Year We Go: Take 2’s 2012 Alphabet Annual Art into article – a new way of doing journalism? Barack Obama is Dorian Gray (debauchery of power surely shows up somewhere). Crisis of Authority: Doubtful performance by Georgy Porgy, Pudding-Pie Chancellor. Eyeless in Rimless Glasses (Lord Leveson and Nick Pollard). F-word Mitchell. George Ent, whistling up half a million. Hillsborough – like pigs not plebs. Iphone therefore I am. Jay walking across press freedom. Kim Kardashian’s chiselled booty. Lathicharge on the road to Lutyens’ Indian mansion. Miliband more Wallace than Wolverine. 'No Surrender': the Orange Heritage Experience. Qaedamonium in New York, wrought by Superstorm Sandy. Rueful Rupert, King Lear in Leveson’s High Court. Santa-in-reverse – death scene in Newtown, Tucitcennoc. Tunis, Tripoli, Benghazi to Chennai, the Anti-American Soul Train. USA Unemployment at 23 million? Victory for sheer athleticism, winning out against London's Olympic Legacy-Logorrhea. Winsome from Wisconsin, GOP’s Wannabe V-P Paul Ryan – who he? Xi Jinping’s Elvis Hair. YTake2? For brief compositions of our common humanity, from source material already published on major news platforms. Zzzzzzzzz.

India, what time is it? ‘Lathicharge’ sounds ceremonial but turns out to mean New Delhi police officers beating back the crowd with sticks as tall as they are. Legs planted firmly apart, leaning back slightly then swivelling forward from the hips to get a good scything motion. On his way down, one demonstrator is still talking into his phone. There’s another one, also still talking, as he manages to throw a tear gas canister back at the police. Earlier, protestors seemed surprised to find they had broken through police lines across Raisina Hill, the thoroughfare leading up to the presidential palace (built for the British viceroy by imperial architect Edward Lutyens). Before they made it to the top, the police retaliated with tear gas canisters. When demonstrators defused these by dowsing them with water, they moved on to water cannon and lathis. But the crowd was not cowed. One teenaged girl was overheard encouraging her companion: ‘Aaja, aaja. Thhoda ro lenge, koi baat nahin (Come, come. We'll cry a little, it's fine)’. The ultra-violent gang-rape of a 23-year-old paramedical student and the lackadaisical police inquiry into this brutal crime, have prompted mounting protests against the authorities’ relaxed attitude towards ‘eve teasing’ – the almost-accepted term for a gamut of sexual harassment from bum-pinching to grievous assault. With their smartphones, wearing ‘street clothes’ rather than street clothes, the mainly middle class protestors of New Delhi would not look out of place in London or Manhattan. They are facing an elite which continues to inhabit structures inherited from the British Raj. Meanwhile the paramilitary stance of the police – that scything motion – still owes something to pre-modern regimes. In India, in the final days of 2012, time comes in three dimensions.

Tribune of the plebs Gone is the goatee; now he flaunts his double chin like a badge of office. Roly Poly (Jon) Gaunty (Gaunt) boasts he’s ‘not thin on ideas.’ Look at me, I’m too busy speaking for the people to be fastidious about food intake. Former Sun columnist and Talksport ‘shock jock’, recently turned media trainer and PR consultant, this self-styled ‘populist’ has been working with Midlands branches of the Police Federation, voicing their opposition to government cuts. Gaunt’s clients include the Federation branch covering the Sutton Coldfield constituency of ‘plebgate’ MP, Andrew Mitchell. The patricians don’t like Gaunt or his commissioners in the lower ranks of the police service. Of course, David Cameron refused their invitation to ‘a Balti in Birmingham’ during the Conservative Party conference there (no ‘beer and [curry] sandwiches’). Of course, Gaunt is the epitome of cheese compared to Andrew Mitchell’s chalk-stripe elegance (‘epitome’ – etymology: Ancient Greek – being a word that Mitchell might use but Gaunt surely wouldn’t). Mitchell’s good bones mean that he really could be gaunt, in a way that round-faced Gaunty simply can’t be, ironically. The real irony is that the policemen’s preferred self-image, as projected and personified by their ‘populist’ PR, means it goes without saying – that very word, the extremely controversial term, which this particular patrician may never even have said.

Why Take 2? They can hardly be called ‘aims and objectives’, having only emerged during the course of writing these entries; rather, these observations have come to the fore while proceeding with the writing. Even so, they may provide some insight into what this writing is for. (1) How lyrical is the language of advertising, especially compared to matter-of-fact journalism in its long established forms. Advertising handles its characters with humour, affection, even tenderness. Whereas journalism has tended to dismiss the people featured in it: its peremptory tone has often served as their dismissal notice. Perhaps lyricism is permissible in advertising because the characters who appear in the adverts come with the authority of the commodities they are there to represent. This would mean that the discrepancy between peremptory journalism and lyrical advertising is a further example of the fetishism of commodities; yet another example of things taking precedence over people, with the latter only recognised as such insofar as they are also recognisably bearers of the former. High time, then, for journalists to write lyrics about the people in their stories, i.e. to write about them in a lyrical way; and, by this means, to address the absurdity of things-before-people, which is also how things really are. (2) The New Journalism of the 1960s was just such an attempt – the lyrical austerity of In Cold Blood; the poetic violence of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It arose in reaction to the reification inherent in mainstream journalism, and took its place in the contemporary counter-culture. Subsequently re-titled ‘the journalism of attachment’, the same kind of long form journalism became part of the advocacy culture of the 1990s, calling for more intervention by Western elites rather than less. Aside from its political trajectory, however, the length of this long form journalism has always been problematic. Given the length of time it takes to write, it cannot keep up with the new: it can’t do the news. What’s needed is something which reaches similar levels of descriptive power, but in short form. (3) As journalism has played a role in composing the public, so formal composition is how journalism comes to play this role. While journalism cannot by itself put the public back in publication, if journalists pay more attention to composition, especially in new forms, at least journalism will be fit to perform its historic purpose, whenever it is re-called to do so. Furthermore, without renewing the attention paid to composition, journalism will continue to decompose. (4) Take 2 is the attempt to compose particular vignettes of our common humanity using current source material made available by digital technology. It works by association: these words have been formulated thus, in the attempt to show the associations between writer, reader, and the people featured in my stories. I only hope it works.

Savile Row One with hair, the other without. Same rimless glasses, though; same reading from a lengthy, prepared statement in a camera-friendly room with just the one, ambient colour. Blue/Grey. Leveson/Pollard. Leveson-Blue/Pollard-Grey. Following publication of Lord Justice Leveson’s report on the ‘culture, ethics and practices’ of the British press (29th November), on 19th December Nick Pollard presented his findings on the culture, ethics and practices of Newsnight and the BBC, beginning with (then) programme editor Peter Rippon’s decision not to run the story exposing TV personality Jimmy Savile as a pervert. In less than three weeks, first Leveson and now Pollard have lined up to diagnose the failure of journalism’s ‘management systems’. Their accents are different (North v South); and their provenance (high court judge v television news editor); so too are the objects of their attention (privately owned newspapers v public service broadcasting). Nonetheless, the two pontiffs share the same priority: management systems must be managed better. Managers managing management – that’s their solution. Journalists thinking independently; using their own judgement – anyone?

Trying to disconnect you The line of his jaw, the gloss on her lips, the self-assurance of being the people other people always have to fit in with. Is it that the lonesome nurse – working away from home and family – was always going to comply with their request? With trumpets blaring, on Monday 17th December a phalanx of sombre family members laid the body of 46-year-old night-sister Jacintha Saldanha into a brick-lined grave. It is widely known that Saldanha fell for a prank phone call from two Australian radio hosts pretending to be the Queen and Prince Charles asking after Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, who had been admitted to King Edward VII Hospital suffering from acute morning sickness. Three days later Saldanha was found hanged, driven to suicide by her failure to spot the prank, presumably. But perhaps she half-knew when she put the call through to the ward. The banter, the easy manner, their physical, sexual confidence – these characteristics stayed with Michael Christian and Mel Greig even when they suppressed them, donning sackcloth and ashes in TV interviews designed to atone for their part in Saldanha’s death; and Saldanha the Serious might even have heard these characteristics, understood them, in the grain of the voice at the end of the phone. In which case, it was not that she was fooled by Mel Greig’s desperately poor attempt to sound like the Queen; rather, that she immediately recognised all those years of not being fully in on the joke. Anticipating the insiders’ mocking tones – circles of hell for the uninitiated, perhaps Saldanha played along and put the call through pronto, in the forlorn hope of exiting their terrifying orbit.

Christmas comes to Tucitcennoc Girl crying, the man carrying her appears to be smiling: ‘even if it’s not the doll you wanted – well, darlin’, you better take what you got’. Children in single file, the fingertips of each one resting lightly on the shoulders of the child in front. Grown-ups shepherding them, holding back the first-in-line who’s getting ahead of the game. Christmas in Reverse, that’s what it’s called, the awful game that came to Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut (‘Connecticut’ – make that Tucitcennoc). Instead of the Nativity, a death scene devised by Santa’s evil twin. Where there was life, he takes it away; where there is sunlight – a sparkling day in New England, Atnas reverses it and darkens the soul. Hence the crocodile of children evacuated by State Police; the girl with downturned mouth who’s heard what happened inside; or perhaps she was brought out of there alive. On this day, in this terrible place where live seems to run backwards.

