How can a European make sense of the fervent anti-government feeling running through America, as seen in the 300,000 strong Tea Party rally in Washington DC?

I’m in no position to speculate really, but I do wonder whether one factor might be geography.

Washington DC may seem more remote to a Texan than London might to a Geordie.

In terms of distance there’s 1300 miles in it, but also a whole level of government.

The US has a federal system meaning that residents of San Antonio answer to the Texan government as well as to the national government.

The UK really doesn’t have an analogous system, but the UK government does answer to the EU government in Brussels and we all know how highly the public regards them.

Photo by asterix611.

Foreign correspondents on China 20 years after Tiananmen Square

What hope is there for greater political freedoms in China? Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the massacre at Tiananmen Square and China’s response to the occasion shows that little progress has been made.

Vigils to mark the date were banned in all areas except Hong Kong and foreign journalists were prevented from filming in Tiananmen Square – including BBC journalist James Reynolds, as can be seen in this truly bizarre video footage.

On Monday I went along to a panel discussion put on by the Frontline Club between journalists with an intimate knowledge of China and an organiser of the Tiananmen Square protests 20 years ago.

Below is video from the event and a summary of some of the talking points from the night.

Panelists
Tim Marshall (Foreign Editor, Sky News)
Sirong Chen (China Editor, BBC World Service)
Isabel Hilton (Editor, China Dialogue)
Shao Jiang (Protest organiser and Amnesty blogger)

Tiananmen, 20 years on

The impact of what happened 20 years ago is still rumbling on. SJ, who took part in the protests, stressed that people still care but that “Government propaganda said people just move on.”

Freedom via the internet?

A few years ago the government introduced their own blogs in response to their growing popularity. The only hitch was that nobody read them.

Much has been made of the democratising power of the internet and IH is one of those people who believe that the internet could well be a catalyst for political change in China. “The Party has an interesting problem with the internet – it is by nature much more cheeky, irreverent and confrontational,” IL said. “Mockery is widespread.”

Freedom via capitalism?

As Capitalism takes root in China, IH argued that there would come a point where Chinese citizens would want to defend their consumer rights – if you buy baby milk that poisons your child, for instance.

Little hope for democracy

Officially the Party plans to have elections for all regional posts by 2010, but the elections will only be contested within the party. National elections or multi-party elections are unforeseeable. “I’m not willing to wait for national elections in my working years,” SC said. IL pointed out that the Party had actually discussed the possibility of splitting itself into four separate parties but that the plans had been shelved.

China and the new world order

“You have a hell of a lot of people who believe that the West ruined China’s prosperity,” IH said. This is historically inaccurate, she argues, but a lot of Party officials told her that that China was no longer in a mood to be pushed around. “Quite honestly what officials say to you after dinner when they’ve had too much Mao time can be quite alarming. ‘In a few years we’ll invade Taiwan and you won’t be albe to do anything about it’; ‘In a few years we’ll have eliminated the Tibetans and you Western liberals will just have to put up with it’. People say these things.”

Westfield Shopping Centre crunched

No news intro is complete without it. The recession has swept through the world’s newspapers. ‘Credit crunch’ is the phrase that launched a thousand stories. Well, more like thousands and thousands of stories.

On work experience at the Times last week I was sent out to Westfield Shopping Centre in White City to see if the recession had had an impact on London’s newest and most extravagant shopping centre. The article I contributed to can be found here.

One in ten units were unoccupied. Only six of these empty stores were set to be filled by retailers. The vacant shops have forced Westfield to think creatively about how to fill excess floor space. Most were blocked up to hide the unsightly units from shoppers and given over to nearby stores to use as shop windows for their goods. In many parts of the centre mannequins stood alone in deserted stores.

Why Sir Fred Goodwin was rewarded for failure

In the back of Private Eye is the reliably eye-opening column In The City, which uncovers dodgy goings-on in the financial markets.

The unnamed author frequently develops stories that have been in the papers. This week’s column looks at the warped reasoning behind Sir Fred Goodwin’s £693,000 a year pension (I can’t provide a link sadly as Private Eye doesn’t really do online).

In The City reminds us that Fred the Shred’s stunning pension was topped up as recently as October last year by £8m, despite the fact that RBS was already facing near bankruptcy. Why did RBS bosses consider it acceptable to heap extra reward on such an unsuccessful chief exec?

This bizarre decision says a lot about banking culture. In The City argues that the increased pension was effectively hush money. RBS had sufficient grounds to sack Goodwin last year if they had wanted to do so, in which case Goodwin would have faced a reduced pension or no pension at all. In The City explains why RBS decided not to give him the boot –

(Sacking) could have been an option. But only if the RBS board were prepared to see him in court and wash all their dirty boardroom linen in public. Negligence or breach of company policy when approved by the board… would be hard to prove. 

Which is why there are always rewards for failure. Contracts assume competence, so incompetence could be “due cause” to dismiss. But companies prefer chief executives to go quietly with a Goodwin-style gag, which is cheap at the price, say their lawyers.

Why sack Goodwin when you run the risk of placing your boardroom decisions in the public domain? Heaven forbid! Best to keep such valuable trade secrets under wraps.

Happily for RBS, pension settlements are usually legally ‘bombproof’, says In The City. Indeed an RBS report in February last year stated that Goodwin was perfectly entitled to “enhanced benefits” on early retirement. The chances of a successful legal challenge look fairly remote.

How many traffic wardens does it take to book a car?

Five! Or at least that’s how many I spotted crowding around this Volkswagen in Islington the other day…