‘Boris Bikes’ Roll on

In July 2011, ‘Boris Bikes’ rolled into its 2^nd year of service as one of the largest networks of rental bicycles in the world. The scheme has been hailed a political success for the city’s mayor, Boris Johnson, who has overseen the installation of around 6,000 bicycles in over 400 docking stations across the city.

But as users of the scheme increase and more and more cyclists take to the road, is enough being done to ensure their safety?

Ayhan Ertas has been cycling to work every day for approximately seven years. With a daily six-mile journey through London, from South Kensington to Kentish Town, Ayhan knows the dangers of cycling in one of the worlds most congested cities.

Despite the Transport for London’s recent commitment to provide an extra 900km of new routes to the London Cycle Network, Ayhan is not satisfied. “What we need are separate cycling routes,” he suggests, referring to the lack of real lane separation. For him the dangers are cars and buses sharing the same road with cyclists. “They don’t care. They just pass you by,” he says as he gestures out towards the street in front of his bicycle shop on Kentish Town road. He points out, “Look, here there are no bicycle lanes. There must be 100, 200 people passing here every day.”

His estimates are modest. The road is a superhighway for cyclists, connecting Archway and Highgate with Camden – the latter of which has experienced an alarming rise in cycling casualties in recent years. Up by 40% from 2009 the statistics don’t reflect the pledged investment to the cycle networks.

Transport for London has recently allocated a further £14.8m to be spent on road safety schemes in general. These range from improvements on the network to safe cycling education programs.

In tune with the programs, Ayhan admits that, to a certain degree, cycle safety is also the responsibility of the cyclist. Although its not law, Ayhan believes “everyone should wear helmets and jackets”. He tentatively adds lights to the list and then tells me it’s the law to cycle with lights. At this point his colleague breaks in, challenging Ayhan’s knowledge. The confusion goes some way to highlighting the apparent lack of clarity and education provided for cyclists in London.

Cycling through Camden this morning, Ayhad’s words about responsibility seem particularly poignant. There’s a real mix between people who wear helmets, those who wear high visibility clothing and those who take no extra safety precautions. There’s also a divide between those who obey the rules of the road and those who disregard them; jumping red lights and mounting pavements.

When I quizzed Ayhad about his habits at the lights he insisted he never runs a red. After further probing, he admitted: “Only at night when there’s no one on the roads and I can see it’s 100% safe.” But as he pointed out earlier, cyclists don’t have the same treatment as cars or pedestrians on the street. There are no separate lanes dividing the bicycle traffic safely. A cyclist walking into Ayhad’s shop agrees the system is unfair. “If the road was safe for me, I wouldn’t have to weave through the traffic,” he says, admitting to practicing a common cause of accidents.

Given the traffic and the statistics, it’s clear that the Camden area needs special attention. All modes of transport using the roads in London should have equal and fair treatment in regards to ensuring their safety.

If this means separating our roads into lanes with physical barriers to stop traffic merging, like in Amsterdam, Denmark and even Barcelona, then this is where much of the £14.8m investment should be concentrated. Taking these important steps will encourage cyclists to follow their own set of rules and reduce the chances of accidents bit by bit. After all, as Ayhad puts it, “You can do everything you can now, but you are never 100% safe”.

A culture of violence

Stark contrasts can be drawn between the current protests and riots in the UK and those seen earlier this year on the continent. How they erupted and how they were dealt with tells us a lot about our society and the problems which underpin the recent violence.

I’ve never lived in London and I wasn’t in London for the riots. Sitting in my living room in rural Devon with a laptop and a 24hr news channel, I never felt far away. I was, however, present for the birth, uprising and crushing of the ‘Indignados’ movement in Barcelona, where I’ve lived for the past two years.

Both events reached a bloody climax following peaceful demonstrations on the streets. Twice, in Barcelona, I witnessed heavy handed police charge peaceful crowds, totally unprovoked. The notorious Mossos d’Esquadra Catalan police force illegally hid their badges and brutally battered their way through large sit-ins in Plaza Catalunya and outside the Parc Ciutadella, shamelessly hospitalising scores.