Three Women and the Mother of All Traffic Jams Swirl of her frock coat as she steps neatly across the astro-turf in high-heeled suede boots, hockey-stick in hand. Playful, she makes contact with the puck. Thwack! At the podium, her pretty voice can pull strings with the audience. Twang! Too much hair falling over her right eye, but it only adds to the impression of modesty. From decorous Duchess of Cambridge (DC) to full-on Kim Kardashian, coming on stage in Bahrain to a backdrop of Kim-Kardashian-coming-on-stage-in-Bahrain; her booty as chiselled as her eyebrows. Screaming crowd, a few words from KK ('beautiful Bahrain' etc, etc), a homegrown MC who has learned to say ‘Kim Kardashian’ the LA way (she doesn’t get to say anything else). Meanwhile, frock coated like DC, narrower hips than KK, an unnamed woman strides down Russia’s M10 motorway, walking past cars and trucks gridlocked since Friday in a 125km traffic jam. A police officer brings a kettle of boiling water to the pop-up, roadside shelter she is heading for. Inside, beyond the hiss of all that slushy snow, there are benches and tables and glasses of tea; and nothing to do but wait.

Take Three Girls Celebrating their fiftieth anniversary, three wizened crones known as the Rolling Stones: Mick, Keith and Charlie (Ronnie remains Johnny Come Lately). Meanwhile in Russia, three Pussy Riot grrrls condemned as witches and sentenced to jail: Yekaterina, Nadezhda and Maria. Yekaterina’s sentence was suspended on appeal, but the others will spend their birthdays in jail, penalised for ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’ – staging a ‘punk prayer’ inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, calling on the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of President Putin, stomping and high-kicking against the pricks of Russian Orthodoxy. Pussy Riot is a feminist-punk collective with around a dozen members. During their agit-prop performances they all wear balaclavas; but in court Nadezhda was revealed as the Face of the group. Good bones, regular teeth, lovely lips (not bulbous like Mick’s), she resembles the original leader of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones, who died of drugs and drowning in 1969 aged 27. (A former girlfriend reported that Brian always wanted to look like French singer Francois Hardy – the spitting image of Pussy Riot’s Nadezhada). The houndstooth check shirt Nadezhda wore in court, is of equally notable descent: shades of Ben Sherman as worn by 1970s skinhead bands such as Cockney Rejects (copied and sampled in Pussy Riot’s recorded rants), all the way back to the Brooks Brothers shirts with button down collar, picked up by the Stones during their early American tours. But whereas Mick, Keith and Charlie have become more brand than a band (increasingly bland), Yekaterina, Nadezhda and Maria religiously refuse to have anything to do with merchandising Pussy Riot. No copyright, no contracts, they insist, spurning the $3m valuation of Pussy Riot TM. Neither corporate jingles nor jangling royalties, this blasphemous bunch has only one mantra: freedom.

Beijing's Reservoir Dogs Acres of red carpet, a plantation of decorative greenery, enough gold leaf to turn the ceiling’s vast expanse into a midsummer night’s dream forest. Xi Jinping’s Big Hair: blue-black and quiffed back as high as Elvis’. Further down the production line of suits, ties and the heads and shoulders inhabiting them, a preference for see-through plastic spectacle frames as worn 30 years ago by Andy Warhol. The staging is as camp as Rylan going Gangnam Style on X-Factor. But this is Reality TV: real-time footage of the first public appearance of the newly appointed Politburo, highest ranking body of the Chinese Communist Party, possibly the six most powerful men in the world after Barack Obama. In the West, not famous even 'for 15 minutes' (Warhol); but these men in suits will be holding the reins of power for years to come. Like their stylistic counterparts in Reservoir Dogs, they don't do double entendre. Whereas in the West we have an endless supply - a double take for everything they say; a re-make of everything they are. Accordingly: Xi says a few words – raising the level of productive forces, against corruption and ‘bureaucratism’ – before waving and walking off stage; unlike Rylan, he is never going to need your vote.

Daddy’s second term They came on stage together: Barack, Michelle and the two girls (look how they’ve grown). For a couple of minutes all four of them basked in the applause of the crowd. The children touching their father now and again: hand, arm, shoulder. Partly passing on to him the goodwill of the American people: this is for you, Father. Partly to claim ownership: let the People know this is my Daddy. The President, also and for the last time President-Elect (second time round the same, cropped hairstyle seems less black, now it’s shaded grey), knew exactly when his wife and children should leave the stage: having lingered long enough not to appear curt or arrogant; appreciating the adulation without milking it. Only George Burns’ timing was ever better. Now the slight touches came from him to them: fleeting hugs and they’re away, back to the Presidential apartments in the White House; no need to pack away childish things any time soon. Barack had signalled for his family to leave the stage without hesitation or any sign of a second thought. His parting gestures were affectionate but brisk, unconcerned. However, as he turned to speak to the crowd in front of him, and behind them the millions watching on TV, his face froze for a moment. In that moment, it looked as if he was having to hold his mouth in place between his chin and his cheeks. Preventing the lower half of his head from collapsing into a Fright Night fantasy, but only by an act of will. Four more years in the public gaze stretched out in front of Barack Obama like the life of Dorian Gray. So many half-truths and not-quite betrayals: don’t they amount to their own kind of debauchery? But then he composed himself, broke into a rueful smile (behold the private man for public consumption), and began his second term.

Ever the same again? Luxury cars dancing on a fountain of candy floss. But the sticky stuff spuming under them is really the surge from Superstorm Sandy, racing up the streets and underground chambers of Manhattan; closing down more markets than Al Qaeda. The lights are out on Broadway. In the world’s most powerful country, eight million people are currently without power. Even in daylight, the city is close to colourless. Only grey and brown, as if Gotham is being reclaimed by Autumn. But since this is America we’re speaking of, let’s change that last line to read: New York City now colored (sic) by the Fall.

Authority in Crisis (4) Farewell then, Sir Norman (aged 56 and three-quarters) ‘So as George Dixon used to do – he used to sign off by giving a cheery smile and a salute - I’ll do that now and look forward to your questions’. Top cop’s right arm sweeps out so that the fingertips of his straightened hand can come back in and graze his eyebrow. In the YouTube clip, the camera closes on him holding the familiar gesture. Introducing an online Q&A session with the Bradford contingent of the Police and Communities Acting Together scheme (ePACT), which took place in 2011, West Yorkshire chief constable Sir Norman Bettison adopted the mannerisms of PC George Dixon, UK television’s first fictional policeman. Sir Norman took us back to his own boyhood, in the days of chip butties and cup cakes for Saturday tea, when, pre-Dr Who, Dixon of Dock Green was the best thing on and there were only two channels to choose from, anyway. Despite receding hair and a mouth thinned out by 40 years of tight-lipped policing, the chief constable wants us to know he’s the same Yorkshire lad who looked up to George Dixon from his parents’ through-lounge in Rotherham, and policing is not much changed neither. That flat accent (‘water’ rhymes with ‘matter’), as if Dixon himself had re-appeared in a Hovis advert. Boots on the streets, Dixon-Hovis insists, that’s what counts, same as always. Bettison, for it is he, means the size 9s of a cheery constable. But Yorkshire folk remember the jackboots of an occupying army during the miners' strike of 1984-5, aka the English Civil War. Liverpool FC supporters won’t forget the same approach being applied to them at Hillsborough in April 1989, resulting in the death of 96 fans. They hardly need reminding that it was Bettison who led the police propaganda campaign in the wake of this disaster. But there will be no more salutes from Sir Norman. Earlier in the week he said ‘vale’ instead, and resigned his post with pension still intact. A local boy who made his way through the ranks – this chief petty officer has outlived his usefulness, along with his style of command.

Authority in Crisis (3) Andrew Mitchell and The Wrong Note ‘I’m now going to go in and get on with my work’. A week after the incident in Downing Street which prompted Plebgate, Government chief whip Andrew Mitchell MP sought to sign off on the whole sorry business. Approaching his office, he addressed the ensuing company of journalists and camera operators, repeating for their benefit his personal apology to the police officers concerned. As Mitchell finished making his statement and moved across the wide Whitehall pavement towards his office, he hoped he had done enough to remove himself from the news agenda. But the grain of his voice didn’t make for an easy escape. It was most noticeable in that last sentence, after he had completed the scripted apology: the how-now-brown-cow vowels; mouth shaped in a choirboy’s ‘o’; purity of tone. Having shown you people around, the Captain of School seemed to be saying, I must now go to the Pavilion and get on with the Game. Good of you to come and visit, his tousled hair appeared to add. It wasn’t yer actual Hooray stuff (in any case, BoJo shows this is passable as long as you make a point of hamming it up). Simply something extra in his voice: surplus and virtuous. Spoken in all sincerity, most likely; but hard to credit when so many are feeling pinched and grubby, or said to be. Schooled at Rugby, the Royal Tank Regiment and Jesus College, Cambridge, Andrew Mitchell gave voice to British authority, the way it used to sound. Sounding like that in 2012 he was always going to have to resign.

