Hypocrisy is a wonderful thing, and thanks to the medium of social networking, it is a much easier thing to achieve. Every time Facebook chisels away at the privacy settings of the least private private network in the world, or Google adds another prohibitively anti privacy line to its terms and conditions, I do the little shudder that will be familiar to most users of the internet, then I open my Gmail anyway and post a YouTube clip to Facebook. I might also grumpily link to an article on some well meaning blog bemoaning the gradual slide into the dystopian future we are all party to, or grumble on Twitter a bit. Maybe sign a petition. Down with this sort of thing.

But, having bemoaned my personal information going to places not of my choosing I them completely undercut my own indignation by taking all of my information and spitting it at the internet like an excitable toddler might a particularly tasty pudding. Not only do I have not one but two blogs dedicated to churning my every waking thought into something vaguely readable, and I’ve spent the last three years on Twitter, where I have posted a quite alarming 12,000 tweets, most of which were probably revealing of myself either in their tedium or otherwise. I joined Last.fm, which takes note of every single song I listen to and turns them into spiffy charts, which it then spews out onto Twitter, as though anyone has the remotest interest in what the three bands I most listened to were over a seven day period. () I’m not alone in doing this, and I actually love to look at other people’s charts and compare their ‘musical compatibility’ with my own, even though it often leaves me feeling oddly voyeuristic even though they too have blurted their own taste out to the world, just like me.

It doesn’t stop their either. About six months back I joined a service called Miso, which you can use to log every single thing you watch and leave a little comment. It also then asks you if you would like to post it just to your friends on Miso, or your Twitter feed, or Facebook, or all three. It then gives you points based on who you tell. I gave up using it for a while based on the fact that I found it a step too far, but then I decided it would be a good idea at the beginning of the year to see just how many films I watch in a year. Because, well, why not. It’s the sort of thing someone as geekily anal retentive as myself might want to know at the end of the year. ‘Oh look Ethel this year I have watched 174 films, wasting an average of 350 hours of my life, roughly meaning I could have spend an entire fortnight doing something more productive. Isn’t that interesting? Ethel?’

But then I instantly fell back into the trap of broadcasting my every episode of Sherlock, or Desperate Housewives, or Coppers, blurting to the world like some kind of broken foghorn, spluttering meaningless titles at the void and hoping people will look at my viewing habits and somehow decide that I am so utterly and comprehensively amazing that they should give me a research grant. Or a medal of some kind. Quite disappointingly, it turns out that in the whole of January so far, I’ve only watched 6 films as well. Gutted.

Then, yesterday, this happened:

I need more! More ways to rivet you all with my every move. Well actually, I thought it would also be interesting to see how many books I actually manage to read in a year, but nonetheless, this needs to stop! Well actually, more than one person pointed me in the direction of GoodReads.com, and having signed up and listed my first books of the year maybe I won’t stop, thank you very much. And I love my last.fm, it listens to me far more than most human beings do and has a lovely recommendations page that isn’t a ‘You like metal?’ Have you heard of Metallica?’ exercise in obviousness. Every month I take heed of its recommendations and find at least two or three new bands that turn out to be pretty good. Also, my charts are too in depth, too complex, too massive to abandon now.

So if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook and find my constant need to transmit objectionable then I apologise. But not all that much. Your choice. I’m not going to change. Next month I’ll probably find something that broadcasts my every idle thought and I’ll sign up for that too, and link it to my Facebook feed and my Tumblr, just for kicks. But the next time you see me crying over privacy settings on the internet, please do give me a virtual punch on the ear, and tell me to stop being an idiot. I’ve lost all right to do that.

Oh, and if you are a fellow obsessive, you can find me on Twitter, Last.fm, Miso, Goodreads and Tumblr.

After the utter mindfuckery that was the worldwide news in 2011, you would be forgiven for hoping that absolutely nothing happens this year, that 2012 would be just a nice gentle, perhaps somewhat English affair. People not doing a lot, grumbling weakly about the smallest of inconveniences and then retiring to a nice cup of tea and perhaps an episode of Eastenders. Wouldn’t that be lovely? ‘No collapse of the Eurozone today please dear, the Omnibus edition is just starting and this brew is perfection.’

