Archives for December 2010

What are you looking forward to getting for Christmas? I bet it's not a patch on the present Norman Simpson was given on 27 November.

Norman has had trouble with his eyesight from birth. He says he was always a disappointment to his sporting father because he could never quite keep his eye on the ball. After a vicious assault in his 20s, he was left completely blinded in his right eye.

Over the next two decades a series of increasingly serious eye problems left Norman needing several cornea transplants.

The problem with these natural transplants is that they are often rejected and can deteriorate and become cloudy over time. The operation can only be done a certain number of times.

Eventually in 2006 Nornman began to descend into darkness. In 2008 he was finally registered as completely blind. Both he and his wife Carmel fled from Northern Ireland in the early 1970s.

A Catholic and Protestant union was not acceptable during the Troubles; the resilience they showed in their partnership probably gives clues to their optimistic outlook. At their home in Brentwood, they never entirely lost hope.

Having heard of the work of leading eye surgeon Sheraz Daya on a report on BBC London and coverage in newspapers, Norman asked his own local eye specialist to refer him to the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead.

In the meantime he continued to get used to the idea of a life of blindness. Getting used to needing to be accompanied everywhere by his wife Carmel, a former Deputy Head at a Brentwood Secondary School, or close friends.

He had, for example, got used to using a white stick and then latterly began preparations to take on a guide dog. It was a daunting prospect. He would lie awake at night dreading the following day, hoping to fall asleep and forget about the challenges that lay ahead.

When his appointment with Sheraz Daya came up 18 months ago at the Eye Centre at the Queen Victoria Norman was rather taken aback when he was told a new technique of implanting an artificial cornea could work with him.

So far Daya, is the only UK surgeon who carries out this pioneering procedure first developed in Boston in the USA. He conducted the surgery on Norman by local anaesthetic at the end of November.

Almost immediately Norman had clear vision in his left eye and the first thing he recalls seeing was wife Carmel smiling at him. He says it was a simply fabulous sensation not having seen his wife properly for nearly 10 years. Needless to say he was not disappointed.

Daya believes that the operation should become routine on the NHS because of technological advances. The big problem is no other surgeons beyond the Queen Victoria are currently able to offer the procedure to the several thousand people Daya thinks could benefit from it across the country.

BBC London has been told that Moorfields Eye Hospital, near Old Street, is considering the procedure but is not yet ready to undertake it.

Visiting Norman and Carmel at home in the current big freeze they are both full of the joys of Spring. After 45 years of marriage they feel they have a chance to experience discovering the world afresh, after thinking they were destined to a life focussed increasingly around home.

The couple have a passion for French wine and a small share in a vineyard. For the best part of a decade Norman has enjoyed tasting and smelling the full bodied red. In 2011 his visit to Provence will mean for the first time he will be able to crack open a bottle and enjoy the view with Carmel.

Now, tell me you are getting something better than that for Christmas?

kurtbarling@twitter

Malet Street at 12.43pm on Thursday

I used to spend a lot of time in Malet Street, the heart of University life in Central London.

The quasi-Stalinist structure of Senate House dominates the imposing architecture and appears to scrape the sky; a reminder of what idea previous generations had of a University education. It was part of an elitist enterprise, for those that benefitted, the sky was the limit.

Academe is no longer so revered. In an age where celebrity can appear to grease the path to fame and fortune less arduously, the whole idea of a university education for many has become much more utilitarian. A means to an end, financial and job wise, not an end in itself.

I write as no stranger to academe. The proud owner of three degrees and fond-ish memories of an early career as an academic means I was a beneficiary of state and university largesse as a young man.

Now my own children are at the age of post-compulsory education the fees issue is a hot topic at the dinner table. There is a lot of finger-pointing.

It comes at no surprise to me to see the tuition fees debate inflaming passions. What is perhaps surprising is that so many people seem surprised. A lot is at stake for a lot of people.

In my generation around 15% of the age group went to University and therefore arguably had a direct stake in this debate; that number has now more than trebled. Many students, although not all, believe they have a lot to lose.

My parents were pretty agnostic about a university education. At 18 my father tried to persuade me to enter a career in banking directly from school.

