'Cat and Mouse' politics: encapsulating the riots

In reality it was quite easy to predict a riot, and in fact at least one group did!



You might consider that a bit of a fatuous levity, but it goes further than the superficial.

Let me explain.

These things are always just over the horizon so the more dispassionate among society will hold their breath until the smoke starts to clear and the potential reasons and causes can be examined more clearly.

Which thread you chose to emphasise depends on which side you butter your bread - some identify the alienation and resentment of an urban youth underclass exacerbated by economic policy, some claim it is a battle for social morality in which individuals recklessly choose the 'sheer criminality' of wanton actions such as looting and vandalism, whereas others describe a rising stampede of powerless individuals disinhibited by the crowd mentality and swept along on the exhilarating ride of the immediacy of the moment.

While a simmering discontent has long prevailed at the institutional relationships with life on the streets and decades of rising wealth has been accompanied by rising inequality, the recent legitimisation of protest culture has allowed the two to merge and give voice to a sense that sections of society are being left behind and scapegoated for it - repressed in order to be oppressed.

Add in to this the potency of social media technology where a newly apparent class divide between the open networks of facebook, twitter and flickr and the closed networks of rolling news broadcasts, official communications and BlackBerry messaging networks is driving the ability to control mass choices at an  instantaneous rate and we can see that almost all sponaneity and original thought is eradicated.

But if the on-going phone-hacking scandal has done anything to lift the lid on the murky and often dubious nature of connections between politicians, media, police and criminals then perhaps we would be less cynical if we applied these same lessons to the riots.

The two rules to bear in mind when evaluating potential players is to separate the coincidences from any conspiracy, and to ask 'who benefits?'

With regard to the political beneficiaries Cameron scores big by insisting commentators link the unrest and the communal resistance to it to his 'broken Britain' and 'Big Society' narratives, while Labour scores on a technicality simply by dint of being in opposition. Meanwhile Her Majesty's forces of Law and Order prove the invaluability of the services they provide - all the more urgent considering the risk to national confidence and reputation which would be caused by any disturbance to tarnish the prestige of the 2012 Olympics - right at the time when public service pay and pensions have have animated the debate over finances and in a far more forthright manner than any strike could.

As far as precise timing is concerned Parliament's summer recess is not known as 'silly season' for no reason  - with all 5 major relevant figures (Prime Minister, Deputy PM, Home Secretary, Mayor of London and Leader of the Opposition) all out of the country a dearth of news and leadership stories allows for media companies to concentrate greater resources, preferably closer to their doorsteps, and subjects of normally lesser significance suddenly attract more attention from us chattering amateurs at large among the wider public.

But most damning is the repeated underlying implication from a succession of heavy-handed hints scattered through reports. Many of the arrestees were already well-known to authorities, the gangs of rioters were divided into groups numbering around a hundred-or-so, directed by what seem to be organising capos, and that the pattern of activities were not only sufficiently profuse as to avoid concentrating either in any single location or on any single source of inspiration - but spreading.

Indeed, looking at a map of the incidents in combination with hearing education secretary Michael Gove MP talk on Newsnight and elsewhere about how the postcode rivalries between street gangs have been set aside to take advantage of the opportunity and the picture of rioting begins to bear the hallmarks of the traditional underworld 'manors' reacting to the call. Equally community residents have banded together to take the place of social protectors and some evidence of violence by the established criminals towards these groups develops the picture of gang warfare, and althought the description that 'the Police are the biggest gang in the country' is a flat comparison of manners it is only inaccurate insofar as the Police are backed by the legitimacy of the law.

As we know from the insights into COBRA arrangements, political leadership does not have operational control of ground units, and cannot leverage any statutory tools due to the oversight imposed by democratic accountability. By considered this model of power as the prime method of influencing the public policy debate for those in position in the trenches as it is for those behind the lines in government the crisis created by the rioting doesn't just look predictable, but wholly inevitable and actively desirable from the perspective of reasserting the legitimacy of authority.

What I'm trying to describe is no simple conspiracy, but a nexus of interests which knot themselves around events with increasing tensions until they can be 'nudged' by whomsoever has the imagination, the determination and the contacts to take a decisive lead on the issues.

We know the ongoing Operation Trident into the capital's gun crime has a focus out of the 'fortress' of  Tottenham High Road Police Station, we know that the victim of the Police shooting had a gun in his possession at the time and we know the vigil of rememberance was advertised to local politicians and media and that Police maintained a presence nearby having been warned that it could be used as a sparking point.

We also know Police tactics during the rioting were to contain the outbreaks of violence rather than to prevent it, and we know everyone from ordinary ranks to PCSOs were drafted in by Police leadership in a show of strength.

What we don't exactly know is who is the cat and who is the mouse.

And we don't yet know how to get the cat back in the bag at the end of it all.