But then you think about what we know about this year, the one that yawns like a chasm of despair ahead of us. Continuing financial austerity and bleakness, an American election between the most disappointing superhero ever and an even more depressing Republican field. Another Royal celebration of some kind. Oh, and the sodding Olympics. Oh, and the Middle East continuing to go utterly haywire. *sigh*

All of this before we can even contemplate the inevitable sudden new arrivals on the news scene. 2011 was chock full of stuff that you wouldn’t have imagined at the start of the year, who’s to say we won’t have the same again this, all heaping on top of the events hangover we still have from last year.

For example, who would have thought that in these 20-um, whatever we call this decade, we in Britain would be again embroiled in race rows across politics, the press and football? If nothing else I thought we’d have moved on from those dark days of the Eighties. But no. Now we have the England football captain facing charges of racial abuse, one of English Football’s biggest clubs seemingly unable to face the consequences of racial abuse from one of its own players, sickening crowd abuse of black players on the terraces and over Twitter, and politicians being castigated for their wayward and racially questionable tweets. (Ok, we’ll let Ed Miliband off his spelling mistake on the grounds that it was bloody hilarious and clearly a typo.) Oh, and throw in the Daily Sodding Mail somehow being able to claim the moral high ground on racism on the grounds that they once had a legally dodgy front page about the Stephen Lawrence killers.

The Daily Mail. Bastions of racial harmony. I may have to go and lie down.

You know when people were talking about this time being like the 80’s, all cuts and strikes and bad haircuts, I didn’t think we as a country would go the whole hog and try and bring back the decade wholesale, racism and all. Next you’ll be telling me that Timmy Mallet is back and Wham have reunited. Actually, please don’t because if you told me either of these things I’d have to do a big cry. Again I give you an almighty *sigh*

And we’re only 9 days in. Maybe the Mayans were right after all.*

On the other hand, maybe history repeating itself isn’t such a bad thing, having just watched my favourite footballer of all time return to the team he loves and which loves him like no other, and seen him score the winning goal in a vital FA Cup game against our old hated enemies. Which is nice.

*They weren’t, just so you know

Ok, so I can’t resist it. The end of year review is like catnip to bloggers, even though nobody really gives a rat’s arse about my views about the year. Mind you if I start thinking like that then I’d never manage to get another blog post out again. (Stop crossing your fingers there at the back).

I thought I’d avoid the traditional listing all the good albums and films and telly things and whatnot, because quite frankly I’ve spent most of the year listening to albums that weren’t released this year, most of it German drug bands introduced to me by peoples on the internets and last.fm. As for films, I’ve barely made it to the cinema at all. Telly is, well, telly. I’ve seen an insane amount of telly this year, and there’s been too much of it that I’ve enjoyed to give comment on. Ditto the news. Last night we watched 2011 wipe on BBC Four, and today I listened to the Bugle Podcast review of the year, and both of those were far funnier and more insightful than I could ever be on a year that Charlie Brooker aptly described as like ‘a series finale for all of humanity.’

Now it may be a measure of the fact that I’m beginning to become an actual rounded human being but where in previous years this inability to round up the year in list form would all seem a bit of a failure on my part (no gigs, no cinema, new music not really floating my boat) this year is a bit different. This year things have actually happened.

When you break it down to the main headlines it all sounds a bit daunting; New baby. Promoted twice. Passed my driving test. Not bad going for one year. Add on top of that I’ve done a creative writing course at York Uni, written a hell of a lot of my novel, and started a whole new blog, and I can be pretty chuffed about my personal achievements this year, and the achievements of my rather splendid family. But to call it a bit of a hectic year is as much of an understatement as to say that people on the internet seem to quite like looking at pictures of cats.

Looking ahead to 2012 what I really need is a bit more of a settled year. I’ve already outlined my writing hopes elsewhere, but I’ve got a new job to look forward to and get my head around, a flailing music website in dire need of attention and all the other life stuff that seems to be around. Oh, and the old perennial favourite of losing weight and getting into shape. I went to the gym today for the first time in over a month (a perforated ear drum kept me away for quite a while) and now feel like I’ve been trampled by wild bison. In short, I need to keep trying. Trying to write, trying to make my life a bit better. Oh, and I promise to spend more time here as well, and less of that time doing silly challenges to fill up space. Honest to blog.

