Caroline Lucas - Bristol Festival of Ideas, at Bristol

There is a simple solution to climate change.  All fossil fuel consumption could be eradicated overnight if only someone could find a way to harness the megawatts in Caroline Lucas’ smile.  Speaking at at-Bristol, the freshly re-elected Green MP for Brighton Pavilion was positively glowing from beginning to end, even when bemoaning the malevolent mean-spiritedness of certain members of the Conservative Party’s life-loathing tendency.  Maybe she’s just a really smiley person all the time, despite having all the hopes and expectations of 1.2 million Green voters resting on her smartly tailored shoulders, and even though she has to spend time in proximity to Michael Gove.

Or perhaps it was the sea of adoring faces that left her feeling so happy.  Obviously this was never going to be Ms Lucas’ toughest gig, in a city where the number of Green councillors seems to grow almost daily.  In fact the punters were so enraptured that moderator Andrew Kelly insisted at the end that the audience remain seated until Lucas had made it safely to the back of the room.  Maybe he was worried that she would be mobbed, or perhaps that they would form an honour guard and expect her to walk under an arch made from rolled-up copies of the Guardian.

But there was also an air of sadness. Many of the audience bought their tickets before May 7^th, presumably anticipating an evening of quiet celebration and revelations of how the new progressive coalition would be pushed to adopt a more Green approach.  Instead, with a surprise Conservative majority, the talk repeatedly returned to “how to stop the Tories”.  Lucas had a number of suggestions, including peaceful protest “as part of the toolbox” (the abrupt pause at the end of her sentence suggesting she might not be averse to more direct types of protest as well).  She also repeated several times her desire to engage in “conversations” with other progressive parties about how to keep to Tories out next time.  Above all, she championed a politics of compassion, hope and vision over the politics of fears and division.

A lot of her talk - and her accompanying book, Honourable Friends - focused on the many defects of the House of Commons. Amidst the tales from the corridors of power, Lucas argued for radical modernisation of what she described as “a cross between Hogwarts and a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta”. One thing did become clear: along with the compassionate and caring side, Lucas has a deeply pragmatic streak, a keen focus on the small practicalities that can make a difference rather than the big ideals that may never be achieved.

Caroline Lucas is a warm and engaging speaker with a rich seam of parliamentary anecdotes.  Her blend of idealism and pragmatism is both infectious and inspiring, and left this audience of the already converted hoping that she might one day be their dream Prime Minister in a Government of the Righteous.

Theodore Zeldin - Bristol Festival of Ideas, Watershed

Described by the Independent on Sunday as one of the 40 thinkers most likely to have lasting relevance in the 21^st century, academic Theodore Zeldin is worried. Humans are living wasted lives, unaware of what is happening inside one another’s head, failing to explore the possibilities of life and failing to draw on the experience of others, both living and dead. “Everyone who has lived in the past has something to tell us.” He is also disturbed by the fact that work is not designed to make people feel fully alive.

With his long grey hair and academic mien, Zeldin looks like a secular cardinal delivering a softly-spoken shriek of anguish against an anonymised society. His solution is curiosity and honesty: to talk frankly to one another about the things that truly motivate us, and to listen wisely. His manifesto of hidden pleasures seeks to cut through the pretence and illusions which surround us in everyday life to see the person beneath the façade and the assumptions, be they a high-ranking government official, a wage slave in an Amazon distribution centre or an impoverished Indian farmer.

In arguing that co-workers should get to know one another as people, Zeldin was echoing the argument put forward by Margaret Heffernan in her earlier Festival of Ideas talk. But whilst Heffernan’s approach was more business-like, describing it as “building social capital” with a clearly definable end-benefit, Zeldin’s more philosophical view offers no ‘business case’, but champions it simply as A Good Thing.

Although Zeldin’s proposed approach is an appealing one, it does not seem to fully take account of the workings of our contemporary society. It is one of the flaws of the modern world that the slightest admission of weakness or fallibility readily triggers a tumult of disapproval. If a government minister or CEO were to take Zeldin’s advice to heart and admit that sometimes they simply don’t know what to do - even though, being merely human, that’s undoubtedly true - it would unleash a media firestorm that would demolish their careers and their lives. Until the rest of the world gives us the space to be open and frank, honesty may not be the best policy, and Zeldin’s dreams of less-wasted lives may sadly remain confined to the covers of his book.

Katherine Ryan - The Lantern

Katherine Ryan is known for diatribes against celebrities, and that was certainly what she delivered on stage at the Lantern: Heat magazine dunked in a bucket of vitriol.  Although the choice of targets - Tulisa, Peter Andre, Miley Cyrus (“twerking: not so much a dance as a cry for help”) - does occasionally feel like shooting fish in a barrel, Ryan’s act has a warmth which takes the sting out of many of the digs, whilst also lulling the audience into a false sense of snuggly comfort before delivering a barrage of no-holds-barred punchlines.

The sweet and sour is also perfectly balanced in Ryan’s more personal material: being a single mother, her relationship with her young daughter, and the many defects of her ex-partner.  Because ironically, like her tabloid-haunting celebrity targets Ryan also has a love-rat in her cupboard.  She is getting her revenge with a microphone and her self-described “smart mouth”, dragging out and dissecting his many defects in front of a live audience whilst still maintaining his anonymity for legal reasons.  It’s ironic that this part of the act comes with a lawyer’s caveat, since the rest of her act is lavishly sprinkled with what is undeniably pure potential slander in the true legal sense (and therefore utterly unreproducible here). It seems unlikely that any judge would buy into Ryan’s faux-innocent defence that “you can’t libel the dead, and I assumed many of these people would be dead by the time I performed this show”.

