No time, no time … no time to write, take pictures, enjoy the internet, enjoy anything other than books, books, books. But my fleeting comment on some historic what-not that appears to have happened while I was lost in the bubble comes in the shape of a link to my favourite, if slightly odd, blogpost of the day: The First US Presidential Speech to Mention an Animal?

Here’s another animal, not so scarred, not so famous, and not so impressively-held:

© catherine buca 2008

This was taken on Saturday night, on the corner of Morley Street and Broad Street in Hanley. There used to be a discount kitchen shop there – this is the only part they haven’t ripped up.

© catherine buca 2008

The rest of the large plot of waste-ground is covered with rubble and weeds. It’s amazing how quickly the weeds reclaimed the ground. Them and the drivers who have discovered a great (free) place to park. The whole area is, as far as I know, going to be used for the new Tesco store, its car park, and new roads to join the ring road to the Festival Park complex. One by one, all the little shops are going – either moving on (and out, to places where no one ever passes) or closing their doors forever. This is progress. The way forward. The new big hope for Stoke-on-Trent.

Okay, so no one would argue the status quo was working. Stoke’s a deprived city, one of the poorest in the country, and its people feel pretty dejected (although despite this they remain some of the friendliest you’ll ever meet). The decimation of the city, highlighted by the loss of the pits and pots, continues with the lack of choice in terms of employment and training opportunities, and the systematic break up of communities. With every new compulsory purchase scheme comes another community that is packed up and shipped out, but the council is running out of money to actually develop the areas they are clearing. But let’s forget about those areas for a moment – what about the people who are moved on to make way for this epic failure of planning? If we see a bunch of pretty plans for the future who really cares what happened to the people who had to go? Who cares about the businesses that had to close?

I’m being a bit simplistic and emotive. After all, is there really a place for nostalgia when you have to look to the future? There’s an exhibition at the local Airspace gallery at the moment. I’ll admit to not having seen it yet, but the window display advertising it got me thinking. Does a window full of old polaroid photographs, school report cards and a photo of the half-pulled down ABC cinema, with its guts hanging out, actually say anything about Stoke-on-Trent? I don’t think so. It’s nothing more than a whimsical look back, a trip down “weren’t things great in the old days” memory lane. But things weren’t so great in the old days. Stoke’s always been poor, industrial and brow-beaten. All that’s changed is that its people don’t have anything to be proud of any more. Pretending life was great way back when obscures the questions we should be asking.

And so, we’re at a crossroads. We’re standing on the corner, and to some it feels like we don’t really have a choice which road we go down. We’re being pushed down the road that’s got a big shiny Tesco and some swanky canal-side apartments at the end of it. The road that’s supposedly paved with gold. Actually, what it’s not paved with is anything that the people of Stoke-on-Trent, those whose report cards are in the window of the gallery, those who stand next to their bikes in alley-ways in the polaroid photos, can grab onto and use to make their lives better, richer, or more fulfilling. It’s not as easy as saying “well, why don’t you do something about it then?”, because when you take away peoples’ jobs and their communities you take away their self-esteem and their hope. People retreat into the past, into the way back when, because no matter how hard things were it wasn’t as soulless as it is now.

Soul-on-Trent is in danger of losing its soul. And I reckon that’s a bit shit. All that glitters is not gold. What use is spending money you haven’t got to attract people who want to make a quick buck when you don’t give a damn about the people who already live here? What does ‘attracting investment’ actually mean? The people of Stoke-on-Trent aren’t stupid, let’s give them some credit. They know their council isn’t doing this for them. When everyone talks about homogenisation of the high street, what they are also talking about, implicitly, is the continued ghettoisation of those people who created and relied on the individual high street, and all that went with it. Which brings us back to nostalgia.

Nostalgia is all you’ve got to hang on to when any sense of togetherness is being eroded. Nostalgia brings people together through a common remembrance, through shared cultural memory. It serves the ‘regeneration’ crowd well, because it allows for a false sense of community to remain in peoples’ minds even as all they once knew is broken down around them. The soul of Soul-on-Trent lives on in peoples’ hearts, that’s what we’ll all tell ourselves. It doesn’t matter what they do to our city, because we’ll still be us. Except one day, we won’t be. What’s in your head, your heart and the past isn’t enough. It’s what you do now that makes you and your community what it is.

Perhaps I’m overly pessimistic. But it doesn’t matter how hard I look – all I see at the moment is people turning right, towards that big shiny Tesco, holding on to a warm, glinting ball of nostalgia that they hope will see them through. But it won’t.

I’ve been following this story for a week or so now, and I can’t help but feel more and more uneasy about it.

Hicham Yezza, a postgraduate employee at Nottingham University, was arrested and detained for six days for possessing a copy of the al-Qaida training manual. Why did he have it? To print out for a friend who was researching an MA on their training methods. Hardly a threat to national security.

The Guardian’s article has the first interview with Yezza since the events unfolded, and highlights the crucial issues around censorship and intellectual freedom involved in the case. The article quotes academics, who point to a climate of self-censorship that is already present, and growing, within universities, hindering academic freedom and investigation. What is also interesting is Yezza’s position within the university. He was active within political societies, and the founder of the campus’ student peace movement. The university released a statement that claimed

The University works closely with the Students’ Union to promote dialogue, understanding and respect between student societies and is proactive in meeting regularly with representatives of key cultural groups. We also work closely with chaplains and faith groups, not only to meet the needs of students from particular faiths, but also to balance the interests of particular cultural or religious groups with those of the wider campus community. Where individual or group action unsettles the harmony of the campus, the University is committed to working through established channels to reinforce the values and standards that underpin a diverse and tolerant environment.

Apparently, ‘harmony’ in this case means not protesting – about anything. If I was a conspiraloon I might say that Yezza’s correspondence was monitored by the university because of his activity in the peace movement (that and his unfortunate affliction of having a strange-sounding foreign name), and it is through this monitoring that they found the copy of the manual in the first place, and that the over-reaction of going straight to the police was in direct response to those issues. However, I’m not into my conspiraloonery, so I won’t say that. But I can understand why some might.

You can follow Yezza’s deportation struggle at the Free Hicham Yezza blog, which also provides some useful comment on the events that led up to this.