Authority in Crisis (2) Deborah Glass, Independent Police Complaints Commission Wide-eyed through rimless glasses, high-vaulted eyebrows drawn into a look of continual surprise. But the default expression – Shock! Horror! – of Deborah Glass, deputy-chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, is offset by the calm authority of her voice, as she reads a lengthy statement on the Commission’s new inquiry into the Hillsborough disaster of 1989. The biggest ever inquiry into police activity. Begin by reviewing 450 000 pages of documentation. Precise, deliberate diction of someone accustomed to high stakes: Glass worked in Zurich as an investment banker, before becoming a financial regulator, and, latterly, police complaints commissioner. Occasionally the sandpaper sound of her Australian upbringing (Monash U, LLB 1982, couldn’t wait to get away from her first job as a solicitor in Melbourne), but hardly enough even to call it a twang. Earrings and a pearl necklace above an oddly informal white top (bunching up beneath her linen jacket, more T-shirt than blouse). Fine hair (needs volume) and a wonky parting; but the heavy metal coiffure favoured by many professional women, would only have done her a disservice. Here, we are told, and we can see and hear it for ourselves, is human frailty tempered by due process. A personal, personable metaphor for the painstaking work of the IPCC, allegedly.

Authority in Crisis (1) George Entwistle, BBC Does he normally wear a tie? In his new job (Director General of the BBC), probably; but the tie George Entwistle’s wearing today might have been made to look like it doesn’t belong to him. Similarly the suit, which says of the wearer: he’s got one on but don’t think of him as ‘a suit’. Certainly not a pinstripe or chalk stripe, red braces and Tag Heuer ‘suit’. None of that ‘neo-liberalism’ in here, thank you. This is the present-day face of UK ‘public service’ management: spectacles which look to Europe (surely seen on Borgen last year) rather than the USA; so too, his haircut – Dutch modernist typographer, or, if you’re not attuned to such things, just plain short (but fluffy short; not even a wafer-skinned waif could describe it as bristling); ditto the management style – emphasis on procedure rather than Reithian personal authority, or equally Reithian subordination to a greater cause. (BBC procedure now dictates that we should have access to the Director General’s written declaration of personal interests, in which he declares that he has none.) The D-G – insiders still refer to the ‘D-G’, pronounced as two long syllables to match the duration of ‘B-B-C’ (short, short, long) – is holding a press conference to announce two inquiries into the fallout from Sir Jimmy Savile (a third inquiry into sexism and harassment at the Beeb, may be announced shortly). Oddly, Entwistle appears before a blank canvas (no image projected onto it, not a BBC logo in sight); unless it’s a ploy to keep the BBC brand away from such toxicity. Tight around the mouth, during the opening section of his statement he keeps looking down, maybe at a list of keywords he’s brought with him. Perhaps not used to limelight of such intensity, after only a few weeks in the top job; or is he partly distracted by the thought of losing it, if he doesn’t succeed in getting a grip?

Doubtful Performance Georgy Porgy, all those puddings and pies are clearly taking effect. The nation’s belt-tightener-in-chief is notable for the ample girth of his neck. Haughty demeanour, Regency face (too plump for Dark Shadows, but a kiss curl would not go amiss); George Osborne MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer, right honourable lump of lah-de-dah. This year, the Conservative Party is holding its annual conference in Birmingham’s International Convention Centre. The main auditorium is Symphony Hall. Seating capacity: 2000 approx; no more than a medium-sized music venue. Even so, not every seat is occupied for the chancellor’s address, and not every occupant is wholly preoccupied by it. Symphony Hall’s owners require 30 days’ notice of pyrotechnics: no need; his speech is a damp squib. Even when the Rt Hon pauses for applause, he is not guaranteed a response. There have been occasional smatterings – half-hearted patterings petering out. At the close, the prime minister promptly stands up, ensuring others will follow. But the ovation is short-lived, all the same. The chancellor risks just one wave to Conference before exiting stage right. Pursued by doubt.

Actually Miliband More Wallace (and Gromit) than Wolverine: wide eyed; toothy (big teeth, Prince Andrew-style), lip curled in a near-sneer that doesn’t dare – actually. Aged 42 but still the boyish sort to say ‘actually’, even if the word did not actually figure in his speech (Ed Miliband, leader’s address to the Labour Party conference, Tuesday 2nd October 2012). Actual figure of speech was ‘my story’: my exiled parents found their haven in Britain's anti-fascist war; I myself was nurtured by 'our country's' comprehensive system of education. Made me what I am today. In brief (the speech itself went on for 64 minutes), the Story of Miliband Minor is equivalent to: Harry Potter leaves Hogwarts to join the Woodcraft Folk and afterwards the Anti-Apartheid Movement, before climbing onto Uncle Gordon's career ladder (Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband's mentor; former UK prime minister, chancellor of the exchequer, and Labour leader). Wizard!, actually. Yes, Ed is herbivore to the core. On the other hand, during his speech there were rare moments of swarthy authority, in which the face of 'Mr Leader' (so called by 'Mr Forgetful', US presidential candidate Mitt Romney, on a visit to Britain in July), framed by a new, swept-back hairstyle (Pompadour rather than College Boy), temporarily lost its habitually pale demeanour. But to retain the idea of Mr Miliband in a position of red-blooded power, we must shut our eyes to the way he kept closing his – just for a second, as he strained to remember the words of his own life story.

Loyalism-lite in Downton Belfast Bowler hats, tilted back, looking not quite right; making the men wearing them seem Stan Laurel-gauche. Headgear not often worn: only hired for the day; or dislodged from the attic and dusted off, the hats their fathers wore. Marching to ‘The Sash’, on Saturday 29th September 2012, thirty thousand Loyalists commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Ulster Covenant, when the province’s Protestants announced their intention to remain in perpetual Union with Britain. A century on, renewing their vows? The ceremony was more of a ‘heritage event’, complete with bouncy castle in the grounds of Stormont. Most Orangemen dressed as their fathers did, emphasising continuity with the role their fathers played. Then as now, to the sound of fife and drum. But Britain’s integrity is no longer threatened by militant Republicanism, which means that Unionism today is more of a costume drama. Accordingly, if today’s stout-defender-wannabes are going to act their traditional role, they really ought to pay attention to their wardrobe. ‘No Surrender’ is only watchable with bowlers worn at the correct angle. On the day, some Loyalists had clearly realised the importance of historical detail. With Indian Army-style puttees wrapped round their calves, and even the twirl of a false moustache, they recalled their forebears by performing an affectionate parody of them. Camping it up even more, the parade was led by a Unionist peer in a horse-drawn carriage: name of Lord Laird; in other words, ‘Lord Lord’. Even Downton Abbey’s scriptwriters would have rejected this as too fanciful.

Life and Death Strands of pale dirt-track against a background of lurid green, but the camera is focussed on a fugitive (baggy ‘urban’ clothing, bareheaded, is that a pigtail waggling at the back of his head?) climbing out of a red SUV (stolen Dodge Caliber; awkwardly parked off-road). Follows him as he hesitates, then breaks into a zig-zag run. A few strides and he stumbles into the sand; rolls himself up again, runs forward a few more paces then veers off the track, knee-deep into the grass. Looking for cover? No escape from the camera-eye. Staring down from the studio (Fox News, Studio 5), commentator Shephard Smith employs a deliberately casual tone (semi-demi-tone short of a full draaawl), inviting us to note the perpetrator’s erratic behaviour: he could be using as well as losing. But maybe this is him taking back the initiative. Going against the run of play, he stops, turns around, now back-to-camera. Uses his right hand to reach for something secreted on his left side. Brings it out, raises it in his right hand, points it at his temple. Hardly a pause……Is this a performance for the camera, or an act of simple desperation? Even if he knew himself, we never will. Hardly a pause before he falls, face forward. By the time his body hits the ground his pants have come down a couple of inches. Shephard Smith has further to drop. The studio camera catches him, bug-eyed, shouting for the police-chase live-feed to ‘get off it, get off’ this unexpected death.

Existential crisis, Chinese-style Striding across the stage, the men who aren’t there. ‘Faceless bureaucrats’, Westerners are wont to say, but these ‘suits’ are minus even more. China’s new Poliburo has no existence yet – no face, no body, neither legs nor feet, because, though overdue, the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hasn’t been convened; not while the stink of scandal lingers over Beijing like a London smog. Malodorous developments include: suspended death sentence meted out to murderous wife (Gu Kailai) of former Politburo-crat Bo Xilai (sentence commuted to life imprisonment for killing British business associate, Neil Heywood). Playboy son (Ling Gu) of close presidential adviser (Ling Jihua), presumed dead at the wheel; naked girls trapped and paralysed in the wreckage of his £250k Ferrari Spider. For Ling Jnr, a shadowy existence suspended between life and death: his death still not officially acknowledged, though he's not been seen alive since the day of car crash, back in March; and his father has already been edged out of his top job. Not even the patronage of retiring president Hu Jintao could stop Ling Snr becoming a non-person. Hu’s likely successor, current vice-president Xi Jinping, recently affirmed his bodily existence by appearing at Beijing’s Agricultural University after two weeks hidden from public view, possibly as a result of a back injury. Xi boasts big hair. Like Elvis, he thinks, though with his small features the effect is more like Roy Orbison, laureate of the lonely. After a spate of suicides at Foxconn telecoms parts plants across China, earlier this year the Taiwanese corporation appointed counsellors to deal with acute loneliness among young migrant workers living in company owned, factory-dormitory towns – cockroach-infested dormitories, factories forensically clean as an autopsy table, or a Beijing courtroom. On Monday night (25/9/12), two thousand workers swapped their habitual loneliness for a collective, teenage rampage through Foxconn’s Taiyuan assembly plant, situated in China’s northern coalfields. Ten hours of life-affirming riot, eventually quelled by militarised police: the CCP’s Terrorcotta Army. Fleeing the police assault, Taiyuan's rioters may even have found themselves – and each other. It’s the Politburo which is feeling lonely and insecure; right now, it still doesn’t exist.