Part of Ryan’s appeal lies in the contrast between the wide-eyed charm and the potty mouth.  But ultimately this is not cheap character comedy which relies on the dissonance of a sweet and innocent ingénue delivering material of such acidity and smuttiness.  It’s rather simpler than that: Ryan is just a very perceptive and honest comedian who has absolutely no problem telling it like it is.  And being very funny in the process.

Analogue protesting (comment piece)

One of the notable aspects of the recent Bristol Against Austerity march was that it was organised by a group of sixth form students. Seventeen-year-olds from a generation who are supposed to be entirely Internet-focused, unable to bestir themselves from their smartphones and tablets, struggling to fulfil even the basic necessities of life unless it comes with a supportive app.And yet it was they who proactively organised a demo, made placards and marched up and down Park Street. It’s nice to see that it’s not just in the world of fashion that the 1980s are back in style.

Meanwhile, my Facebook feed has erupted with a torrent of demands from my forty-something friends that I sign online petitions. To save the NHS, protect the Human Rights Act and defend the Arts, please click here. It seems that it’s us grown-ups who have become enraptured by the quick-click instant gratification of the virtual petition, huddling indoors over our glowing screens, lulled into the belief that breaking off from completing yet another pointless Buzzfeed quiz in order to put your name to something on 38degrees is a valid form of protest. It’s so much more convenient and instant that having to go through all the palaver of actually going outside and demonstrating.

But sometimes quick and easy isn’t best. Just as we’re moving away from instant coffee to the hand-crafted loveliness of an artisan flat white, maybe it’s time to recognise that the ersatz protest of the online petition is a feeble substitute for the real thing: the turkey twizzler of popular dissent. Whilst its debatable whether street protests ever truly affect change - as the million people who marched against the Iraq War can testify - I’m guessing that the freshly-elected government, comfortably surveying their absolute majority in the House of Commons, are more likely to pay attention to thousands of citizens on the streets than a few thousand names submitted by sedentary keyboard class warriors.

Conspiracy theorists might even want to consider the following hypothesis: what if sites like change.org and 38degrees have been specifically created by the powers that be to neuter the expression of citizen anger, a placebo button for the malcontent to press to vent their frustration without ever disrupting life in the bricks and mortar world?

That theory may be farfetched, but even without a malevolent intent behind it, that’s precisely what they’re doing. The splutterings of the laptop-wielding classes are all too easily consigned to David Cameron’s junk folder.  The quick click may be a cheap way of buying yourself some property on the moral high ground, but it’s ultimately as insubstantial as a luxury villa in Second Life.

So the next time someone tweets or shares a link to another online petition, take a moment to think. Is this something you feel strongly about? And if it is, is it not worth actually getting out of your chair and going on a march, or organising a meeting, or at the very least taking the time to write a strongly worded e-mail to your MP, rather than just the quick fix of click and sign? Those 17 year olds at Bristol Against Austerity have discovered the joy of analogue protesting - perhaps it’s time their parents threw away their mouse and joined them.

Philip Zimbardo - Bristol Festival of Ideas, Watershed

To students of psychology, Philip Zimbardo’s name is a familiar one, attached as it is to the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment in which the research subjects took their roles as prison guards considerably more seriously than expected. No surprise, therefore, that the audience for Zimbardo’s Festival of Ideas talk included a lot of students and the offer of selfies with the great man afterwards.

Zimbardo’s current thesis is that “technology has sabotaged what it means to be male”. This talk at the Watershed was his first attempt to present to an audience the arguments contained in his new book Man (Dis)connected. Because the lecture is still a work in progress, and because of the tight time constraints imposed by a lunchtime talk, Zimbardo spent most of his time focusing heavily on video games and online pornography - much like the teenage boys he was describing.

In summary, his argument - delivered with a torrent of statistics that frequently failed to distinguish between correlation and causality - is that the excessive consumption of video games and online porn is causing boys today to fail academically, socially and sexually through a host of mechanisms, from a failure to develop social skills to porn-induced erectile dysfunction. The potential solutions to the problems he identified were rushed through in a heavily time-pressured PowerPoint cascade, but did not feature anything earth-shatteringly different from the usual fixes (e.g. take junk food out of school, make school learning as much fun as video games, support the role of fathers).

Although Zimbardo admitted he is yet another in a long line of “alarmists”, he did claim that this ‘crisis’ was different. Unfortunately he did not have the time - or perhaps the impetus - to explain in what way it’s different. But without a convincing argument, cynics can too easily claim that he is simply part of a long tradition of old men who have essentially argued that “modern life is rubbish”. His critique also appears to be based quite heavily on one model of family life - his own Italian-American upbringing - as being the only desirable ideal.

The Festival of Ideas’ offering of one hour lunchtime talks is an excellent one - a chance to cram in some wisdom along with your packed lunch. But as this talk demonstrated, the event does need to be specifically tailored for such a tight timeslot. Otherwise you get a lot of talk about the problems, and too little about the solutions.