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As Gove argued, it would be wrong to draw connections between social class and criminality: criminals exist at all levels of society - although the type and scale of their crimes vary accordingly.

It seems a big debate is growing up about the causes of the riots. Let's hope those participating can show a bit more maturity than the norm, eh?

Songs of the summer

It's summer and I've been sweating on how to fill this space, so why not with some music?



Nah, you can take that one away and overload on the freakbeat's visuals instead.



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Song of the Day

The sun has set for today, but tomorrow morning - for the first time in 6 centuries - a full lunar eclipse will coincide with the Winter Solstice.

It will be visible over the north and west of Europe, but for best viewing (weather permitting) make your way to the outer Hebrides.

Due to the refraction of the solar rays the moon will appear a beautiful blood red.

It's the turning of the seasons.

And it's my birthday.

Enjoy!



The song was written about the Solidarity movement, and Bono said, "It would be stupid to start drawing up battle lines," suggesting the unconventional song's success indicated a sense of popular disillusionment regarding contemporary music... and politicians.

There's something hauntingly apt about the tonality of this song, which was set against a backdrop of increasing militancy and political conflict of the early 1980s.

But where U2's development of greater harmony as a musical response to their environment and paved their way to unifying the market and become the accepted global behemoth they now are divergence and stratification among and between musical styles is preventing the emergence of spokespeople for new generations who can synthesise the thoughts of the masses.

Where are the modern bards?

It's illuminating that the names put forward to offer commentary on the implications of the recent X-Factor phenomenon include Elton John, Paul Weller, Seal, Suggs, Alice Cooper, Bernard Sumner, Brett Anderson and Damon Albarn.

Perhaps JLS and Alison Goldfrapp still have time to create greater popular resonance with their art, but is it me or are contemporary musicians not making the same impact?

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Songs of the Day

Boom, Boom, Boom.



Bombs go boom.

It's been a week in which news headlines have been dominated by bombs.

Apparently the printer bomb sent by cargo plane from Yemen and destined never to reach their intended recipients at Jewish institutions in Chicago was defused with only 17 minutes to spare and the implications for the air freight industry has got(ten) the international media wound up with excitement.

In such circumstances intelligence - and especially the calmness to use it when under pressure - comes at a premium and a balance must be struck between the twin imperatives of security and liberty to continue business as usual.

However industry body IATA has warned that this will have a major impact which they won't be able to compress alone.

Unsurprisingly questions have been raised about efficacy of scanning machines - none more eloquently than by the delightfully-if-unfortunately-appropriately-named Geneva airport spokesman, Bertrand Stämpfli, who said without any trace of world-weariness, "Every time there is a crisis we get an incredible number of calls from lobby groups all trying to sell the best possible detection machine," although I'm less confident of his assertion that "Everyone is suspicious of 'the magic detection machine'."

Nevertheless I completely agree with Swiss aviation expert Sepp Moser's comment, "There is no absolute security and it can never be achieved."

Meanwhile 14 parcel bombs have been sent to various embassies and political offices across Europe this week - there's nothing like priming a pump to make sure your story detonates with sufficient resonance.

Well, Al-Jazeera is equally right to show balance by pointing out that Europe is under constant threat of internal terrorism in order to show that the phenomena can't simply be written off as the fundamentalist extremism of outsiders - the West does have some very real problems which won't just go away if we ignore them... the rest of the world can't ignore them - just like any powerful expansion the vacuum it grows to fill is only relative.

Anyway in this excursion into the explosive world of medialand I found this fantastic article by Nicola Simpson in which she details how the establishment of 'a successful equilibrium' comes from recognising that one side simply cannot exist without the other as it is in fact defined by the other.

Ms Simpson quotes Franklin's inalienable 'essential liberty' and remarks on Montesquieu's argument that the general political reality has a marked influence on specific individual conceptions of where the balance will be struck.

She suggests complacency about security "will inevitably mean a seismic shift in our attitudes concerning what liberty or liberties we might consider essential."

The big modern example cited is 9/11. And clearly this event informs both the Yemeni ink-jet bomber and Al-Jazeera's giving weight to a campaign of anti-establishment anarchists sending bombs through the post to Berlusconi, Sarkozy and Merkel.

But more interestingly she notes another notorious instance where an unbalanced media enabled the political swing to be pushed: The Reichstag fire in 1933.

It occurred only 4 weeks after the new Chancellor took office and was used as an example of exactly the sort of threat which government should intervene to prevent.

It is easy to compare the conspiracy theories which grew into the information gap in both 1933 and 2001 as examples of apparent coincidence mounted up, but to do so would require a final judgement on the precise details of the full events and this is something we should refrain from as history has a habit of letting the facts speak for themself.

For me at least the lesson is that we can't neglect the potential for distortions in hindsight even when we assume we have 20/20 vision, and the only reliable method to maintain as close an approximation is to seek the widest balance possible.