Xchester: ‘Abbey Gardens, Hattersley’, is the widely reported address where two Greater Manchester policewomen, Nicola Hughes (pretty and 'bubbly') and Fiona Bone (her photo has a cheeky look like Pauline Quirke's), were killed on Tuesday 18th September. It’s got previous: Moors murderer Ian Brady lived on the estate in the 1960s, not longer after it was built. But the postal address of the crime scene is ‘Mottram’, where there are ‘stunning views’ of the Peak District and the stone-built old police station is currently on sale for £300,000. In Abbey Gardens, on the edge of the Hattersley estate, proletarian Manchester protrudes into the outlying middle classes. Bet they don’t like it up ‘em. Meanwhile, spurning Mrs Bouquet and all her works, Manchester is half-proud to have been known as ‘Gunchester’ in the 1990s; ‘Gun-’ being half-a-decade on from off-yer-face ‘Madchester’ (Happy Mondays, Hacienda, smiley meets scally), with firearms. There’s even a gym on the south side of the city (in Wythenshawe, the biggest housing estate in Britain) which issued a promotional video purporting to be CCTV of a gangland shooting: silent movie, Chav-style; the underclassy club people are dying to get into (but no one was armed in making this film). Watching it on YouTube, you could almost mistake these premises for the Cotton Tree pub (built 1905) in dreary Droylsden (another part of the Greater Manchester sprawl) where in May one-eyed, Irish-born Dale Cregan is thought to have killed amateur boxer Mark Short in a punishment shooting gone wrong, before going on to murder Mark’s father, David Short, three months later, followed a month after that by the two policewomen. Perhaps the murdered officers thought the call-out was to leafy Mottram instead of ‘Gun-Mad-Manchester’, where the sensibility is Shaun Ryder meets Baudrillard’s Postmodern but pockets of gang war are really taking place.

Boys and Girls Flipped like a toy and over it goes. Car up-ended by a bunch of Chinese boys – no longer mere ‘boy’, are they, guys? – scouting Beijing for Japanese products they can vandalise. Gleefully, thoughtlessly smashing windows. Not stopping to cross-reference: ‘I love the sound of breaking glass’; just lovin’ it. In another part of the city, thousands of girls are coming out to Cos-Play: it's an international convention of youngsters (mainly young women) dressed up in costume and play-acting parts from anime and manga, taking place in Beijing this year. The girls slide into a pose. Hold it; then strike another. Holding still is what they came for. Having to move between freeze frames is their dead time, like silence on the radio. Inspired by Japanese comic books and films, posing and vogueing like New York’s finest trannie, Cos-Playing China Girl is as self-conscious as any female impersonator. Meanwhile, Beijing's boys are firing their ire on a Canon photo shop.

Shoeless: town and country style Sandals were slowing down his escape so now he races barefoot through the white streets of Tunis, wreathed in teargas. In Cairo they’ve got good at throwing the canisters back at police – especially the man dressed as a Mid-Westerner in checked shirt and bluejeans. Beats baseball. Spuming water, fired from a police cannon, rains down into the centre of Sanaa’s main street, but the Yemeni crowd has already parted to the sides. In Tripoli, Lebanon (even the BBC tripped up here), the Colonel’s beard is badly singed; beneath this icon, his KFC outlet burnt to a crisp. Whole cream milk shaken into the burning eyes of a rioter who’s been tear-gassed. Head turned half-way round to check how fast the police line is moving, lithe lady in a gas mask, running. Youths standing on burnt out cars, gesturing to police, posing for cameras like victorious athletes. From Benghazi to Chennai, and further east to Kuala Lumpur, the streets are action-packed with anti-Americans. Meanwhile, in the rural provinces of India, protestors have taken to the water, neck-deep. There they stand for days on end, heads sticking out against government policy of raising water levels behind India’s dams (60 years since Nehru dubbed dams ‘the temples of modern India’), displacing many villagers. Without shoes, their feet turn to bad meat, pockmarked with parasites. Police cited health grounds when recently removing a group of protestors from the water around Hada, Madhya Pradesh. In that other twilight, before dawn, the only bright spots were the fluorescent lifejackets of police officers wading through grey water, bringing protestors to shore: slowly, slowly; one by one.

Benghazi Barbecue: the almost accidental death of an American ambassador Clipped box hedges and manicured bonsai trees. Strolling through the grounds in football tops and Ts. No hurry. The sound of crickets, then it’s someone’s phone chirping. One guy with a serious camera, others make do with their mobiles, holding them out towards the cauldron of flame. Are we in the Olympic Park? No, it’s a car, flaming too fiercely to be doused out in the adjacent swimming pool; and behind the burning vehicle (under a car porch in true suburban style), the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, is going up in smoke. Right now, American ambassador Chris Stevens (Californian veteran of the Peace Corps, fluent in Arabic, friend of ‘the Arab Spring’) is succumbing to smoke inhalation. But Stevens has not been targeted by terrorists. Hardly anyone knows he’s arrived from the capital, Tripoli, especially not those – not rioters, not quite as innocent as bystanders – who only want to have been there when a little bit of America was burning. By the morning after, the compound will look like a real crime scene: blackened buildings, ransacked interior, the pool half-full of debris. The night before, though, if you agree to mistake small arms fire for firecrackers, it could have been a party getting out of hand.

Move Along, Please The late summer had been due to turn autumnal, but London was allowed one more day (Monday 10th September 2012) solely to bask in the success of the Games. A Victory Parade (Mansion House to the Mall), crowds along the route, thick as cream (‘many thousands’ – nobody even tried to count ‘em), and 800 gleeful Olympians and Paralympians floating above their shouts and cheers. The whole affair as bumptious and good-natured as Boris Johnson addressing the athletes: ‘you produced such paroxysms of tears and joy on the sofas of Britain that you probably not only inspired a generation, but helped to create one as well’. The entire city as bright and playful as BoJo’s hair. Yet already something wistful in the air. This was the last moment of spontaneous unity; the only proper repeat of the unrepeatable. All the rest is propaganda. Sponsored re-runs will turn the winning Games into a series of also-rans, if we let them; unless we resist the eye-candy of endlessly repeated highlights. Better to let this moment go, and perhaps one day we will be surprised to come across it again, unexpectedly evoked in a new moment, each of them enriched by association. What’s yet to come will be all the more splendid, if in the meantime we have not over-used the colour of memory.

Touched Mock Tudor Surrey, home of The Good Life (mid-career, moderate achiever jacks in his job and joins his gorgeous wife in turning their ample garden into a smallholding complete with piggery), now accessory to a drive-by shooting hundreds of miles away. Instead of the al-Hilli family (they sound jolly, don’t they?) returning home from their Alpine holiday (last outing before the girls are at school), police and the media have set up camp around their house in Claygate. Instead of painting the doors of the second garage (it needs doing), in face masks and protective suits (protecting potential evidence, of course), officers are stripping down the house in search of clues. The road outside has a peculiar liveliness. Not only police following procedures or a sudden flurry of photographers (maybe she’s a relative: snap, snap, snap). Mainly it’s those sensible-looking, not-really neighbours (they must have been sensible; they made it to the stockbroker belt) prompted to pay their respects to people they never knew and bodies that aren’t there. Out of their ordinariness they come, carrying flowers and asking the policeman at the garden gate to put theirs near the house (already too many: ‘I’m sorry, madam, they will have to stay outside’). Drawn here – though of course they wouldn’t have wished it on anyone – to touch the hem of the extraordinary. Now heading home in the late summer sunshine, just as their forefathers would have moved back from the altar rail.

It’s All About The Boy On one side, the prime minister. Making eye contact, hands at chest height, fingers splayed, saying: ‘it’s like this’. Full-on explanatory mode, right? While the p-m continues to expound, on his right-hand-side (but maybe not his right-hand-man), Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister, fields a different question. Nick (David Cameron had to ‘Dave’ himself for a while but Nick was always Nicked) is leaning back slightly, arms folded, brow furrowed. The bouncer’s position. Listening to the loser who’s trying for a squeeze on the door, staying silent and at the same time saying: I’m taking this for now but I could rush you any time I like. Not clever, Nick, to let yourself be seen in this aggressive-defensive posture. Prompted, I’m pretty sure, neither by a barbed question put to you nor a sharp point sticking into you, but by the mere presence of a beautiful blond boy. Standing in between the politicians, immediately the centre of attention. Son of the mum you were photographed having coffee with earlier (minimalist white mugs on the kitchen-diner table), recent occupant of a new property in the housing development (Aldermere, Cheshunt, Herts) you came here to be associated with. Because Britain will boom if there’s a building boom, geddit? But their association with the son of the house, has left both ministers upstaged. Downing Street officials should have remembered the adage about (not) working with children and animals. The child in question has turned away from Nick to look up at Dave (well he would, wouldn’t he?), who is still expostulating to someone else. He would have to look up at Dave, wouldn’t he?, because the boy is a good foot shorter than the prime minister. Yet this line of sight, from junior up to senior, is richly ironic. In the boy’s eyes there is a look of wonder, amazement. But not, I wannabe like you, you’re amazing; rather, where on earth have you parachuted in from, stranger? They could be creatures from different planets, this boy and his uncles-for-a-day. He already knows that the avuncular ‘power duo’ (Hertfordshire Mercury) can do nothing for him.

