James's thoughts, ramblings and rants

Picture the scene… it’s 7:45 on a Sunday morning. The clocks went back overnight, so really it’s 6:45. I hadn’t got in until 12:30 the previous evening having been out drinking in a west end cocktail bar (unusual in itself for me). The previous night I had also been out until late and still up at a reasonable hour. It had been a long week at work, and sleep had been a victim. Surely now was the time to catch up on slumber?

So why in God’s name was I dragging myself out of bed to go and listen to Ed Balls?

The answer is that weeks earlier I had decided that as part of my “get out and do more stuff or you’ll just sit alone in your flat and end up getting a cat” regime I would book a ticket for the Guardian’s first Open Weekend. I know, it sounds like the most revoltingly middle class event in history, which the Guardian themselves described itself as “Richard Littlejohn’s worst nightmare”. As I sat bleary eyed on the Piccadilly line to Kings Cross I really wasn’t sure why I was going, and given the £30 ticket price started to fret that it was all a waste of time, money and valuable doing nothing time.

Fortunately I was proved wrong. Yes, many of the cliches you would expect from a Guardian event were there, including poetry in the foyer, all sorts of free range/organic produce at a canal side farmers market and various eccentric characters milling around. Not that I understood the poetry… I tried, honestly I did, but as I sat surrounded by intelligent looking folk nodding earnestly all I could feel was the whoosh of the prose flying straight over my head. I have no soul.

The event mostly consisted of a bewildering selection of talks, workshops and debates held across the Guardian’s Kings Place HQ, the lower floors of which double as an arts centre. It’s a wonderful building nestled on the Regents Canal just round the corner from Kings Cross. I had serious office envy, although as I know too well a good looking building is not necessarily a joy for its occupiers.

Here are some incoherent ramblings on the sessions I attended:

Ed Balls in conversation

I’ve never been a huge fan of Ed Balls. He always comes across as a bit of a bully who is very keen to tell people they’re wrong but then less so to tell us the solution. In this session his human side definitely came across, probably thanks to the time available and a tone far less aggressive than your regular interview, Commons debate or episode of Question Time. His worries over the NHS reforms was surprisingly chilling, describing such policies as the moments that make opposition hurt the most. His critique of the budget was unsurprising, although again I couldn’t grasp much substance in terms of alternatives.

Obviously a room full of Guardian readers such as myself were going to be sympathetic to Balls’s coalition bashing, and much as I found myself nodding along I felt deeply uncomfortable that I was merely validating my own views. The interviewer could have been more challenging at points, although she rightly picked up on the hypocrisy of a former Labour minister criticising the current government for attempting to manipulate the media. It wasn’t entirely a love-in from the audience though, with many expressing the common exasperation of left-leaning voters despising the coalition but struggling to understand the opposition’s message. Balls’s answer is that as the public grow tired of excuses the mood would change and support would drift back to Labour. I think he’s right about being tired of excuses, but I’m not so sure about the second part.

Some edited highlights of the session are available here.

Will the internet be open?

Richard Allan (Facebook’s European director of policy), Rachel Whetstone (Google’s global head of communications and public policy) and Clay Shirky (auther, professor, God to geeks) discussed freedom on the web and the threats to it. China may be the obvious example, but as Whetstone pointed out this risks letting several (even democratic) countries off the hook. While she was reluctant to name and shame, Shirky was happy to point the finger at Turkey and South Korea. The panel explored some of the issues, both real and hypothetical, that face companies like Google and Facebook as well as their implications for start-ups – YouTube can afford lawyers, the next YouTube can’t.

Allan was reluctant to be drawn on Facebook’s stance on China and what they would and wouldn’t be willing to compromise on to gain access to the lucrative market. I think that relationship status will definitely be “It’s complicated” for a while. There was also a brief but good-natured ding dong over what Facebook did and didn’t reveal to Google and why Mark Zuckerberg’s Google+ profile appears higher in Google’s search results than his Facebook presence. It would have been nice to hear the neutral Shirky pronounce over such issues, but time was against us.

No great conclusion was reached, but it was a thought-provoking discussion with excellent speakers, especially Shirky. I ended up buying one of his titles from the bookshop, where I could happily have spent a small fortune had I not reined myself in and remembered my already overflowing in-tray of reading material.

Small society: are Britain’s social bonds fraying?

This was a wildcard option for me as I had a spare slot and there were still tickets available. It was definitely the most “Guardiany” session of my day, addressing issues around social cohesion, community and inevitably last year’s riots. Camila Batmanghelidjh of Kids Company was, as ever, a captivating listen, conveying the sometimes impossible to imagine realities of some young people. There is always a danger of appearing to make excuses which, on the whole, she successfully avoids, although as with Ed Balls this was hardly a balanced room.