In 30 years expectations have dramatically changed. The idea of a fulfilling life without a university education has become almost unthinkable, for some even scary. Many will now need to think again.

Protesters in Malet Street at 13.06pm on Thursday

Amongst the marchers were many who will begin their university careers in a few years time. Presumably they were there because they were all there because they'd not yet been convinced that the changes are in their best interests or the country's.

Politicians take note; the best way of politicising young people is demonstrating they have a stake in politics. The best way of riling them is to then ignore them when they try to become engaged.

The assembled throng was too angry to be described as overwhelmingly good-humoured, but it was good-natured, there was a real sense of purpose and a common thread to what most marchers were protesting against. Many fear the worst, even the commercialisation of non-compulsory education.

So when I arrived at Parliament Square at about 2.35pm I think I was expecting a more sombre and menacing mood.

Instead it was part music festival and part gentle protest. Perhaps the walk from Malet Street to Parliament Square had worn people out, but the majority of marchers had already begun to drift off through St James' Park.

For more than an hour different groups seemed to mill aimlessly around in Parliament Square.

Police on horseback at Whitehall at 14.33pm

Inexplicably to the demonstrators police horses were then without warning used against the crowd gently pushing up against the police line running between the Supreme Court and Westminster Abbey.

A number of those bundled out of the way were sixth-form girls much to their bemusement and the anger of others around them. It was only by sheer luck that none was seriously injured.

The sixth-formers were from a North London Grammar school, one of the best, they were seriously unnerved by that experience. Their mood had been calm, although excitable, and they didn't anticipate a horse charge.

It's a bit of a mystery to me why horses were deployed at all at this point. It was certainly one of the police actions that helped switch the mood.

The fact that police were already in riot gear and there hadn't yet been any serious trouble caused some consternation too.

On the opposite side of the square facing Parliament there was still a polite standoff; only the occasional expletive being exchanged back and forth between police and protestors.

Curiously as you walked around the square it still felt like several different events were going on, including a protest.

One group followed a sound-system pulled on a bicycle trolley with blaring hip hop; dancing and swinging from the traffic lights.

Underneath Churchill's statue a raging bonfire created a Guy Fawkes Night atmosphere. Meanwhile a lone protester placed a note over the head of Abraham Lincoln in front of the Supreme Court.

Around 3.45pm the police were still letting people come into Parliament Square from Whitehall and in and out through a tight cordon on Whitehall Place.

Scenes opposite Parliament at 15.08pm on Thursday

Within five minutes the Whitehall Place cordon had been closed. I found this out when I was told that my exit point was now Whitehall itself. I walked to Whitehall and was told that where I had come from, Whitehall Place, was my exit point.

Twice more I went back and forth to each exit and was told my exit point from the Square was in the opposite direction.

There scores of other people doing the same and getting increasingly frustrated that they were being given confused information.

In fact after 20 minutes of asking a simple question of where my exit was the Sergeant at Whitehall place told me in fact no-one was being allowed out for the moment. At 4.01pm I tweeted that I thought "kettling" had begun.

A couple of the North London school girls who recognised me came over and were clearly panic stricken about not being allowed out. I doubt they could have caused any harm to a blancmange let alone a fully equipped riot officer.

Now anxiety levels rose across the Square and those groups of individual's intent on causing trouble begun to do just that.

Charging police lines outside Westminster Abbey with metal barriers, Westminster Council seemed to have helpfully left lying around, setting fire to memorial benches and a whole host of other downright daft ideas.

From what I could observe there were still a majority of people in the Square who were openly irritated at both the police hemming them in and by the people intent on causing trouble.

Those still in the square at this point were nevertheless a minority of those who had marched down Whitehall and entered Parliament Square earlier in the afternoon.

As the temperature dropped and the night lights came on the tension rose. The police opened a very narrow exit at one end of the Whitehall cordon. Judging by the jostling in that corner there were many people eager to leave. Police were letting half a dozen people through at a time, effectively a trickle.

The weight of people trying to get out irritated some officers in the cordon because they were getting pushed. The response from those colliding with them let more people out, more quickly and you won't get pushed.

Tempers were fraying but still no general violence. It was not possible after that for me to judge how many people were left from the original march.