Before I do go though, I really should put up some of the music that was rather good this year. If I were going to choose an album of the year then it would undoubtedly be Will Haven’s Voir Dire. But then there is only one video from that album, and it is the weakest track on the album. If there was a runner up, then it would be Origin’s Entity. But that doesn’t have any videos. So let’s go instead with the album I listened to most in 2011, even though it isn’t an album released in 2011. So not the sound of 2011 per se, but the sound of my 2011.

Happy New Year to you all.

Leveson is not a inquiry about the illegal activities at one newspaper, it is looking at the wider ethical standards of an industry that has used its considerable leverage to ensure it is accountable only to itself. The printed press in this country has long held itself up as the arbiters of common moral decency in this country, while at the same time huge swathes of the press has been engaging in such morally questionable activities as to beggar belief.

I heard Steve Coogan being interviewed on the Today programme the other day along with a Guardian journalist, who was accusing Coogan and the other celebrities of overleveraging their position to make their own self interested points, and of reducing the potency of the arguments of the ‘normal’ people like the McCanns who are appearing at the enquiry. Coogan very calmly expressed his view that actually the majority of people are uncomfortable with the practices of the press, but the celebrities are the ones who are called onto programmes like Today and as a result they have a responsibility to speak up for those who are never likely to be called onto discussions in the printed press or the radio or television, or those people who are smeared every day but do not have the funds or the profile to fight back. I think the media needs to realise that when the rich celebrities are the ones making sense in the argument, they’ve probably lost the moral high ground.

I had wondered if the Leveson inquiry might bring about some kind of soul searching among the media, that they might actually sit up and think; ‘Blimey, maybe some of what we do is a bit strong,eh? Maybe intruding onto people’s grief, their private lives, their property, maybe some of that is a bit out of order for what is essentially cheap voyeurism with no conceivable public interest whatsoever. In the wake of this enquiry and all the stories about us, maybe on the next story we don’t intrude into private grief, or indulge in speculation, or hang around outside someone’s home hoping to see someone crying. Maybe we just let them get on with it, yeah?’

Oh, never mind.

These stills are just from the newspaper you’d expect. Then there’s the idle speculation;

The Telegraph also ran a Live Blog of Gary Speed’s death, which is quite possibly the least respectful thing I can think of.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the great British Press.

The more astute of you will have noticed that this here blog has had a shiny new redesign, and is all sparkling and new. Unless of course your general method of entrance to this blog is through an RSS feed, in which case this blog post will look exactly the same as the last one. But rest assured, the main site is all shiny looking. Mad props to Woo Themes, who have provided the requisite themes for both sites.

The reason for this overhaul, aside from the fact that the last look was never meant to last particularly long, is that I have finally gotten off my rather unshapely behind and set up BloodOnTheMotorway.com. I’m not going to hash over the reasons again here, as I have rather helpfully done that here. Long and short, it will be a place to prattle on about writing. The main benefit for you, dear reader, is that you will no longer have to listen that stuff if you don’t want to. Of which I am sure you are all very pleased.

Anyway, there will be more normal blogging here shortly, including the thrilling conclusions to my Discography thingy (which was rather short lived, but hey let’s not get ahead of ourselves) and the 30 day song challenge that has taken rather a lot longer to complete, as well as the next thrilling instalment of Gym Films.

I can practically hear your excitement from here.

I haven’t blogged for a while but there’s nothing quite like the death of a celebrity that you have an anecdote about to bring a blogger back to his keyboard. I’ve written this tale before, so forgive me if I recount again the tale of when I was put into a headlock by an elderly man with muscles like power cables.

A few years back, I actually came pretty close to a career in journalism, or at least I thought I had. I was hired by a small company in Leeds to be first a writer for, then editor of, a publication called the Asian Express. Not being Asian myself I had a few misgivings about my ability to relate to the subject matter, but given this was largely an exercise in slightly rewriting the press releases that emanated from local organisations, and because a writing job is a writing job, I took it. It turned out to be a fairly unmitigated disaster, but that’s another, much duller story.

One of my first assignments with the paper did provide respite from the relentless churnalism however, when I was asked to interview Jimmy Saville. Again, a strange thing to do for an Asian newspaper, but apparently he was due to open a new community centre or some such. Jimmy had always been really active in community politics in Leeds, so along I trundled. As always I was to be both reporter and photographer (and editor and everything else), and when I got to the venue Jimmy was running late, so I got chatting to a few of the assembled crowd, all of them delighted to be meeting Jimmy, who had a genuine standing within the Asian community of West Yorkshire.

