fare and travel halfway across London to furnish their pleasures then perhaps they'd think twice about spending money they didn't have. After that, if they're still so keen to waste their cash, they can come round my place, wipe my face with their tenner and throw their money down the loo after I've vomited in my monthly fit of rage.

Anyway, having solved the mystery of the mask (and the mystery of why anyone in their right mind would choose to cover up Tom Hardy's delicious face) I then stumbled across a clip of some of the lovely work he's doing for the Prince’s Trust.

Might I add that the very same people he's trying to help are not dissimilar to the muffled voices that live in my new novel, Block. Getting pointers from an ex-addict must surely help. Tom has admitted in countless interviews that financially/socially he had a good start in life but just took a wrong turn somewhere. Unfortunately some kids have less of a foundation to build upon. A lot of families face daily challenges. I’m not even talking about the big life changing events like a death in the family, someone losing their job or a father walking out, I’m talking about the tiny ways in which societies can become ground down into the dirt. The minuscule events which eat away morsel by minuscule morsel. Without the right support it’s too easy for some kids to fall into a certain pattern of behaviour, behaviours sometimes inherited simply by virtue of the location of their home, behaviours that they acquire almost through a process of osmosis by being too close to crime and poverty. Add to that, endless bureaucracy and inefficiency and, without meaning to remove any element of personal responsibility, you have real recipe for disaster. So it's great that the Prince’s Trust does such work to help kids turn their lives around but a lot of their problems should never arise in the first place.

There will always be poverty, and it's always relative of course, but surprise surprise lives can be made a lot worse by mismanagement by various agencies and the Government is at the top of the chain. Take children’s centres for example; in these poorer areas I have spoken to so many people who have lost their jobs. Some centres have closed full stop with others having to downscale the services that they offer. I know the recession is hitting everywhere but does it make sense to batter childcare centres so hard when they are the information hubs of some of these poorer communities? They are not only a safe place for disadvantaged children to play and learn but a place where developmental issues can be picked up early and addressed by various experts, a place where parents can meet others in similar situations to themselves and gain support, a place where out of work parents can learn new skills and gain advice, a place where some people learn parenting skills so that they don’t just repeat patterns generation after generation. These are the places that strengthen communities and offer a way out. These kinds of services are of benefit to us all as a society… rich or poor.

It's all very well setting up youth programs. I have nothing against that, but sometimes you can improve a person’s life in small ways just by fixing a lock that's been broken or providing them with a noise free and pollution free environment, by setting up CCTV cameras and patrolling problem areas. You’d be surprised what a child can achieve when they can breathe clean air, get a good night’s sleep (without listening to wannabe ASBO chick/chap from three floors up) and go out to play without tripping over a crack pipe. And please please please can they one day visit the local play park without fear of being eaten by a rabid dog that’s been cross bred to within an inch of its life? It does wonders for their confidence. Create better management of estates/social housing and better policing and a better justice system, create better schools and better support for people who want to do the right thing and you might just create better communities who don't see drugs and crime as their default option.

Forgive me for being a little slow on the uptake but it's just come to my attention that the next Christopher Nolan film is due for release in July 2012. I'm clearly not fanatical enough in my love of the Bat. Still, although I'm sure you real fanboys out there are ready to punish me for my ignorance by collectively cyber spitting in my direction, please indulge me a little.

How intrigued was I when I saw the pictures of the new villain? Do I want to meet that in a dark alleyway? No I do not. He looks like a bloody hard dog with a muzzle on it, the likes of which I'm not accustomed to seeing round here in North London, the pit bull capital of the world. Muzzle or no muzzle I'd still cross the street and take my chances with a drooling rottweiler that's still slobbering over the carcass of its last kill after having been let off its leash.

I want to start a campaign; the tagline of which would read 'if your dog's pure muscle buy it a muzzle'. The only kind of dogs that I want to see strolling next to me are the ones that wear a coat in a light spring breeze. You know, the ones that are so small that you wonder whether you should stroke it or call pest control.

A few rules;

• If you're smaller than your dog then your dog's too big.
• If your dog looks like it would get thrown out of the Olympics for taking performance enhancing drugs then your dog's too big.
• If your dog looks like it's spent its entire life eating pure protein lunches equivalent to the population size of a small country then your dog's too big.
• If your dog has a shit in the street and that shit looks like it came out of a large reptilian prehistoric animal that lived 230million years ago then YOUR DOG'S TOO BLOODY BIG. If you have to give it a name like Rex then surely that's a clue.

Really though dangerous dogs is a serious issue that just never seems to go away.


Anyway, how intrigued was I still, to find that hiding beneath the mask of the super psycho Bane was none other than Tom Hardy who is currently one of my favourite actors? Don't worry Tom I forgive both you and Christopher for Inception, which in my view could have been a great movie had it not been so unnecessarily complicated. Although I am willing to admit that perhaps I just don't get enough sleep and that's what's messed up my intellect. My mate on the other hand did catch up on some sleep... sat next to me at the cinema while I was scratching my head trying to work out what the hell was going on in that movie. Perhaps it was just one of those nights. You know, one of those cinema nights where you don't want to work your brain too hard. Where you just want an excuse to eat your own body weight in popcorn, scoff pic 'n' mix till you're so amped up it takes a week to come down from the sugar high. And let's not forget the main reason for going to see a movie on the big screen, to have a really lengthy conversation on your mobile phone until the person sat next to you wants to stab you in the eye with the straw from their Coca Cola... repeatedly or rub salsa in your hard to reach places. But there I go rambling again, off on one of my many cerebral detours.

Back to Bane, penned as 'the man who broke the Bat'.  Quite literally, for in the Knightfall story arc in the original comics he breaks Batman's back. Don't like the sound of that at all. No I do not. Upon checking the character's backstory on Wikipedia I find that,

    'Bane was born in the fictional Caribbean Republic of Santa Prisca, in a prison called Peña Dura ("Hard Rock"). His father Edmund Dorrance had been a revolutionary and had escaped Santa Prisca's court system. The corrupt government however decreed that his young son would serve out the man's life sentence, and thus Bane's childhood and early adult life are spent in the amoral penitentiary environment. '

Ahh, the rough justice of fictional lands. What follows involves several killings and altercations in which a teddy bear may have been involved but to cut a long story short...

    'Bane ultimately establishes himself as the "king" of Peña Dura prison. The prison's controllers take note and eventually force him to become a test subject for a mysterious drug known as Venom, which had killed all other subjects...  The Peña Dura prison Venom experiment nearly kills Bane at first, but he survives and finds that the drug vastly increases his physical strength, although he needs to take it every 12 hours (via a system of tubes pumped directly into his brain) or he will suffer debilitating side-effects'

I suppose that such a childhood would leave you a bit pissed off wouldn't it?