In London, however, it was the protests which turned violent. The peaceful demonstration following the shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham was hijacked by opportunist individuals and groups as they sought to take full advantage. Soon after, London was burning as copycat crimes erupted across the boroughs and looting took hold of the capital.

It’s perhaps easy to jump to the conclusion that the heavy police intervention quelled potential violence in Barcelona while police in the UK were too slow and light handed to avert the danger. This is not the case. Firstly, the protests in Spain had been going for over two weeks before the police intervention while the protests and riots that followed in London were spontaneous and ultimately unpredictable. Secondly, to fight fire with fire is not the best approach, given the level of violence which had already gripped so much of the city. Finally, and perhaps more significantly, the culture of violence in Britain is far more prominent.

We live in a country where violence is a regular form of escape, openly exercised in the centres and boroughs of cities and towns all over. You can’t spend a Friday or Saturday night in any one without experiencing some senseless act of (usually drunken) violence. It’s almost an accepted practice among the young and old in a country where something in society seems to be broken.

It’s not a recent thing either. Violent and public exchanges have been common across the country for years. And nor is it a class issue. From my experience, clashes are frequent between men and women from all walks of life

It’s difficult to pinpoint how exactly our society became so self destructive and why violence has become such an accepted and regular occurrence, especially in the public domain. What is clear though, is that in countries on the continent, public displays of violence and vandalism are few and far between in comparison.

That’s not to say people in Catalunya, for example, are any less confrontational than at home. The Catalans, Spanish, Italians and French are all known for their fiery nature and verbal disagreements are to be heard loud and clear throughout the day and night across towns and cities. There’s no lack of restraint in telling someone just how you feel, but rarely does it end in violence – at least not outside on the street for all to see. Nor, for that matter, in the centre of cities so regularly and on such a large scale.

The contrast is enormous and considering the two extremes of order and disorder in culture and policing, it’s hard to say which is more favorable. Put yourself in a peaceful protester’s shoes and work out what’s worse; living in a country where demonstrators are dispersed by unforgivable state aggression or a culture of violence on the street which hijacks a protest with similarly peaceful intentions. Either way something is out of balance and its plain for all to see.

Facebook Attacks London

Hoodies, yobs, disaffected youths; however the rioters are branded there seems to be one thing mobilising them according to some mainstream press – social media.

The less thoughtful who seek an explanation for the explosion of violence and looting have targeted facebook, twitter and Blackberry Messenger. Obviously the causes run deeper than social networks and the ‘facebook generation’, but social media has played its part in speeding up and coordinating the destruction.

Much like in the Arab Spring revolutions, constantly updating feeds mobilised groups into riots across various points in London at incredible speed. Rioters were carrying out planned attacks on targets highlighted across the social media channels.

However, to blame the new technology is ludicrous. Riots existed before social media, the internet, mobile phones, telegrams or even carrier pigeons. The new technology merely increases the speed and adds an element of direction to spontaneous acts of rebellion

What is more, the methods used are not a hidden weapon. A lot of social media is open to all and funnily enough can be followed reliably by police or journalists curbing or covering the looting. Not that that helped given the scale of the uprising as officials were hopelessly outnumbered in a dangerous environment. In the aftermath though, police may be able to track looters based on message activity and content with mobile phone company Blackberry already saying it will cooperate with investigations.

Counteracting the night time mayhem, as we have seen today, is a strong community reaction as people of all affected boroughs have come out to help with the clean up. Pulling together the crowds is, again, social media. Networks linking outraged citizens have been overloaded with angry responses-turned-encouragements for people to take their brooms to the streets and raise them high. However, people, communities and brooms existed before facebook. Again though, this time they acted faster.

So social Media hasn’t caused the riots, tackled them nor cleaned them up. It has merely facilitated the process at a greater speed. Modern networks of communication have this blanket effect on all facets of the story and of our society and cannot be blamed for sparking events we have seen numerous times in our history – and all before the digital age.

Beyond the Road to Recovery

In a recent article for a competition in The Guardian, I highlighted how a successful private company can exercise its wealth, knowledge and position in order to commit to a non profit community project. Company policies like these show how private firms should play a more positive role, especially in the current climate of economic uncertainty….

