Stand-off at St Paul's

If you were a tourist in London during the past week wishing to visit Britain’s most famous cathedral, you were out of luck – you were up against the disorganised and incompetent management of an antiquated institution paralysed by an unexpected moral dilemma.

The ludicrous decision to close the doors of St Paul’s for the first time since the Second World War, only to re-open them a week later without anything apparently having changed, shamed and embarrassed the cathedral’s religious leaders – partly because of the nonsense of it all, but largely because it displayed a sense of indecision about whose side the Church was on.

Finally, after a week of discussions and deadlock, yesterday’s news that legal action is to be taken to evict the protesters means the cathedral – in partnership with the municipal authority, the City of London Corporation – have decided enough is enough.

After all, if the camp’s grievance really is as fundamental as the curse of capitalism and the state in which it is said to have left the world economy… a natural resolution is not exactly imminent.

Unless, of course, this is just another fashionable fad that will fade as soon as the media circus rolls out of town. The Sage invites the reader to make up his or her own mind.

Of course, this is no isolated protest. Demonstrations have sprung up in different forms and on different scales across the developed world, with a mixture of international and local axes to grind but all united under the ‘Occupy’ banner. The movement was started by massive marches around Wall Street in New York but has since inspired similar events in countless cities – most notably in Rome, Madrid and Athens.

London itself is not the only city in the UK to be ‘occupied’ – George Square in the heart of Glasgow is the scene of a similar (albeit much smaller) tented demonstration, which suffered a similar fate yesterday when the city council formally ordered the protesters to leave.

But it is not only the sheer scale of the London camp which has caught the people’s imagination and the media’s attention – it is also the typically English social politics that arises when a revered ancient monument clashes with a modern exhibition of people power.

It’s a conflict that the authorities have not handled well. The protesters, said to be disappointed when the cathedral was closed last week, must have been flabbergasted yesterday when the powers-that-be hit back so defiantly. Isn’t the Church supposed to be all-for tackling inequality – the proclaimed mission of the Occupy movement – and people’s right to express their dissent?

Of course it is, but the Church would also advocate the argument that such freedoms must be exercised within the rule of law and – much like the case of Dale Farm earlier this month – the law must be enforced and be seen to be enforced legitimately, fairly and consistently.

The protesters are partly camped on both public highways and the cathedral’s own private property. That is illegal, and the persistence of the camp and the continued toleration of it by the authorities threaten not only to make a mockery of the rules but also to set a worrying precedent.

They may have spent the week on a PR drive claiming to be the good guys – honest, hard-working men and women vacating their tents in the daytime because ‘they have to go to work’ – but law enforcers have a job to do, too. It looks like the unhappy campers must find somewhere else to go and make their futile case – they better get comfy, they could be there a while.

The Steve Jobs Generation

Yesterday’s vote by MPs to allow the use of electronic equipment in the chamber during debates represents not only a welcome move by the House of Commons into the 21st century (and the real world), but also a sign of the irrepressible march of mobile technology.

As it becomes increasingly clear that resistance to advances in the technology and availability of smart phones and other hand-held devices is futile, the mother of all Parliaments has finally laid down her own law – after months of uncertainty and misinterpretation.

Understandably, the vote was not a formality – many Members argued that to turn the current, discreetly underhand use of such devices into a free-for-all would have a negative impact on the atmosphere and quality of debates, through distractions, outside influences and ill-gotten information. The curse of Twitter strikes again on the Sage’s pages.

In the end, in classic Parliamentary parlance, the resolution reached was that devices may be used “in a way that does not impair decorum”.

The House of Commons, though, is by no means the only employer finding itself powerless against the irresistible force of technological proliferation. But it is not that firms should do more to restrict personal technology – to do so merely drives its use ‘underground’ and deters talented potential young recruits.

Rather, they should embrace these new tools of interaction, education and empowerment. The iron grip of IT departments on employees is loosening; digital dictatorships are becoming data democracies.

Such liberalisation of technology does have its drawbacks – and its dangers. Legal injunctions have been breached on Twitter, Facebook has fought an endless (and, frankly, tedious) battle against privacy hawks, and BlackBerry Messenger was partly blamed for the sporadic and unpredictable outbursts of violence and looting in London and elsewhere earlier this year.

But above all it plays to the modern man or woman’s growing sense of personal freedom and entitlement – the right to know, to understand, and to react to what goes on around them. The abuses of this empowerment are far outweighed by its legitimate uses.

Which is just as well – the explosion in the market for personal IT has been spectacular. The global technology firms at the heart of the boom face a constant challenge in keeping up with consumers’ demands, which can change as instantly as the delivery of knowledge that they desire.

That is, except for one company – an empire that has not followed its customers’ tastes, but defined them, and in doing so led much of today’s ‘information generation’ into something of a trance… and a money-spinning one, at that.

It’s likely that many of those who queued overnight for the latest – and umpteenth – revision of its flagship product (as if stocks would run out if they didn’t put their hands in their pockets quickly enough) didn’t fully appreciate just how this one was different from the last one… or how it was meaningfully better (if at all) than its much cheaper but less fashionable rivals.

But Apple’s decade-long strategy of telling people what they want, then telling them they need it, then giving it to them, has been so overwhelmingly successful that the draw is magnetic. Its mastermind may no longer be with us, but his influence – his legacy – lives on.