Although I reject the accusation that I'm a conspiracy theorist I do find it an ironic coincidence to recall the first weeks of the previous Prime Minister's tenure, when a pathetically incompetent series of bombers lined up to undermine the new regime - first there was the Tiger, Tiger incident and then there was a gas bomb attack on Glasgow Airport which resulted in fingers being pointed at an active cell linked to Al-Qaeda.

Bombs are tediously predictable if you've ever seen one explode. They are designed with a single purpose in mind. To cause sufficient impact to make a breakthrough.

All the way back to the original fireworks night when Guido Fawkes (no, not that one) attempted to blow up the pomposity of parliament (yes, the very same one) the results are the same: bombs do not and never have changed the underlying requirement to ensure the essence of liberty is maintained through regularised parameters of behaviour. Bombs are beyond the bounds. They are evidence of an argument backed by force at the expense of right.

So ignore the convenience of a shocking bombing campaign launched during Halloween week and forget who could be trying to manipulate the agenda.



Oh, did I mention 28-day control orders are under consideration?

As Bagehot wraps up, it's an issue which unites LibDems - a curate's egg at the best of times, least of all while being scapegoated for sweetening the economic medicine in straightened times.

But as Andrew Rawnsley points out in his usual muscular editorial voice, this partisan unity is not only a glue which keeps the internal coalition locked within the government coalition, but it is also the charge which is driving the government forwards.

Boom, boom, pow.

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Songs of the day

Wyclef Jean has ended speculation to announce he will seek election as President of Haiti.



We've had pornstars in Italy, footballers in Africa and a range of pop culture celebrities everywhere from the US to Russia and Japan and Estonia, but Wyclef is of another order altogether.

Not for one, Haiti is the poor relation in a poor region and in desperate need of real leadership.

Then he is an international star with global artistic credibility who has actively cultivated his political base through his music, so there is less of a contradiction between the two and it was more a question of when not if.

But it was the recent humanitarian and environmental disaster in his homeland which catapulted him into acting on his ambitions and brought him into contact with the realities of organising and mobilisating social action. "If not for the earthquake, I probably would have waited another 10 years before doing this," he said.

According to Time, he will 'galvanize' a large youth vote where turnout has hovered around 10% amid a succession of corrupt leaders and stands a good chance of succeeding in his bid.

But The Economist is more cautious, noting how his abilities as an administrator are questionable - although it strikes me his acclaim and financial wherewithal are indicators of his capacity to delegate. Not that rivals and competitors will hold back from calling him an unqualified diva who is satisfying his ego.



Meanwhile the trusty BBC is more impartial, offering a profile, and MTV offers the chilling suggestion of Dizzee Rascal for PM.

For sure Wyclef will become (for a while at least) the darling of the international political classes seeking to ally their star to his (did you notice Al Sharpton standing to his left in the BBC article?). He will, therefore, be able to count on the support and goodwill of coaligned leaders (Obama will be smiling, if not singing along, as the mid-terms roll around) to help tide him through many difficulties, but this will immediately raise questions of his ability to chart an independent course for his country.

Nevertheless it is another marker on what is potentially a transformational period throughout the Caribbean region where banana republics and tin-pot dictators pretty much originated (see: the file on the Duvaliers; Papa Doc's philosophy of 'strong man' leadership and Alan Whicker's sinister anecdote on his snap of a finger) and has languished since.

With Cuba's gradual emergence in the post-Fidel period, a referendum in the Netherlands Antilles later this year and the moves to regional organisation and integration under Caricom, Wyclef may well find himself in a position to garner real influence and make lasting positive changes in an area where chronic suffering has existed alongside staggering wealth for far too long.

It will certainly be worth watching whether Wyclef can fulfil everything he has wished for or whether he will be unable to escape the lure of mistakes which derail unrealistic ambitions.

But that's the challenge of power.

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Songs of the week

Change is the big theme of the election.



Controversy was initiated when the PR team behind tory leader David Cameron decided to use Keane's song as an anthem for their manifesto launch against the wishes of the band when apparently members had already granted exclusive use to the LibDems.



The tory machine has clearly thought they've found a theme which taps into the pop culture consciousness as they've signed up Take That's Gary Barlow to front a policy initiative to unearth new talent in an X-Factor style search.

But it is eerily reminiscent of previous criticism of David Cameron for naming The Jam's 'Eton Rifles' and The Smiths as his favorites.

The only fair conclusion to be drawn is that either the tory leader doesn't listen to the content of the music he listens to and has failed to grasp the intent behind it or that his acolytes are cynically pushing him into adopting it.

Obviously the tories are only talking change since their rhetoric doesn't chime with reality.



Will Young is another LibDem who'd also be opposed to the tories using his songs.



And you just have to wonder how long it'll be before they make overtures towards David Bowie.