E Pluribus Unum Still cool as iced-coffee, even now he could have walked in off the set of Mad Men; though he tells us these are different times and he himself is different, having sent young men to die in battle, having held their bereaved parents in his arms. Seeking a second term, Barack Obama is still doing it right. It’s a performance, yes (nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Charlotte, North Carolina, September 2012); but that does not mean it’s false. When Obama reports that falling to his knees was the only correct posture for a man laid low by the responsibilities of office, his humility rings true. When he addresses ‘America’, above all when he calls out to the only person with the power to maintain hope and refrain from cynicism – ‘you’, the timing is perfect. So what if it’s rehearsed? Is the Catholic mass fraudulent because it’s been practised before? Bonded to the people in the hall – expectant, ecstatic, Obama becomes their celebrant. They are transfixed by him as he is transfigured into all of them together. Standing in for the best of each; standing tall as the best of all. Holy Father Obama, your communion wells up out of the convention centre and washes over every TV viewer.

The Colour of Desperation is Orange Bright as a fire marshal’s vest, corn cobs piled high in front of the villagers’ houses. Is that what you would have lived on, Qu Huaqiang, if you hadn’t entered a government office in China’s Shandong province, and blown yourself up with home-made explosives? Twenty years after the big city accident which exiled you to your home village, perhaps you couldn’t stand the corn getting stuck between your teeth yet again. Almost 20 years ago, same vintage as the construction job that crippled you, London’s 'postmodern' building boom produced No 1 Poultry, EC2. As featured in H.M. the Queen's camp Olympics cameo with James Bond; clad in that garish, marbled limestone which has been ageing orange ever since. Were you sad to see it hadn’t remained salmon pink, Madame X (unnamed 30-something Asian female in business attire)? Is that what tipped you over the edge of the restaurant roof garden? Leaving behind a floral print bag and a glass of wine (one sip taken). Plummeting past eight floors of Aviva offices – viva meaning lively, full of life. Falling to the ground face down – hummph, in another desperate death.

Cover-Ups The Christian girl accused of burning the Koran, helped into an armoured car with her whole head hidden underneath a white sheet. The Pakistani imam accused of fabricating evidence against her, led into court with his faced bandaged – for anonymity, not because of injury. To the West, an Egyptian newscaster appears front-of-camera wearing hijab. To the East, Chinese fashion favours the face-kini, a new item of beachwear combining ski-mask with balaclava in a High Street iteration of S&M. Nothing spurious about the ostensible reasons: respectively, to prevent reprisals against the accused and their families; religious observance; high status accorded to pearl white skin. But, these aside, this age of self-presentation also reveals a strange allure in covering up.

Pace of Change Debris shoots out horizontally. Arterial spray. Twin towers lean towards each other. About to embrace? They never get the chance. The crowd ‘ooohhs’ and ‘aaahhs’ – approving noises with only a hint of surprise – as two skyscrapers crash to the ground and rise again solemnly in slow moving circles of dust and rubble. This is the southern Chinese city of Chongqing, where the cycle of construction and reconstruction is anything but slow. Demolished to make room for something bigger and better, these old buildings lasted less than a decade.

The Man With No Name vs Invisible Obama If you were alone in a lift with POTUS, what would you ask him? At the Republican National Convention, Clint Eastwood came on stage to play a version of this game. Except that the Hollywood star formerly known as The Man With No Name (TMWNW, Spaghetti Westerns) didn’t actually ask a question of ‘invisible Obama’ (headline, Reuters). He said he was going to, then turned the phrase round to challenge the president’s record on unemployment. Referring to ‘the 23 million unemployed in this country’, the actor-director sounded short of breath. Was he choked by barely suppressed anger and sorrow, or just acting? Either way, in his cameo role he called into question the high level of emotion surrounding Obama’s election (‘Oprah was crying, even I was crying’), compared to the low grade attention doled out to the unemployed. Clint Eastwood is an old man now but he did not appear out of date. The eyes are set back further, weakening his famously unstinting gaze; his hair is un-seriously wispy and the perfect nose is just too damned perfect. But there’s still the grain of his voice and that fascinatingly implacable face – long and hard as the faces of Easter Island. When the camera panned round, however, to the RNC delegates applauding him, boy, were we thrown back in time? On the money, of the moment, yet TMWNW was addressing the past.

Ryan rides the storm Winsome from Wisconsin. The Ruminating Republican. If Mitt Romney is wooden, his vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan is Woody from Toy Story. Were he conventionally handsome it might cramp the style of the senior partner. But instead of the mature man, Ryan (42) is Mr Almost Grown. Absolutely not Mercutio, more like Sugarfoot or the Sundance Kid (though not as fully formed as Robert Redford), especially with his lips forming a rueful curve and his hair brushed forward to evoke the crew-cut-that-used-to-be. Whether or not it ever was, there is now a poignant contrast with Romney’s slicked back coif: elder to younger; generation to generation. Ryan is a picture of what integrity looks like just before it draws to a close. That’s his image, anyway, and with proceedings delayed because of Isaac storming the town, at the Republican National Convention there’s not much to do but doodle.

Painting The News: notes towards the redefinition of reporting What defines the reporter? It used to be that reporters went out to look at events, and came back with answers to four or five questions: who, what, where, when, and, sometimes, why? They covered events by capturing basic information, writing it up in the form of a ‘story’. But the basics are now readily available – more easily and at lower cost to the reader than ever before. It does not take a reporter to answer the first four of these questions when we can gather as much from open access, user-generated platforms such as Twitter; and these platforms have all but dispensed with the form of the ‘story’. From the traditional list, that leaves only one question for the reporter to answer; and just the one answer to be formulated. True, the outstanding question – why? – is also the most difficult, but this still amounts to a reduction in the reporter’s role; especially since separating the fifth question from the other four Ws means that the last remaining answer often comes better from analysts, commentators and leader writers rather than reporters. So what is the reporter for? Now that basic information is often provided not by reporters but by people-formerly-known-as-readers, it is surely time to reconsider what the people-formerly-known-as-reporters should be doing instead of supplying the basics. Consideration of this question is especially timely since, unless we make a point of addressing it directly, chances are that the Leveson Inquiry and its legacy will redefine the reporter in terms of how well he behaves and what codes of practice he has been seen to follow. Although this process may demonstrate who is and who is not considered fit to be a reporter, it cannot show what purpose reporting is fit for. British journalism will have wasted a good crisis if it checks in for moral rehab instead of seizing the opportunity to reformulate itself. Whereas Leveson et al pose the current situation as a moral crisis, what the reporter really faces is a fundamental question of purpose – what am I here to do?; and a supplementary question – if I am to fulfil a modified purpose, now that the basics are covered by non-reporters, what form should this fulfilment take? However well-intentioned, it is not possible to answer these questions with a new morality. For reporting to be fully rehabilitated, i.e. for it to continue into a new phase as a discrete, journalistic activity, it has to have a purpose which cannot be fulfilled by just anyone with a Twitter account. Perhaps reporters should be using their powers of observation to supply not just the basics, but a description of events which captures both their uniqueness and their similarity to other human experiences. Maybe this always was the higher purpose of the best reporters, but now that the basics are covered by non-reporters while the fifth question invites analysis rather than observation, showing what makes an event distinctive and at the same time what makes it human, could emerge as the primary purpose of reporting. Supposing that the fulfilment of this dual role did become the re-making of the reporter, at least it would require a level of literary technique far in excess of what most people can ordinarily do with the 140 characters afforded by Twitter; and this, thankfully, could only confirm the requirement for dedicated reporting rather than user-generated content. But if the reporter needs a new form of reporting, what would it look like? This is the task which I have begun to address, in a very humble way, in this blog. The short pieces published on this blog roll are a small scale attempt to develop a secondary form of observational writing, predicated upon basic information which is assumed to be in the public domain already. In that there is no legwork involved (only internet surfing), it could be said that they hardly qualify as reporting. But they do entail a kind of capture or recapture on my part – grasping at something in the scene that has not been seen before, and in this aspect I regard them as a continuation of the reporter’s role. They also incorporate other ways of seeing drawn from a variety of imaginative precedents such as advertising and painting. These pieces are intended to serve as adverts for reality: they are short items which go beyond the basics, just as advertisements go beyond basic product information, composing their subject matter in an arrangement of accurate but unexpected – pleasurably surprising – associations. In this respect, though they are journalistic my pieces are also positioned somewhere along the axis which ends in the iconic images surrounding commercial brands; but mine are ‘branded’ events rather than commodities. My way of working could also be described as ‘painting the news’ – rendering current events in an imaginative way in order to capture something essential about them, without prioritising or being restricted to basic information which will already have appeared elsewhere. The model for this modus operandi is a magnificent painting. Caravaggio’s ‘The Beheading of John the Baptist’ re-tells a well-known biblical episode. It captures the moment after the executioner has struck the fatal blow with his sword, just as he is about to swoop down with a knife to cut through the tendons still linking head to torso. Although the scale of this work and Caravaggio’s level of insight, far surpass my own petty offerings, it is his combination of the sensational and the humane, his spectrum of sacrilege and the sacred, prose and poetry, which I have sought to imitate in my rendering of recent events. My efforts were prompted by the problems facing journalism, and they can only be informed by my own, all too limited experiences as a reporter, writer, former musician and occasional art-lover. But my blog pieces are also derived from the position I find myself in as a part-time Londoner (working in the capital but living elsewhere); and their content is further informed by London’s current position in relation to the rest of the world. Today, London’s defining characteristic is its estrangement from the social relation of production. As the major, global supplier of financial services, this ‘fictitious capital’ is characterised by secondary activity which is increasingly distant (not only in terms of mileage) from the primary activity of other cities and countries. In recognition of this, my efforts comprise a miniscule attempt to utilise self-consciously secondary forms of writing to enable the reader to identify with the essence or primary nature of events. But the essential or primary nature of events does not lie in their immediate occurrence; neither is it found in the basics now covered on Twitter. Their essence occurs in the realisation of their uniqueness (the particular way in which something has happened to specified individuals) and their social character or commonality (how this particular event is also an aspect of the general human condition, comparable to other people’s experiences). Accordingly, in each of my blog entries I have tried to identify not only what distinguishes the featured event but also what it has in common with other human experience. Instead of aiming for an exclusive – the hallmark of reporting in the twentieth century – my pieces are intentionally associative: they are intended as a literary form of re-alignment, integrating contingent elements in order to construct the featured event in its essential, social reality, i.e. as a combination of both its uniqueness and its commonality. On account of where I am and who I am, my reporting is necessarily derivative, and in this respect my reports are formed in the image of London’s secondary way of life. In recognition of this, I have tried to use the relatively rarefied techniques associated with literature, advertising and painting in order to show the uniqueness of featured events and their association with our common humanity. It is not for me to judge whether my pieces have succeeded in this aim, but insofar as they suggest this possibility, they must also suggest the possibility of reconciling those aspects of human existence which have recently become further estranged. Although estrangement between different aspects of human existence pre-dates the global division between productive labour and finance-style activity, the geographical distance between production and finance has only deepened the divide between interpersonal relations and the social relation of production. Meanwhile, in the shape of the world wide web, we already have the technology to overcome this degree of separation. But the available cultural forms are barely enough to effect reconciliation. We need new forms of expression which are themselves informed by this estrangement, while at the same time addressing the problem in such a way as to suggest the possibility of transcending it. Though absurdly small when measured against the tasks involved, nonetheless this blog is offered as a very early sketch of that immense possibility.

