The cone ranger, AI agents and what makes us human

It’s been a belter first year at Bell HQ. 1,000 subscribers, 200-odd articles, 35+ freelancers published, and a scoop unmasking the neo-Nazi behind the saltires picked up in the national papers. 

But as well as The Bell, I still dabble in various audio projects. This year I worked on Young Warriors, a podcast series written and presented by the criminologist Alistair Fraser. Fraser and I travelled to six different cities, where he passed the microphone to young people and youth workers flipping the script on youth stereotypes and stigma in different ways. We finish up our journey home in Glasgow. Various parts have brought tears to my eyes on many occasions. Fraser reflected on the series — and how we can learn from young people to solve issues like knife crime — in this article in The Bell earlier this year. 

I lent my hand and ears to two episodes of BBC Radio 4’s Archive on 4 this year too. The first was a satirical swipe at Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, 30 years on. It was all rather silly, and presented in a deliciously sassy fashion by comedian Susan Morrison, but it made some serious points about Scottishness, identity, myth-making and how Braveheart iconography has shaped the modern independence movement. The second was Pétain on Trial: From Hero to Traitor, presented by the inimitable broadcaster Allan Little. We explored the troubling legacy of a trial that divided and shook France to its core. What’s interesting, and perhaps worrying, is the extent to which Pétainism — the revanchist ideology linked to the war hero who led France right into Hitler’s arms — remains alive in the far right politics of the present. I fear the UK is going the way of France, where Le Pen’s dédiabolisation (de-demonisation) has shifted extreme political ideology into the mainstream. 

Here today, cone tomorrow 

At the risk of being branded a conical curmudgeon, there is something about The Rebel Bear’s most recent art stunt — a pigeon reading a paper atop the Duke of Wellington statue — that doesn’t sit well with me. At various points over the years, people have taken the classic orange conehat off the Duke’s heid, replacing it with club advertising or some other gimmick. Generally, people don’t take kindly to its removal under any circumstances, but the reaction this time seems more positive, even if many are devout cone purists, like yours truly. I like the statuette artwork itself, it’s just that it doesn’t seem in keeping with the spirit of what has been happening in a delightfully organic fashion for forty-odd years. 

 Interestingly, the artist was in the news recently for all the wrong reasons, having painted the famous Cables Wynd banana flats in Leith without consent. I actually quite like The Rebel Bear; his Hope Street artwork this year makes me stop and smile every time I see it. Sure, it’s a bit (okay entirely) Banksy-derivative, but it also feels of its place, and I love that the young team have now sprayed around it to get their tags in front of the eyeballs of more passersby. 

This piece, though, seems to signal a sort of self-promotional takeover of the statue in order for the artist to sell more prints of his artwork. I say nay. 

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