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Song of the day

Well, there are two big news stories today.

They are the 'historic' first leadership debate between the prime ministerial candidates and the grounding of thousands of flights over northern Europe due to volcanic particles entering the flight paths of aeroplanes following the eruption of the wonderfully-named Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

Amidst all the cynicism about politics in the aftermath of the expenses scandal, Iraq and everything else this oldie is strangely appropriate.

I particularly like the line: "...come back as fire, burn all the liars and leave a blanket of ash on the ground."



Handily Greg Neale recalls a story I also remember about how an eruption of the Laki volcano in 1793 conspired to add to the general toxic atmosphere of pre-revolutionary France. According to Gilbert White an acid, acrid 'red mist' descended on the land (and is blamed for the death of up to a quarter of the global population as 120m tonnes of sulphur dioxide was released into the sky, together with changed climate patterns and subsequent failed harvests) which contemporaries such as Ben Franklin saw as an indicator for the forthcoming social tumult.

Perhaps it was more a case of the retrospective wisdom of commentators who latched onto the event as a metaphor for the times than a direct indicator (in a similar way to the sinking of the unsinkable Titanic foreshadowed the death of the ancien regime), but nevertheless it is inescapable that the comparative mindsets of the people on either side of the channel and their reactions contributed to the political climate.

The dogmatic and volatile religious fervour in traditionally-Catholic France (exemplified by the replacement of one absolutist cult after another, from Louis XVI to Robespierre and the Jacobin Reign of Terror to Napoleon himself) which viewed their supreme deity as having forsaken the people or betrayed their trust contrasts with the gently sceptical and scientific Protestantism at large in the mind of Britain (eptiomised by Hampshire's country pastor and naturalist White) which tends towards self-reliance and a generally inquisitive attitude.

I may be being optimistic, but with all the new outlets for information and comment including this humble blog and the first televised debate last night I actually have some serious hope that all the liars will be burnt as they are exposed to a more intense level of scrutiny - something that already seems to be happening with Cameron's claim about a £73k Lexus as indicative of waste in the Police force, Brown's claim that Police will be 'visible' on the streets 80% of the time being hung out to dry and a greater focus on all the claims made by each side.

LibDems traditionally suffer from a lack of profile and also from a consequent lack of scrutiny of their manifesto figures and actual policies, so although I'm pleased that Nick Clegg has been resoundingly named the victor of the first debate (whatever that means) I think it will serve the party better should we see a significant rise in the number of votes and seats gained, or even should the state of the LibDems become decisive to the formation of the eventual government: the threat of scrutiny is nothing to be feared!

It's ominous that experts are already suggesting that we should be prepared for a second, larger eruption from the neighbouring Katla volcano - one of Icelands twin 'angry sisters'. Although Eyjafjallajokull has only exploded 3 times in a millenium, each time it set off Katla... maybe this time the people will really look at the manifestos on offer and overturn the assumed consensus that hard-line policies are most popular.

Don't get me wrong, I like procedural rigour, but without the imaginative perspective to go with it and be able to see where we're headed politics offers nothing but excuses for past mistakes. This country really does need to explode the myth that perpetual top-down clampdowns is any way forward.

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Song of the day

I'm informed that today is the most depressing day of the year.

It's also known as 'Blue Monday'

...according to the Telegraph, the Brownies are are offering advice on how to beat the blues, but Ben Goldacre points out that the mathematical formula used to calculate the position of the day in the calendar was designed by a PR company on behalf of SKY Travel - a Murdoch initiative!

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Songs of the day

Something for robot friends in St James

not 1


not 2


not 3


not 4


yes 5 - count 'em, 5!


Bah, that's all my fingers and thumbs (on one paw)!

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Song of the day

A sweet birthday present to you all.


Sometimes answers aren't nearly as interesting as the questions that are raised by them.

Song of the day

Well not quite (one wasn't enough), but with Beck, Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannan involved it is floppy-haired beat and melody heaven and I couldn't wait.

Song of the day

Oblique reference disclaimer: this is somehow appropriate.



Don't expect me to explain how.

Ask and ye shall recieve

They're adorable - how can you possibly refuse them...

1000 Butterflies

It's everywhere and it's great!

The End of an Era?

After 19 years one of my favorite bands is 'taking a breather'.

I've seen them everywhere and now I may not ever see them again - I'm almost distraught!

Jusque a la fin?

Arboreal delights

There I was, just exploring my part of the jungle, when I discovered an unexpected tree which by all rights shouldn't be standing there - it was a date palm! Tasty!

Oranjepan recommends: Animal Collective

It's not often I get excited about new music, and it's even rarer that it lasts any longer than it takes for them to be embraced widely, but I was jumping up and down on my branch after being tipped off about Animal Collective, which is perhaps appropriate

They are touring Britain from 22-28 March and I'm buying tickets.