Phew, it’s just the Recession (not Terrorism) Later pictures show only a brown hand peeping out from beneath the white sheet. But there is one fuzzy photo, taken before the police covered the body, which shows the victim of New York gunman Jeffrey Johnson. The shape of the body seems more womanly than male, although it’s hard to tell from the baggy pants and big shirt s/he’s wearing. Let’s just say it’s a she. Her head and torso lie flat on the pavement. But her legs are jumbled up against the wall (the wall of a shop and office building in Manhattan), as if her feet started walking at the very moment when her top half slumped to the floor. Death came untidily, then. Not a clean, cool, smart, wind-in-your-hair death, if there ever is such a thing. Meanwhile Mayor Michael Bloomberg, speaking at a press conference two hours later, was relieved to file this fatality neatly away under ‘not terrorism’. Ditto the fate of the gunman himself, shot dead by police a few minutes later. In the shadow of the Empire State Building, in the run up to the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, this might have been another iconic killing. If it had been a suicide shooter, the plump police chiefs and the onlooking crowd (dressed down in the late summer heat: 75 degrees at the time of the 9am slaying), would have been automatically recruited as extras in another Gotham City epic. But because Jeffrey Johnson came back to kill someone he used to work with, or for, at the women’s clothes firm which sacked him when it downsized a year ago, this whole episode was swiftly demoted to a B-movie. Of course he, and only he, was personally responsible. But in another sense both Johnson and his victim were casualties of recession; and unlike terrorism, everything to do with recession is banal, non-iconic. Even when it bleeds, it doesn’t lead.

Prince of Ginger ‘Embarrassing photos’ is the phrase used by the Daily Telegraph online to link to the TMZ celebrity website photo-story of Prince Harry in a Las Vegas hotel suite ‘getting BARE ASS naked during a game of strip billiards’. The two pix are of such poor quality you can barely (ha!) make out, first, a naked man cupping his balls while a topless woman holds onto him round the waist; and, second, from the rear, the same naked man (the crack between his buttocks modestly X-ed out) holding onto a naked woman by her waist (the two of them seemingly skewered together with a pool cue). But the photos are far from embarrassing. They serve to upload the third-in-line to the British throne into the semi-fictitious life world realised in television shows such as The Only Way Is Essex. Check out the abundance aesthetic! Flesh – pots of it. Ascetic, it ain’t! Not that the ‘strip pool’ episode is merely a stunt designed to update the British royals; although this is likely to be its long-term effect. But almost as it if were a set-up, it so happens that the colour scheme of the hotel suite fits perfectly with the prince’s natural colouring. Brown walls, latte carpet, cream soft furnishings; even the pool table baize is tan, not green. Every element is aligned to Harry’s reddish hue. Cue billiards, bazoomas and the Ginger Prince.

Spot the difference 'Thank you and God bless you, and God bless the United States of America' (1). 'Thank you and God bless you, and may God bless America' (2). Once again (1), and then again (2), Barack Obama invokes God and America to draw his speech to a close. POTUS is one of the few political performers who knows how to commute between vocal registers, moving effortlessly between public rhetoric and apparently private conversation. On the campaign trail prior to the presidential election in November, he’s been demonstrating this ability to good advantage. Over and over again. But now a study of Obama and his teleprompters (quoted above) by a Reuters photographer, seems to show that even the variations in what he says, the bit of Barack that comes out differently because that’s how the moment has moved him – yeah!, is really scripted in advance. Just as Dean Martin acted drunk, Obama is performing a patina of confidence and ease. Will it be enough to start a fire this time?

Korean workers across the centuries On the inside, the factory is more like a laboratory. No impurities here, though not all-white; instead, peppy colours (yellow, blue, tan) that could have come from Ikea. With its flat planes, immaculate surfaces, and a shop floor so highly polished even the toughest sar’nt-major would have to acknowledge his reflection, the place is pristine as a brand. But this ‘brand’ is not merely decorative; it’s the Hyundai plant at Ulsan (250 miles from Seoul), where cars get made by the million. Conveyed along the spotless track, ministered to by men and machines, slowly the vehicles take shape. Or they would, if production had not been suspended. Hyundai autoworkers are on strike for more pay, better hours, and the integration of subcontracted employees into the regular labour force. Outside the engine plant where the night shift is massing, we are back in another century. Neon lamps give off a sepia light in which the strikers and their clothes are grey and grainy. They way they look tonight, these workers have taken on a rough, old texture, as crude as the long, long poles they carry to keep the police at bay. But this is only an appearance, a trick of the light that shows people lagging behind the world they themselves have made. Or is it?

Pale Freedom Gangly Julian fills the frame of the French windows leading onto the tiny embassy balcony. Trademark Albino bob now shaved to short-back-and-sides. Pale skin and a soft mouth. Ever-so slightly sibilant speech. Assange’s statement is framed by reference to legendary libertarian struggles: the world is watching – Chicago, 1968; freedom of speech and the American Declaration of Independence. Appealing to Obama to ‘do the right thing’, he evokes both civil rights activism and Spike Lee’s world-weary re-make of it. But the resonance for Assange comes from none of these. Instead he echoes the new compulsion to make a spectacle of ourselves. His Wikileaks observes the principle that manifesto ergo sum and applies it to the state. Unthinkingly.

South African Surrealism The body of a miner, nose and chin nuzzling into the crook of his own arm. Shot by the thin blue line, down on one knee to fire into a straggle of strikers, already regretting the heat of their action. Was this man comforting himself at the moment of death? More likely his head and arm arranged themselves arbitrarily, same as the other bodies strewn around at random. If only this were a Surrealists’ Convention, and they were suffering for their art.

The Show Must Go On And On And On Between choruses Sir Paul McCartney shouted, ‘I can’t stop it’. He was kidding himself if he thought that audience participation in ‘Hey, Jude’, the closing number in the London 2012 opening ceremony, was unstoppable. At 12.50am in Stratford’s Olympics Stadium, SingAlongAMacca was more gently simmering than boiling over; and plenty of seats were already empty by the time Sir Paul stood up to conduct the final chord. But supposing he meant Britain compulsively remixing itself – frantically sampling itself in a bid to hold the world’s attention, then the ceremony up to and including his own participation in it, proved him right. Out of the mouths of baby-faced old men..... Out of the ground: in the opening ceremony’s most compelling representation of British history, concertina-ed chimneys sprang from the turf to symbolise the rise of Britain’s smokestack industries. Industrialisation really did make men as mobile as molten metal, so the scene in which a dramatised facsimile of ‘industrial Britain’ actually went on to mould the five Olympic rings, rang true. (How apt that a disused building on the former Ford’s Dagenham estate was used as a rehearsal room for this sequence.) So, too, the parade of iron bedsteads representing the formation of the National Health Service in 1948. Never mind that Sir Kenneth Branagh, the actor presiding over relentless industrialisation in the role of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, politely refrained from lighting his cigar; or that few Brits would have recognised Brunel without the aid of TV commentary, helpfully scripted in advance. The section highlighting Britain’s formative experiences between the mid-nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth, managed to keep its line. In accordance with the original, historical period, there was certainty in the tableaux, too. By comparison, the lengthy retrospective of British pop culture, with the athletes’ parade sandwiched into it, was circuitous rather than directional. Scores of micro-samples – from ‘Pretty Vacant’ to ‘Tiger Feet’; from Queen to the Queen, were pasted into the presentation like so many examples of clip art. Old Man McCartney was there as a replica of his younger self – a sort-of hologram with sadly sunken cheeks. As they buzzed around a world audience of ‘up to one billion’, these relics made for a messy mixture. Yet all the ones-I-made earlier (why no Blue Peter?) comprised an accurate reflection of London as it really is today: the place where things produced earlier (culture from the past, commodities from elsewhere, capital derived from global production) are continually re-mixed, re-branded, and re-launched around the world. So if this part of the opening ceremony was no more purposeful than a merry-go-round, that’s telling it like it is. True to form, television coverage of the ceremony had not even finished before images from two hours earlier or even two minutes ago were being recycled and beamed around again in a brief reprise of the ‘historic’ occasion. (Commentators describing an event as ‘historic’ when it has not even finished yet, have already pinged it into a higher orbit of continuous recycling.) On last night’s showing, this part of the world really ‘can’t stop’ circulating itself; even while the Olympics are on, it’s the only game in London town.