Social analyst Richard Sennett discussed the implications spending more time at work, especially with work now often so far from home. His suggestion seemed to be that more home “stuff” (my pathetic phrasing, not his) such as schools and childcare should be moved closer to our work. I wasn’t too clear on how this would make a significant difference, other than distancing us even further from our home communities. As an audience member later questioned, why must we accept the premise that life should adapt to work and not the other way around?

Conservative MP Jesse Norman somehow bypassed security and made it to the stage, but generally refused to play up to the Tory stereotypes which was pleasing, although I honestly can’t remember the thrust of his argument (and I wonder why the journalism thing never worked out for me?).

The tone of the discussion was not especially combative, with each speaker largely making their own points without disputing the others. There was one tense moment when Norman attempted to suggest that Hereford was not the bed of roses you might expect, which seemed to rile Batmanghelidjh and more so the audience, which I found frustratingly predictable.

Again there was little in the way of conclusion… other than the depressing thought of what social unrest may blight the Olympics. Cheery cheery. Incidentally I’m no saint on communities – in the six months I have lived in my current flat I have barely said a word to my neighbour, and I’m massively jealous of my friends in the suburbs who not only know their neighbours but even socialise with them!

On the cutting edge: scientists working at CERN explain the latest developments in physics

Scientists communicating their work always fascinate me… I don’t know why people so fantastically intelligent and sufficiently focussed (some would say blinkered) to reach the summit of their chosen field should somehow, by coincidence, be expected to also possess the ability to disseminate this knowledge to us mere mortals. Many of my university lecturers were, I’m certain, at the bleeding edge of their specialism, but they couldn’t explain the relative basics for toffee.

The three physicists on this panel did a reasonably good job explaining their amazing work, and an excellent job conveying their passion and enthusiasm. I was definitely struggling by the end though… clearly this was due to a lack of sleep. Yet even as I sat in utter confusion, I was thrilled that on a glorious Sunday afternoon there were a few hundred people willing to sit in a dark basement in Kings Cross to hear about this stuff.

Some other nice touches to occupy time between sessions:

• Over lunch in the staff canteen (a very tasty lamb cobbler) I shared a table with a couple of Guardian writers who were happy to chat about the sessions we had each been to, along with what they were working on that afternoon. A reminder that amidst the crowds there were still people putting together a newspaper for Monday morning.
• A giant mural was created over the course of the weekend, documenting and reflecting on the event, exploring the purpose of the paper, its relationship with its readers and its future in the digital age. Yeah, OK, very Guardian.
• The three little pigs and the big bad wolf from the Guardian’s recent TV ad were on display in the foyer. If you haven’t watched the ad, do so now – I think even an Express reader would chuckle.

And the point?

So what was the point of all this? At £30 for a day ticket it wasn’t exactly cheap, but I have no idea if they made a profit or if that was even the purpose. I suspect this was more about a newspaper engaging with its audience, trying to make them feel more connected, more inclined to get involved and more likely buy copies / subscriptions / associated services.

And the point for me? I don’t really know. It was just a nice way to spend a day, surrounded by pleasant and friendly people. Much like when I go to Radio 4 comedy recordings at the BBC, this felt like my crowd – certainly more so than the people I shared the cocktail bar with the previous evening (my friends aside of course!).

This was an opportunity to learn more about things that I knew a bit about and to learn a bit about things I didn’t know about at all, though I should probably have challenged myself and done more of the latter. My one regret is not getting along to any of the sessions about the paper itself – how it’s put together and what the future holds. Hopefully I’ll have another opportunity next year.

I’m still a media anorak at heart. And apparently a Guardianista as well. I can live with that.

… I was working in a betting shop in Romford. It was a quiet Tuesday afternoon, just a handful of regulars placing small bets on unremarkable races. I got a text message telling me to turn on the news as something extraordinary was happening in New York. I then went through the same process as I’m sure many others did – shock at the initial pictures, followed by trying to work out how air traffic control could have gone so terribly wrong. Perhaps naively it wasn’t until the second plane hit that I realised it was not an accident.

We put the news on one of the screens in the shop. At one point a customer came to the counter and quite irately demanded to know why we were showing a silly disaster film instead of the 3:10 from Kempton. It was a misunderstanding that sums of the surreal nature of that day.

This morning I was setting up my new TV, and since it was Sunday morning most of the channels were showing drivel, so I put it on BBC News which was showing one of dozens of documentaries that have been made about 9/11. Although I have seen those pictures hundreds of times and heard many moving stories of what people endured that day, it still brings a lump to the throat.

This was a story that unfolded on live TV, in all its shocking detail. I won’t just read about it history books and watch archive, like I have done so many events of the past. It’s odd to think there are people now in their teens who wouldn’t have been aware of what was happening on 9/11 and who now wonder what it was like to have lived through those times. Of course people older than me can say the same about many other historical moments.

This was undoubtedly the defining news event of my life so far. Here’s hoping it remains that way.

It must be bad if I’m actually writing a blog.