But it was possible to see that the circumstances had become extremely intimidating for many of those trying to leave, it was obvious to most trouble was brewing.

The mood had changed. I tweeted that I passed through the cordon at 4.28pm. I think by this time most people trying to get out had at least for the moment stopped thinking about tuition fees.

I'm clearly not an expert in police tactics but there must surely be questions for the Met about more effective ways of encouraging people to move on and disperse from a largely peaceful march once it has reached its destination.

Ironically most marchers were not expecting to go all the way to Parliament Square and were confused that this had been allowed by Police.

Keeping a large number of vocal and volatile people in one place, stopping them from leaving, police officers giving them confused information but being prepared for the worst in full riot gear feels like a recipe for intimidation if not downright confrontation.

When young people march to have their voice heard and then see that the overwhelming depiction of their freedom of expression is a focus on a minority of morons who want to smash up the joint, it is hardly a good advert for robust political debate.

What's the point of attempting to talk politics with the majority, my children ask me, if everyone in the media appears more interested in focussing on the minority who relish street fighting?

The Gordon Riots of 1780 were an anti-Catholic uprising against the Papists Act of 1778. Getty Images.

The French have a saying "the more things change, the more things stay the same". In reality protesting is to London, what fish is to chips.

You'd be hard pressed to find a decade in the past few hundred years where there haven't been protests of one kind or another in the capital.

How about the 1780s when protestants got the hump with an act which removed some elements of discrimination against Catholics. After several days of argy-bargy word of mouth spread bringing out a crowd estimated at 50,000.

The Gordon Riots ensued; days of rioting caused extensive damage in central London. The use of live ammunition turned this into a rather notorious event with several hundred Londoners left dead.

Since then any number of causes has brought protesters to the heart of where political power lies to make their voices.

Think suffragettes, the Jarrow marchers, those who fought street battles with the Mosleyites, CND marchers, anti-Vietnam protesters, National Front supporters, Civil Rights marches in the 1980s, poll tax haters, anti-war protesters, G20 demos and the list goes on.

Rarely do these events pass off without some disturbance or police intervention. When passions are running high some people can't help themselves when it boils over.

The latest student organised marches to protest against what they argue are decisions which directly contradict the mandate of one of the coalition partners joins a long line of justifiable protest. The law allows the protest therefore it is justified.

There are those who argue that the use of new mobile technologies is helping to change the character of the current crop of marches. Some argue that these protest are more organic, driven from the bottom up.

Social networking sites enable quick communication and in assist the spontaneous organisation of events. It is the speed at which events can be organised which has added to the speculation that London could be in for a season of difficult demonstrations.

But when you talk to veterans of street protests there is a much more sanguine view. They remain less convinced the character of demonstrations is changing.
They emphasise that to be effective, protests still need a strong sense of purpose.

Of course, demonstrations also respond to the way they are policed. We have heard from demonstrators this week that in order to counter the police tactic of "kettling" they broke into many different groups to avoid being "kettled".

This has accounted for some of the assertions that the character of the demonstrations is changing.

It would seem that there is a danger of mistaking spontaneity here for an unwillingness to be kept in one place for hours on end because the police chose to use the particular "kettling" tactic.

The Metropolitan police have faced heavy criticism for the use of this tactic. Clearly if it forces demonstrations to fragment along the way of a marching route it may soon become as much a problem as a solution.

There is another problem with new technology. Speed of organisation may be helpful for many things but can lead to fragmentation on the street because people come with different agandas.

Talking to protesters at this week's fragmented demonstration, it was clear that many people were being given different information.

I kept bumping into people asking where the demonstrators had gone to. It's not difficult to see why it might be difficult to keep control of an event in these circumstances.

Fragmentation may be good for making a nuisance of yourself but it is arguable that to march in London is to get your issue at the heart the news agenda, conveying your message of protest to the widest possible audience.

Without a strong sense of purpose this may be more difficult to achieve because it can comes across as simply anarchic. Of course anarchists on the marches will argue that's a good thing.

Some people feel there's something French in our emerging culture of street protest. It's more likely that mobilisation using technology is speeding things up.

But this doesn't mean the reasons for demonstrating in the first place OR being effective is destined to change. Or for that matter need less thought and planning.