Inability to Complete Nick Buckles: man out of time. Nick Buckles: man of his times. The head of G4S, the security firm that failed to recruit enough guards in time for the Olympics, is also a man of the moment, perfectly synchronised with the way London is today. £5.3m earnings last year. Cheesy grin like David Dickinson. Central Casting for the fat cat that only knows how to cream? But Nick Buckles does not lack integrity. His operation was fully integrated with London’s current way of being. ‘They are all working through a process of interview, two or three different degrees of training, licensing, accreditation’ – Buckles describing the applicants who didn’t make it onto the company’s books in time. He went on: ‘Our review process was around the number of people applying for interviews, we had 100,000 of those, the number of people interviewed which was 50,000. So basically you work through that process of numbers….’ Process, process, process. Not only his keyword but also the key to a city – the City, which processes value for and on behalf of global capital. Accordingly, Buckles has been carrying out a ‘process of numbers’ for and on behalf of the International Olympics Committee and its London brokers, Locog. His company does not seem to have fully grasped that the outcome of this process was to be finalised before the opening ceremony. But its inability to complete is consistent with London’s everyday priorities: continuous financial processes; continuity of finance. Buckles’ manner of speaking is similarly inconclusive. (And not only about G4S and the Olympics. He once said ‘I can’t say I have ever read a book, particularly’.) Yet when circling around a topic, not quite getting there, it isn’t simply that he is being evasive. Speaking inconclusively, he is articulating a whole way of life – process, process, process – which is how London lives today. To repeat, Nick Buckles – man out of time; Nick Buckles – man of his times.

Dispossessed and Re-possessed: Spanish-style hardship Robocops fanned out in a line across the city street. Studiously not looking at the camera, the unemployed line up…who knows what for? First thing you learn is you always gotta wait. Protestors, preponderantly and preposterously middle aged (clenched fists and berets, for goodness sake), have all gone home, assuming they still have homes to go to. Give it a few weeks and some will be back out on the street. This time to sleep.

Scenes from Syria Smoke, shouts and gunfire. Hauling a body – dead, wounded? – into the back of a van. The sound of man a crying. In a different film, you would take it he was singing, but this is ‘amateur video’ of the attack on Houla, Syria. Another film shows dead bodies from the village of Mazraat al-Qabeer, now dressed in their best clothes and composed – arranged like flowers – for the camera’s worldly eye. The lens lingers over them, and the accompanying voice calls for action against the forces of President Assad. But because there are children among the dead, twenty-first century decorum dictates that we must look at a white blob where their faces would otherwise be. It turns the whole scene into an outtake from the X-Files. So much story-telling, too much narrative, means we can’t see, we can’t see.

On the rainy river, Jubilee pageant, London Sunday 3rd June Union jack bowler hats, top hats, sailor hats, cowboy – cowboy? – hats. Umbrellas everywhere. Union jack leggings, jeggings, faces and hair. Among the crowds a thousand Wills and Kates (face masks a fiver each); cardboard cut outs of the Queen. Is it all too silly to be true? Wind-swept, rain-streaked, the choir cuts through. Never mind the words (‘Land of Hope’ – that’s dope), or the cold, old lady they are singing to (nine degrees and falling: you can read the temperature by the way she folds her hands together). Only listen to the sound of a thousand years of choral singing, harnessed and let loose again in the mouths of young men and women.

Setting the scene, Leveson Inquiry, London When the court rises at 5pm, a fourth camera shows the whole room: rows of desks, cupboards and computer monitors; all comfortably integrated into a bland interior. But during the proceedings, we have been receiving pictures from three, other cameras, each of which is trained like a spotlight on a different section of the room. Each section of the chamber has its own protagonist – a judge, a barrister, a series of witnesses; but their respective ‘spots’ are so varied that these actors could be playing entirely different scenes, instead of complementary aspects of the same courtroom drama. Scene 1 The Control Centre: Lord Leveson is tightly shot, framed by blue curtains, wooden desk, and a high-backed, matt-black chair. Domed head and no legs visible, he resembles the crippled comic strip character, the Mekon, at the controls of a levitating stairlift. But Leveson’s voice is just Northern enough to make his received pronunciation sound like suburban social climbing: more Didsbury than Dan Dare. Scene 2 The Forest: Green, yellow and brown (suit, tie, hair); olive tints, and is that a dash of paprika in his beard? Colourful Robert Jay QC appears before a lush background made up of other people; functionaries of the court, but people nonetheless. Nestling in all this warmth and greenery, the answers he draws out from witnesses are like long filaments of chlorophyll. Scene 3 Forensics: He’s sitting down but the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport still looks splayed out against the plain white wall behind him. Plain white light bounces off the wall, reddening his cheeks and forehead, making him appear feverish, alarmed. Now that the third camera is depicting Jeremy Hunt, are we looking at the infamous mugshot of the defendant – the one the police always take when the suspect is first brought into the station? Or are we already in the mortuary, with the body of the late cabinet minister laid out on a slab?

President of Self-Consciousness, Washington In the White House, the new French president faces the press alongside Barack Obama. Monsieur Francois Hollande is dumpy and speccy compared to the iced-coffee elegance of his host. Although Obama stumbles over his visitor’s name (hesitates, then over-frenchifies it), it is Hollande who is somehow in the wrong. Instead of simply being the President of France on his first visit to Washington, he is also thinking that he is the President of France on his first visit to Washington; that kind of thinking which is one step removed from being there, doing it. Hollande only has to sit still while Obama introduces him to the Washington press corps. Naturally, Obama followed the ‘remarkable’ election in which Hollande ousted Sarkozy. Of course, having read his biography, Obama knows that as a young man Hollande spent time in America studying fast food. Meanwhile we can see the President of France wriggling in and out of his own skin: one moment inside himself; next second, beside himself. At the end, he chips in with a line about French fries and you only wish he hadn't.

Queuing in the sun, Cairo The citizens of Cairo are queuing in the hot sun. A pool of people fills the full width of the street, narrowing to a thin channel – only one person wide – between two barriers. Two soldiers are standing by the barriers, weighed down by the guns strung around their necks. Underneath the butt and the barrel, the tips of their fingers are pressing upwards, lifting a little of the weapon’s weight from their shoulders. The day stretches ahead. One of the soldiers waves the next man through and he duly steps forward to cast his vote.