After an hour or so of waiting, Jimmy turned up suddenly with no announcement, other than to stand at the doors and say loudly through a cigar filled mouth; ‘Now then, now then.’ The crowd went as bonkers as a collection of middle aged Asian businessmen and their wives can reasonably be expected to go. I started snapping some pics, happy for Jimmy to make his way to me eventually.

This was my first time ever interviewing a celebrity outside of the music scene, and I have to admit I was a bit nervous. I mean, Jimmy Saville. A bona fide celebrity in the way that someone can only really be when you grow up seeing them every week on your telly. As he made his way over to me I panicked slightly and blurted out the first question that popped into my head: ‘So Jimmy, how come you never replied to the letter I sent you?’

It seemed quite erudite and witty in my head, but as soon as I said it I felt an utter buffoon and Jimmy fixed me with a look that showed exactly how many times he’d heard it. Quick as a flash the look was gone and he smiled that big silly grin of his and replied; ‘Because you forgot to put a stamp on it.’

Pleasantries exchanged and ice awkwardly broken, we continued with the rest of the interview, with both of us enjoying the fact that this was a puff piece of zero consequence. I found him to be a bit odd but hugely likable. I commented on how fit he looked (not like that) and he told me all about the marathons he runs each year, and about his time as a wrestler. He was very happy to talk around his charity work but I sensed his now waning TV career was off the agenda. Every time I brought it up he deftly brought the subject back round to what he wanted to talk about, and this being a puff piece I was happy to indulge him.

Once the interview was over, the organisers of the event were hovering close by, clearly wanting to be photographed by me so as to appear in the paper. I obliged, and as soon as I was finished, Jimmy motioned that I should get a photo with him. ‘I’m sure you want a photo with me!’ he said, and he had a point, although this instantly dissipated any sense of journalistic integrity I was clinging onto. I found someone who was willing to take the shot and went over to Jimmy.

I stood next to him, giving my best ‘look, I’m with Jimmy Saville’ expression, when suddenly his arm went around my neck and placed me into a rock-solid headlock, and not in a playful, ‘hey hey’ kind of way. This was a death grip of the kind that was probably used as a finishing move inside the wrestling ring. I grasped his arm and tried to remove it but it was like a steel cable around my neck. I tried to maintain a smile on my face despite being unable to breathe and being aware that I was being strangled by an old man in a shell suit and peroxide straggly hair while a small Indian man took a photo.

After the photo was taken Jimmy released me and patted me on the back, while I spluttered for air. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said and then he was gone, with me bent double, trying hard to remember how to breathe normally.

And that was it, my afternoon with Jimmy Saville. Looking back now he was every bit as odd as you would expect, and there were little flashes of the unsettling creepiness that Louis Theroux would later hang a documentary around, but then at the same time there was the man very clearly plugged into a sense of community and charity.

Unfortunately, when I left the company many months later, I forgot to take the photo with me, and so I have no photographic proof of the incident, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. In the days since I heard about his death in the now traditional manner of seeing a joke about it on Twitter, I’ve searched through countless old discs to find it but to no avail, which is a shame.

I was certainly not close to the man, and can’t say I was ever really a fan of his, but I was saddened by the news of his death. I think the fabric of British Eccentricity lost a thread this week, the kind of man who liked to put nervous journalists into a headlock.

Rest in peace you magnificently strong old lunatic.

Last night I braved a downpour so severe I could barely make out my own headlights on the road ahead to make my way towards a modern building in an esteemed seat of learning, and found myself sitting in a classroom for the first time in over a decade. I was surprised to see that even in such surroundings as the starkly modern physics building of the University of York that they still resort to chalkboards. It was oddly comforting to be in such an austere high ceilinged room, reminiscent of all those lecture halls I failed to attend when I was at university proper.

I was back in the academic world for the first class of my creative writing evening class, which I’ve been meaning to do for ages but which only got decided on a whim a week ago. I’ve mentioned before that the more seriously I take my writing the more I realise how lacking I am in certain areas. Due to an idiotic decision to take English Literature at A level rather than English Language (actually I should have done both and dropped stupid Media Studies) I really have very little technical understanding of the fundamentals of writing, beyond that which I have picked up through trial and error or osmosis over the years. So here I am, back to school, trying to be better.

