What? In truth, from this distance, the protesters are difficult to like. I don't automatically respect people who paint their incoherence as a sort of democratic innocence, and I don't like those who claim their innocence as a cover for self-indulgence borne out of privilege. All told, we the spectators to their spectacle could feel justified disappointment that, in the end, though they have demonstrated an ability to attract the TV cameras, they seem to have nothing coherent to say to them. Instead, we get a generalized attack on capitalism (yeah, thanks, grandad) or the inner practices of the Corporation of London (Huddersfield talks of little else, I assure you).
It is as if they do not truly feel the weight of their actions; and probably do not truly wish to feel the weight of their actions. Protest ultimately as self-expression rather than political action.
Despite all that, there's just this feeling that they're close, so close, to something important. Forget all I said about protest as self-expression, forget the jibes about trustafarians, sometimes when you're reaching for a new idea, the creative process is messy, silly, annoying, time-wasting. Sometimes the struggle to be born looks a lot like dicking around.
If only these people had the faintest inkling that a fair number of people in the City feel the same as they: that something has gone deeply wrong; and that the opportunity to rectify it is slipping away day by day; and that as it slips away, so do our chances for the future.
And so, in all seriousness, I offer this as a simple one-stop program for reform around which the St Paul's protestors, the Archbishop of Canterbury, academics and intellectuals, a coalition of politicians from all points of intellectual sentience across the spectrum, a hefty slice of the City, and even Islamic thinkers could unite:
'We ask that the law be changed in order to recognize the fundamentally one-sided and immoral nature of the deposit contract, and for such contracts to be made illegal under UK law.'
Frankly, that single change would do it. Just that single change. And from that springs the Fundiflora.