As yet another week of turmoil on the global stock markets wiped billions off the value of the world’s biggest companies we are left pondering when, or if at all, it will all end. With problems lying so deep that some analysts are forecasting decades of stop and start before we see a return to normal levels of growth, its clear the current financial system is broken. But how on earth do we go about fixing it?

Short term answers like the European Financial Stability Facility – or EFSF, are hastily being assembled to plug the holes in Europe while the US is tightening its belt to justify raising the public debt ceiling to another meaningless figure in the trillions. Desperate to settle the markets, fresh bond issues seem to be another likely quick fix on both side of the pond as we plan to borrow our way out of immediate danger.

Long term solutions, however, are harder to come by. Fiscal austerity is the only certainty and is a must to tackle the debts and ensure money returns to creditors. It’s something we’re going to have to get used to and is part of the long and painful road to recovery. Down this track, major changes need to be made to the way we organise and regulate the markets to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.

Governments and policy makers have a tough role in implementing and following through plans but private industry must also play its part. Some European leaders have already suggested that firms should dig deep and take part of the responsibility with the latest bailout package for Greece including the potential for selective defaults which would hit private banks instead of taxpayers.

But this is sill not quite enough for the long term future. In order to learn and progress, the mistakes that were made need to lead to a significant change of attitude throughout the political and financial world. People need to wake up to the idea that we are all in this together. Money and the system in which it flows has suffered from the irresponsibility that comes with relentless and unrestrained profit chasing for too long.

In the age of a globalised system, private enterprise must demonstrate greater responsibility. With multi national companies turning over more than states’ GDPs, the role of these entities must reflect their size.

Great steps have already been taken in the form of innovative corporate social responsibility policy. Many companies have shown commitment to projects which utilise their wealth, knowledge and privileged positions in reaching out through community work. Now big business needs to take a step further and realise their potential role in society.

With public money running dry, private companies could be key investors in social and community welfare both locally and abroad. Investing in people and society can foster relations of trust and eventually ensure a return to growth. A rich and strong society will soon pay back its investors as security and reliance is restored.

This is no easy task, but is partly a question of attitude. Aims and goals must change in respect to operating a big business. The realisation that helping all will eventually help you is key in building a strong future for the community, the company and the global economy.

Euro Trash

In light of the draft deal proposed today on the new bailout package for Greece, the positives of the single currency system in protecting the weak seem clearer. The benefits of a union of states when tackling a crisis is something I have covered in length in an article for Cafebabel this week. However, in arriving at my conclusion about the Euro, I bypassed some basic facts along the way.

To clear things up….

Firstly, I wasn’t clear that the single currency has fueled the crisis in Europe to an extent by amplifying the debt problems of smaller economies. Banks across the continent holding much of Greece’s debt have suffered and subsequently damaged stronger economies like Germany and France. The Euro has also restricted the fiscal freedom of Greece, perhaps limiting its ability to deal with the crisis.

Secondly, in the article I highlighted a kind of protection the Euro can offer from the full brunt of the IMF by forcing countries to unite and respond to a crisis in the Eurozone. Without the commitment to the single currency, members wouldn’t be obliged to help out and Greece would face the IMF alone.

However, in this case the Euro only helps if we consider there to be no other option than bailouts. But there is another way, and this is sovereign default. Default is being mentioned more and more frequently and is an option which had relative success in Argentina (in comparison with the endless loans it received before the crash). It is seen as inevitable by some and promoted as a way out by other, more radical economists.

But for me, it’s not a realistic path that can be chosen by Greece. The current political and economic system just won’t let them. Why? Firstly, it wouldn’t be paying the debt that it owes its creditors, and secondly, it may trigger another global liquidity crisis; taking us all back to the start. It may be the best option in the long run for Greece, but it’s not one the rest of Europe or the world would support.

Finally, I also avoided the issue of where the crisis came from and who started it. As has been well documented, the crisis was triggered by a mix between irresponsible lending and borrowing and a lack of financial regulation. As for the lack of regulation, countries and their taxpayers are paying for the errors through economic hardship and foreign bailouts. Private enterprise, however, is not helping to bailout the sinking ship. This is something which needs to change if we are going to deal with the crisis successfully.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have managed to ensure that private creditors take some of the loss in the form of ‘selective defaults’ in the latest bailout deal drafted today. The way they see it, private firms too have a responsibility to fix the problems and should, therefore, contribute to the rescue package. This makes sense when considering that it’s in the private industry’s interests to stabalise the economic situation and perhaps even stimulate it.