The class itself was great fun, and got me really quite excited. The module is very much introductory, but I’ll be learning about poetry, scriptwriting and prose, and getting a better grasp of the fundamentals. The group seemed a good mix, from a clearly very talented 18 year old with a keen eye for poetry, a shy girl with a lovely turn of phrase, a novice starting out on his journey, a few people who seem to be regulars of the creative writing courses and the old lady whose polite manner hides a burning political anger. The first session saw us introduced to ‘Fast Writing’ where we’re given a riff (think of a place and imagine yourself there) and then given five minutes to write as much as you can. For some reason my mind went straight to sweeping up the bar of Certificate 18 after the drunk metalheads had vacated and when we all read them out my piece seemed well received, which was nice. There was some lively debate on the nature of creativity and overall I left with a tangible sense of excitement about the whole thing.

As well as taking the step back into education, last week saw the first Demon Pigeon staff meeting in nearly a year, sparked by the impending renewal of the domain name. Seems we’re all really keen to pick it up again, who knows how long it will last but I did my first proper review in ages this week (which you can read here) and have a rather silly but good idea for an article next week so it seems it’s all systems go on that front as well. I’m making a real effort to find a few nights a week to sit down at the laptop rather than the telly, and the writing seems to be flowing really well. Tonight it is back to the novel, and I think I’m going to try and get some work done on sorting the plot.

On an unrelated matter, the picture you see at the top of this post is a rather lovely word cloud of all the ‘tags’ (ie genres) that I have listened to over the past few years over on my last.fm profile. For those of you who don’t know, last.fm is essentially a service which logs all the music you listen to and then makes recommendations based on your tastes, with the added bonus that stupidly geeky people such as myself can pore over the logs and lists and get lost in the detail. But I thought this was a really nice visual, and is a nice accurate description of my tastes. The more bands I listen to in a particular genre the larger it is, and it’s no real surprise to see the domination certain genres have achieved, even if it does rather put pay to the idea that I have a varied and eclectic music taste. Oh well, I can live with that. If you’re on last.fm why not add me as your friend!

It must be love, because he is the only person on the planet who could scream at me for two straight hours with no coherence and still get nothing but cuddles and ‘aww’s. Add to this a four year old who seems to be a little emotionally fragile about the new arrival and his seeming ability to pull Mum and Dad’s attention that used to be so completely hers and my days now seem to fly by in a haze of cuddles and tantrums and bedtimes and nappies and screaming. Lots and lots of screaming.

None of which is to say that it isn’t fantastic. Two children just seems to feel inherently right somehow, as though out little family can now actually lay claim to the title with some justification. For all that Rosie is a little fragile she has shown nothing but sweetness to her new baby brother, concerned when he is crying, cooing when he is asleep (in fact we have to restrain her from waking him up after spending hours trying to get him to settle) but then I never really expected anything less from a girl of such lovely temperament.

As for the little man himself his tantrums do not tell the whole story. He is tiny and fragile and looks just like my Dad when he is cross, and if you sit him on your knee to burp him he looks like a little lost mole person, all big baby eyes and hangdog expression. His little downy hair fluff remains the softest thing I’ve ever felt, and when he looks at me he seems to be staring right into the heart of me. I know that all of this states are transitory, and already after three weeks he seems a world away from the frail little man who first landed in my arms with a towel wrapped around him. I know instinctively, like I did with his sister, that no job I have now comes close to being as important as looking after him, and giving him all I can.

For all the tiredness and the lack of enthusiasm for doing, well, anything else (writing has taken somewhat of a back seat of late) I don’t think I’ve ever felt as good about my life as when I walked into my living room and saw my beautiful family all cuddled up together on the sofa; my tiny little man, my beautiful little girl and the love of my life, the best Mum my kids could ever hope for. I’m a very lucky man, and I’m enjoying being that for now, no matter how much it may leave me feeling like discarded sock puppet at the end of the day.

So you may have noticed I’ve not been around much lately, the reason being the rather lovely and handsome little fella you see here. My gorgeous little fella arrived on Thursday morning and every day since has been a blur of doing stuff, cuddling him, cleaning up his sick, and trying to catch furtive little sleeps where I can. To put it bluntly I am absolutely and totally knackered, and in the few moments of peace I’m getting the only internet activity that I can be remotely interested in is checking to see if Arsenal have signed any new players.