I went to bed last night having spent an uncomfortable few hours watching the coverage on BBC News. The images such as those of the furniture store burning out of control were simply astonishing and tragically compulsive. Around 11pm I started to hear rumours that trouble was brewing in Ealing, my adopted home of the past 6 years. Initially I dismissed this as rumour and exaggeration of the (justified) extreme police precaution. Last night you could put virtually any place name into the Twitter search box and you would find tweets claiming the area was under attack and that its branch of Nando’s had burned down. By 11pm I could no longer bear to hear any more, switched off the radio and went to sleep.

At 6am I awoke to news that there had indeed been violence in Ealing. Turning on Sky News I was met with images of destruction not unlike or anywhere near as severe as the pictures I had seen from Tottenham, Enfield, Hackney or many other areas over the past few days. Except this time the windows that were smashed were those of coffee shops I had relaxed in, restaurants I had dined in, and retailers I had shopped in. Selfish though it sounds, it definitely hurts more when it’s your home.

In the office today the mood was subdued, and most people had a story to tell of what they witnessed last night. One colleague told of a troublemaker hiding under bins in her garden, meters from her bedroom window. I consider myself fortunate that in my temporary lodgings in a relatively sleepy village near Heathrow (long story) I am immune from the direct of impact of events.

As many of you will know, I’m something of a Guardian reading, granola munching, fairtrade drinking lefty liberal. And as us types so often do, I’ve found myself torn on my feelings around all of this. Seeing the images of youths running riot in the streets, especially streets that I know and love, like most people my instinct is that they should be punished with the full force of the law, with a tragic feeling that there is no hope of “fixing” such mindless animals.

And yet at the same time I am unable to shake the desire to understand and explain their behaviour. Many times over recent days attempts to analyse the situation have been shouted down by those saying that there is no justification for the appalling violence and theft that we have seen and that those responsible for the trouble over recent nights must be punished quickly and firmly.

And I wholeheartedly agree. But what about the kids that are going to cause trouble tomorrow? Or next week? Or in five years time? Many say that firm policing and punishment would be a deterrent, and perhaps this is true. But do we want to live in a society where the reason people don’t commit crime is just because they don’t want to go to prison? I don’t. So therefore I do need to understand what has driven these people to make the utterly incorrect conclusion that this behaviour is necessary or acceptable.

I could write about how the education system has failed people and how too many children do not have a stable and loving family to look after and guide them. I could speculate over how the current spending cuts may be disproportionately affecting the poorest, youngest and most vulnerable in our society while the bankers and the wealthy continue to occupy a different world. I could explain how it’s all the fault of the coalition. I could argue that the 13 year Labour government must be to blame. Plenty of people have and will continue to write on the subject with varying degrees of accuracy and sensitivity, but clearly I’m not best placed to work this out. I’m a white, middle class accountant who has been fortunate to have received a good education and to have been raised by loving and decent parents who somehow instilled in me an implicit sense of right and wrong. I have a good job paying a decent wage, have never had to go hungry or cold and my only worries in life are superficial in comparison to many others.

Obviously I have an opinion which I could and at some point may share on this blog, but that’s another post for another day, and you’re unlikely to have your view changed by little old me anyway.

Whatever the underlying cause, regardless of whether you’re a bleeding heart liberal or a member of the Daily Mail “hang ‘em and flog ’em” brigade, the immediate question is what the police should do to stop the trouble in our cities tonight, and dare I say over the next few nights. Should they use water cannons? Should the army be called in? Should Blackberry Messenger be closed down? Should there be curfews? Should there be a media blackout? My answer…

I don’t know.

Outrageously, given me zero years of experience and training in the area of public order policing, I cannot tell you what should be done. Pathetic isn’t it… everyone else with an equal and even lesser understanding of the subject have been able to come up with a view, be they callers to radio phone-ins, members of the public interviewed on TV, politicians, colleagues, friends, random people on Twitter or some bloke on the bus that some other bloke overheard. As Simon Mayo ever aptly and succinctly tweeted earlier – “I never knew I followed so many experts in urban riots”.

In hindsight I’m sure that the police will be able to learn lessons from this. Who amongst us when faced with a new and unprecedented challenge can guarantee that we would get it right first time. For now they are simply doing the best they can under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. When people rant that the police “weren’t there” to protect them, that wasn’t out of choice. They weren’t sat in the canteen sipping tea and eating doughnuts. And for whatever failings there have been in the past or inevitably there will be in the future, I still trust them to make the best choices about how to deal with the situation. Frankly if I didn’t, I should probably be moving.

To finish on a positive note, as is so often the case when our city comes under fire and we witness the worst of human nature, soon after we witness the best. By 7am this morning “#riotcleanup” was trending on Twitter and throughout the day we have seen pictures of the “broom armies” out in force and getting our communities back to normal. I would have loved to join them in Ealing today, and like the police and our other emergency services the images of them hard at work remind us of the overwhelming number of decent people that we pass and ignore every day of our lives. Thanks to them my faith in the people of this city is maintained at a time when it would be so easy to despair. Thank you all.