This collaboration between two leaders is another example of a positive effect of the European monetary union on an crisis stricken country like Greece. With the Euro, states like these are closer than ever which forces them to act together – especially when looking for a resolution. Moreover, as a union, the claims that private enterprise should be responsible too has more weight in a world where creditors are rarely held accountable for their mistakes.

To reiterate my point: The monetary union is about interconnectivity and interconnectivity implies shared gains and losses. This in turn breeds responsibility, and in a time of crisis this encourages a resolution which protects, to an extent, instead of ostracises.

Tweet tweet

If I had any readers they might ask me: Louis, why do you always bang on about Twitter so much?

Well, first I don’t really, and second I happen to think it’s quite important. However, for me, it’s not the actual Twitter phenomenon itself, but what it represents that’s key.

Twitter is at the forefront of the social media revolution which is changing society. In this revolution it’s the simplest, most effective and sharpest of all the tools in the box. It represents a modern approach to keeping up with people, trends, stories and news and is modernising the way we communicate. For good or for bad, it’s perhaps the most significant of the social networking applications that we increasingly rely on.

From organisers of the Arab Spring to super-injunction scandals at home in the UK, Twitter is creating, reporting and distributing news more and more frequently. It’s users are questioning established rules, organisations and even governments through an open platform where their voices can be heard. It’s also questioning people too, directly calling on their accountability and responsibility; changing the way roles are kept in check.

One such person to feel this checking power recently was Johann Hari of The Independent. His case is one which subtly demonstrates how social media is changing the way we scrutinise.

Hari stated in his blog that he had substituted quotes from books of authors he had interviewed when the interview material did not adequately put the point he wanted across. Now, if we think back to how the same case would have been dealt with maybe ten years ago, the changes are clear.

First of all, he may not have had a blog. But no matter where the article was published, being from such a respected journalist, it would have caught some public attention. As far as a reaction in the press goes, I would imagine that it would have made it into a few editorials or opinion sections of a number of papers a day or so later. This would have resulted in a rather exclusive spat between writers and journalists, with Hari defending himself from his own columns.

Instead, what it started was a public and open wave of criticism, denunciation and even insult from everyone from respected journalists to every day readers who gave their two cents worth on the matter. Within a day Hari had made the top three in global Twitter trends as news spread fast of what was dubbed as ‘plagiarism’ by many critics. The trend was picked up and followed by newspapers and online news platforms who added to and magnified the debate. Hari, backed into a corner, threw his hands in the air and admitted his errors in a post the following day. The storm settled and an apologetic Hari, once journalist of the year, was left with a tarnished reputation.

The speed and efficiency in holding Hari to account for his words and actions was humbling for him to say the least. Hari was taught to be careful of what you say and do in a society where people are actively watching, questioning and scrutinising more than ever.

Johann Hari has been made an example of by a critical mass here. He, much like the regimes in the Middle East or Ryan Giggs, has found out that people with a tool like Twitter are a lot less forgiving. Whether it be plagiarism, dictatorial tyranny or cheating on your wife, watch out because you will be held accountable for your actions.

Naughty Greece

Greece has been bad and will be punished. The IMF and ECB stand furious over Athens threatening with unfathomable demands. But how much blame should Greece be taking and who’s keeping punishers in check?

The anger and disillusion on the faces of protesters outside the Greek parliament illustrates the severity of the cuts facing the country. With the weakest economy in the Euro zone, Greece is already fighting to stay afloat. A further £50bn of planned cuts to public spending to ensure the approval of the next bailout from the IMF and ECB looms ominously.

Most commentators agree that Greece’s economy is rotten. Heavily in debt with an over-inflated monetary system and an inefficient and expensive public service. It’s a backward economy full of overspending, underinvestment and corruption. It needs change and needs it fast in order to return to anything like a competitive or attractive market. The only answer is cuts, cuts and more cuts

Cuts to public spending, cuts to public investment and cuts to the workforce. The public will be taking the brunt of the economic mismanagement. Public institutions will be comprehensively stripped apart and ‘streamlined’, leaving jobs scarce. State owned utilities, companies and services will be looted too and sold off to new private firms in an attempt to raise capital, cut costs and most importantly give the green light to the IMF and ECB for more money and more debt.