Not that I’m complaining. Having such a precious little man is a far greater thing than anything else in the world, and he is totally worth the exhaustion. At the moment though, all other pursuits seem rather insignificant. As well as this I’m trying to make sure Rosie is kept busy, and out from under Ellen’s feet while she recovers. Today’s excursion was to a local kid’s activity thing, which quite suddenly went all churchy in the middle of it. Not good. Next week she’ll be starting big school (an event in itself) but I’ll have one more week off, so I’m hoping I’ll have the inclination to do some writing then.

From a lot of quarters the reaction has been quite visceral, but it seems to me there is a danger here. By ignoring the complexity of the issues surrounding this, we are in danger of having them repeat on us. Last night I saw widespread condemnation from some quarters of Ken Livingstone and others who were arguing that the riots were a by-product of cuts, unemployment and disaffection amongst the youth of this country. ‘Nonsense,’ came the response, ‘this is criminality, pure and simple. Sickening and abhorrent criminal behaviour.’ But surely it can be, and is, both?

Why is it that those who seek to understand the root cause of the problem seem to be perennially seen as somehow condoning it? Is it not perfectly possible to think that these displays of thuggish behaviour and reckless hate are despicable and inexcusable, but at the same time seek to understand that there are reasons why these young kids are out there? The fact is that in parts of London unemployment is horrendously high. Cuts to the EMA have had an impact on retention in education. Local community groups have had huge funding cuts, and relations between young kids and the Police have long been brittle and weak. Does any of this excuse the rioting and looting? Of course not. But it provides us with a context that just maybe might allow us to move beyond last night.

But the situation is more complex than that.

If you look at this generation you see a whole age group who are battling against competing messages. One the one hand that they are not good enough, that they have no future. That there are no jobs. That we are saddling them with debt. That they will have to work longer than us. That we cannot pay for them. That they are workshy. That their exams are not as hard as the ones we took. Again and again, no future for you, we don’t believe you’re good enough and anyway, we mortgaged your future to pay for our present, sorry.

On the other hand, money is everything. Money is status, money means girls, guys, success. Look pretty, make money. Guns are cool, crime pays, think of yourself alone. All the media made for this generation seems to lack the social conscience you’d expect from youth culture, the righteous anger we got in our youth movements completely removed from a culture obsessed by glamour and celebrity. What does that do to the psyche of a whole generation? I think we say the answer to that last night, and it helps to explain why it spread so fast to other cities. These actions are an expression of a rage they lack the language to articulate. The only other way of looking at this is that this is a lost generation, gone, beyond redemption. This is not an excuse, nothing can excuse the inhumanity on display last night. But it is a reason.

But still, it is more complex than that.

The scores of disaffected youths out on the street are one part of this, and there is clearly an element of hardcore criminality on the street driving things on. The veneer of acceptability, the rule of law, these are gone now and the hardcore have come out, hell bent on destruction. But this won’t be everyone out on the street. Last night on the news for every looter I saw on shaky hand held footage, there were a dozen more doing nothing, loitering, experiencing the riot without really taking part.

And what of the huge swathes of kids who were not on the streets? Those kids and young people and adults and normal Londoners who looked on in horror and this morning formed impromptu clean-up groups over social networks? Last night we saw the worst of what I still think of as ‘My City’ even though I haven’t lived there in over a decade, but we also saw the best. People risked their lives to pull people out of burning buildings. People faced down rioters. The footage of the woman yelling at the kids to go home that spread like wildfire over Twitter last night proves as much to me as the footage of burning buildings. The groups set up on social networks to catch looters and report the, to clean up affected areas identify where trouble is moving speak more to me about social networking than any hyperbole in the press about the negative impact they have. There is a very real risk that we write this generation off based on the lawless actions of the few.

As I say, it is a massively complex situation, one that I cannot possibly hope to explain in one blog post. Please don’t think that I am trying to do so. But we should not allow those who want to force it into a simple box to do so, nor should we allow the issue to pass without a thorough examination of its root causes. By failing to learn the lessons we risk repeating them. In the meantime my thoughts go out to all my friends and family in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds and anywhere else affected. I just hope that tonight sees calm on the streets, wherever you are.