Chalk and Cheesy, Basildon, Essex Two former pupils who got in to Oxford and Cambridge, invited back to school to present prizes at Speech Day. That’s what it looked like. It was a kind of Speech Day; but not back to school. Instead the whole country, represented by the workforce of CNH Tractors in Basildon, Essex, was being schooled by Nick (Clegg, Liberal Democrat, deputy prime minister) and Dave (Cameron, Conservative, prime minister) on the Merits of the Coalition. After their political parties polled poorly in last week’s local elections, the Coalition leaders travelled to Essex to lecture us all on why they’re right and we’re wrong not to see it that way. Mouth composed into a perfect ‘O’, Cameron made his choirboy face, then shifted to his other persona: he-man of the jutting jaw. Either way, Clegg looked on incredulously. Later, when it was Clegg’s turn to do the talking, Cameron looked up at him, head drawn back at a slight angle: ‘Y’what?’ Of course the whole thing was a photo/podcast/rolling news opportunity. So well designed, right down to the colour scheme. Cameron wearing a blue tie, Clegg yellow. Some of the tractor factory workers were dressed in blue polo shirts; others yellow. You couldn’t ask for a closer match. However well-designed, though, there’s no hiding how the two boys are coming apart. Nothing in the orchestration of the event could drown out the discord between them. And here are some more entries which I prepared earlier. (1) Royal Preserve Dateline: 2nd March 2012 Halfway between a wave and the brush-off, Prince Harry gestures to Caribbean photographers at the start of his first solo tour. He is ginger and slightly gauche. Back in London his grandmother, the elderly Queen Elizabeth, looks quizzically at the food hamper produced by Fortnum and Mason to mark her Diamond Jubilee (1952-2012). Nestling among the preserves, 60 years of judgment reserved. (2) By A Nose Dateline: 2nd March 2012 When injured journalist Edith Bouvier was brought home to Paris from Homs, Syria, she was carried off the plane sheathed in protective padding - only her nose poking out from under the red wraparound. On the runway, in attendance: President Sarkozy. But this homecoming was too intimate - daughters rush forward to hug their mother's prostrate form - for Sarkozy to make a show of it. Like the estranged husband that no one finds time to acknowledge, the president of France was obliged to withdraw. (3) Anders Breivik: the fascist salute that hardly was Dateline: 16th April, Central Criminal Court, Oslo Fat face. Small eyes behind considerable expanse of flesh and forehead. Receding hair and a thin strip of beard with a patch that's missing - either his beard is also balding, or he made a mistake when shaving. Bulky. Suit, collar and tie in a style that might be 1970s-retro; but isn't. 'Defiant salute,' they said of Anders Behring Breivik's far-right gesture to the Oslo court on the first day of his mass murder trial. (Norway, summer 2011; 77 dead in a killing spree directed 'against multiculturalism' - Breivik's description). But the Reuters clip shows an understated movement. Breivik's right arm touches the left side of his chest, grazing it lightly before unbending into the familiar, straight-armed gesture - only for a moment. His arm has performed a cautious curve, not the absolute angles associated with 'fascist salute'. Completing this modest arc, Breivik sits down with downcast eyes. Perhaps he swore to himself he would salute, then lacked the will to tough it out. Perhaps that's how he murdered his victims: diffidently. Responding to the rattle and shuffle of countless camera shutters, Breivik half-smiles, his teeth kept hidden by thin lips. Although the cameras are keen, keen, keen to find something striking, exciting, disturbing, there is nothing to show for the extraordinary carnage caused by this seemingly unexceptional person. A man ill-at-ease with himself, but so what? On that score, no different from a billion others. (4) Jason Russell: textbook study of arrested development Dateline 10th March 2012, Reuters studio Firm chin, full jaw, and a smile so wide a family of Mexicans could move in there. Of course his teeth are pearly white. Raised in San Diego, graduate of the University of Southern California, Jason Russell's face testifies to the expansive wealth of the Sunshine State. Co-producer/director of world-renowned viral movie Kony 2012, and co-founder of the charity, Invisible Children, Russell is famous for bearing witness to the plight of African child soldiers pressed into Joseph Kony's militia, the Lord's Resistance Army. He has come in to a Reuter's studio to respond to queries and criticisms of his film. 'I had just finished my film degree at USC', Russell recalls, 'and I wanted that post-graduation globetrotting adventure. I figured instead of backpacking Europe, I'd visit an African genocide.' 'Figured' - early morning reruns of Wagon Train and Rawhide sure left their mark. 'Visit an African genocide' - is this Kardashian-style self-obsession? Or candid admission of same, which effectively cancels it out? Russell's relaxed manner says: you decide; his self-confidence comes with 40 million internet hits. He shrugs off the complaint that Kony 2012 is one-sided: 'this video is not the answer, it is just the gateway to the conversation.' But this self-confidence is only skin deep; super-facial. Having exposed the plight of particular children, Russell has to hide behind the condition of childhood in general. 'When you get older, you get muddled and polluted by the way the world is supposed to work,' he explains. Thus children respond unequivocally to his film because they 'have very clear understanding', not 'muddled' or 'polluted' by grown-up hang-ups; such as objectivity or getting the story right, right? All that bone and muscle and gristle. So much protein invested in such a prize specimen of American manhood. But still Russell defers to a child's 'understanding'. His kind of deference would make kids of us all. (5) Mourning Man and the Dissolution of Self Dateline 20th April 2012, Jinnah International Airport Eyes more than half-closed, mouth wide open; thick, upper lip stretched across the horseshoe arch of his top teeth. Whatever it is pouring out of this man's throat, it clearly means an awful lot to him. If it was his own hand caressing his right cheek, looking at this picture we'd put him in the midst of a vocal performance; and in our minds we would fill in the sound of him singing. But the hand in the photograph is someone else's, reaching out to comfort this man whose wife, child, father, friend - who knows?, is presumed dead after an airliner fell out of the sky while preparing to land at Jinnah International Airport, Islamabad. Microphones on either side of the mourning man, thrust forward to capture his moans and wails, serve to reinforce the idea of performance. For us, in a way, it is. The curve of his open mouth, the framing of the photograph - this is grief, perfectly formed. But for the man we're looking at, sheer loss has rendered him shapeless. His feelings are not framed at all. Right now, he does not even have a point of view from which to look back at us. (6) Sisters of Surprise Dateline: 21st April Bahrain Her head is loosely covered with a shawl, and a lock of hair has spilled out and splashed over the right side of the young woman's face. The left side is obscured by the glare of bright sunlight shining through a police visor. Right, left - her face is effectively screened off on both sides. Thus the religious rules are more-or-less observed, if only by chance. Without seeing right through this accidental screening, we are looking at the face of Zayban al-Kkawaja, daughter of human rights activist Adbulhadi al-Khawaja, stopped by helmeted riot cops on her way to the anti-F1 Grand Prix protest in the markets district of Manama, Bahrain. But Zayban is not the one wearing the visor; this belongs to a police officer standing directly in front of her. Zayban is holding her hands at chest height. She has made them into fists, and although we can't see her eyes, from the tilt of her head we can tell she is looking intently into the eyes of the officer blocking her way. 'Are you going to cuff me, then?', her look, which we can't quite see, would seem to be saying. The officer's thumb and forefinger are already wrapped around Zayban's right wrist. In order for the religious rules to be observed, however, the restraining officer must be a woman. The rules that dictate segregated protests in Bahrain (male protestors separated from women), also demand segregated policing - only female officers to manhandle female protestors. Underneath the visor, therefore, a pert nose. Decked out in the stuff of Robocop (matt black padding and webbing), a small, human form. There is even a pouch beneath her helmet at the back of her neck, so that the female Robocop can conceal the rope of her own dark hair. (7) Pretend Answers and Real Questions Dateline: 24th April 2012, Leveson Inquiry, London Young James' eyebrows are raised in a continuous, upward frown. Beneath them, his spectacles are fashionably large, the frames transparent like the Milky Bar Kid's. The Milky Bar Kid is coming to town. This Milky Bar Kid can't help himself frown. With his left hand he is holding onto the lower part of his right arm, which is resting - it's being made to lie still - on the table in front of him. Meanwhile his right hand is tucked under his left elbow, so that the weight of his left, upper arm is keeping it down. Hold on tight, he seems to be telling himself, lest extravagant hand movements lead to loose talk. In town today is James Murdoch, son of, recently resigned from, due to the phone hacking scandal and related events at his father's News International. At the current session of the Leveson Inquiry, chaired by Lord Leveson and commissioned by prime minister David Cameron to investigate 'the culture, practices and ethics of the press', James Murdoch is being asked to answer for a series of internal emails re: his thwarted attempt to overcome restrictions on UK media ownership and gain full control of BSkyB. The question is: given that the (Liberal Democrat) secretary of state for business was not well disposed towards 'the Murdoch press', were you not jockeying for position with the (Conservative) secretary of state for culture, who was likely to look more favourably on a bid from your family firm? Although James clearly feels the need to keep a grip on himself, he seems to be handling the pressure. He maintains that he would not conduct business in a directly politicised manner. While it is hard to credit such a clear cut distinction between business class and the political elite - as if they only ever speak to each other through formal channels, as he makes this distinction and elaborates upon it, Young James' voice becomes more insistent; he appears to gain in stature. Not for what he is ostensibly saying in response to his inquisitors (the flat denial simply sounds flat), but for the tacit questions underlying his answers: Don't you people know better than to wash this kind of linen in public? In the tired, old country that you guys live in, have you forgotten what it takes to get anything done? (8) Messrs Rueful Dateline: 1st May 2012 His hands on the table are the mottled hands of an old man, though his eyes are sharp as pins. Pausing between sentences, his mouth defaults to a downward curve - a pictogram of sadness and regret. Last week, giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, Rupert Murdoch kept his composure, managing to maintain his stance as a newspaperman. Particular answers to detailed questions (so much detail from all those emails) were generally a way of saying: that's who I am - a newspaperman. In front of Lord Leveson, Rupert was careful to regret the damage done to others, ruing the day he allowed himself to be compromised by corporate concerns. If I hadn't let myself be corporatised, none of this would have happened, Murdoch seemed to be saying. And the way he said it: so much the cartoon he could have been Roger Hargreaves' latest character, Mister Rueful. This was a more positive performance than last year when, quizzed by the parliamentary select committee for Culture, Media and Sport (a group of senior MPs), Murdoch Snr had seemed like King Lear upon the blasted heath: lost. Days later, he killed a newspaper; akin to suicide for a man like him; or, for the man he wants us to think is him. But then, by launching the Sun on Sunday to replace the News of the World (deceased), he was seen resurrecting himself. In his shirtsleeves among the newsmen of Wapping, Rupert rolled the stone away from his own tomb. Two months later on 1st May, with their announcement that 'Rupert Murdoch is not fit to undertake the stewardship of a major international company', members of that select committee are trying to roll it back on top of him; punching his lights out; shutting him out of the corridors of power. They looked nervous, conscious of the whole world watching, even while making their pronouncement. However much they want to be the MPs who dethroned Murdoch, there's no guarantee that the British government - or even the British people - will let the old king go down. In months or years to come, those MPs may be rueful about what they said today; just as Rupert has come to rue the day he looked the other way.