This familiar process is called ‘structural adjustment’. It’s a word that has been used to define the IMF’s demands which allow it to release capital in the form of loans. The loans are, of course, conditional – adjust your economic system and you can have money. It’s a term which has fallen out of fashion in recent years. We barely see it used in the press over this Euro crisis.

One of the reasons may be that it got a pretty bad name in the 90s. Structural adjustment in Latin America and especially Argentina played an enormous part in the build up to the crisis there in 2001. Economic austerity was used to tackle a bloated and inefficient system but plans went too far, selling off everything from land to water in the name of free market economics and foreign investment. The IMF’s loans kept coming and plugging the holes but eventually Argentina defaulted and thousands lost jobs, savings and homes with foreign capital taking flight.

Greece’s crisis is very different though. The fact that this time it’s the IMF and the ECB with the demands means that perhaps different interests will be protected. Either way, the already crippled public institutions will be attacked to make way for a new type of economy – one biased to free market principles of deregulation as opposed to state intervention.

So what right do the IMF have to meddle in this Greek tragedy? Well, as the largest economic institution in the world, its job has been to ensure monetary cooperation and stability since World War II. When you sign up to membership at the IMF you are joining a commitment with 187 states to global economic stability. You don’t have any obligations as a member but if you’ve been naughty and require some help you must jump through hoops

And Greece has been naughty. It rode at the cusp of the financial bubble with the other PIIGS, throwing no caution to the wind in its borrowing and spending. It was gluttonous in a time of abundance, pulling all the strings in the age of free credit in an unregulated financial system. But so was everyone else and the money flowed freely and irresponsibly from the ECB and private banks across the continent and the world as they sought to double, triple or quadruple profits based on non-existent or exhausted credit lines. And where was the IMF during this time? Sitting quietly letting it all happen.

With the thousands of professional economists and analysts, it’s hard to believe but the IMF gave no warning signs. As the largest institution of its kind, perhaps it should have. An element of responsibility at least should fall on this economic juggernaut. A failure to spot the looming crisis by top professionals whose jobs are to analyse economic trends in an economic system built on boom and bust is staggering.

Then again, to spot it and to do something about it would have represented a contradiction in their neo-liberal beliefs. The only prevention would have been regulation and this is something the IMF cannot fathom.

But back to Greece and being naughty. If the IMF’s watchful eyes had been a little more alert then the ECB’s unrestrained economic policy wouldn’t have been quite so destructive in the long run. This kind of logic begs the question, if the global environment didn’t encourage such rates of borrowing and spending, would such an irresponsible financial policy have been possible?

Comparisons with the sub prime mortgage industry which triggered the whole crisis can be drawn here. People borrowed money to buy houses they couldn’t afford. This is irresponsible. But companies underwrote these loans for houses that people couldn’t pay for. This too is irresponsible. So who’s to blame? Well, the responsibility should be shared in reality. Both borrowers and mortgage lenders made huge and costly errors.

However, the fact remains that if credit isn’t available to people, companies or states that can’t afford it; they can’t take it. The sad truth is, it was there and we all took it, and now Greece is paying the price harder that anybody else.

Huge responsibility now rests on the country to dig itself out of the hole and not let it drag the rest of Europe and the world back down. And all with the IMF and ECB breathing down its neck – watching carefully to make sure Greece dismantles its public sector through the process of structural adjustment.

Roles and responsibilities to the EU and especially the Euro zone are being addressed through this desperate process. Leaders around the continent are calling for Greece to adhere to demands and ‘save the union’. Perhaps though, they should be addressing who’s giving the orders and whether the demands are reasonable. After all, we’re not just talking statistics here, we’re talking real jobs for real people with real lives taking the brunt of a crisis that could have been avoided or at least foreseen. Greek citizens are the ones paying while the same economists in New York who failed to spot the crisis glance across the Atlantic disapprovingly.