On Saturday, as I returned from a meeting through the middle of Bristol I saw Redcliff Hill blocked off by the police. My initial thought was there had been an accident, but as I passed by on the roundabout I glanced over my shoulder, mainly to check the traffic around me as bikes have no mirrors, and saw the riot in progress outside the hotel. “Ah,” I thought, “that lot again!” The usual right-wing protesters were fighting the usual left-wing protesters while the police tried desperately to pull them apart. Half a mile later as I crawled through the diverted traffic a pedestrian asked me what was going on. “The usual,” I replied.

I can understand why feelings run so high. England doesn’t feel like England anymore. We frequently hear and read reports of teenagers stabbing each other. I never go out without seeing at least one illegal act committed, even if it’s only someone driving an illegal vehicle along the road or along the pavement. I see motorbikes being ridden in parks. I sometimes see fights. I hear people shouting death threats at each other. I see flags hanging from lamp posts. Since when have the English waved flags away from international sports events, last night of the Proms, or military parades? It’s not who we are. It feels more like a pre-revolutionary state than safe old England.

Then there are the public services which no longer work, and the politicians who think the best response to laws being disobeyed is to make new laws. What makes them think people who won’t obey the old laws will somehow obey the new? For the last fifty years they’ve told us we can have better services with lower taxes. What sort of madness is that? The result is the services are there in theory and inaccessible in practice. Private firms are no better. Most of the big ones work on the more service with less cost model too, and the result is an hour of hold music while waiting to book something or buy something or get a fault remedied. Nor can we listen to the music, for every ten seconds it will be interrupted by an anouncement that our call is important to them. Well, why don’t they answer it, then?

It is not surprising people feel angry, and angry people are less inclined to listen to reason. They want to fight. Unfortunately, fighting solves nothing and only inflames others, and so a downward cycle begins. It is these tempers we need to cool.

We need a means by which people can explain their anxieties and understand those of others, seek compromises and realise issues are rarely simple. Extremists shout and demand, but the rest of us need to discuss and understand, so we can come up with sensible policies which shame the extremists. It should not be the sensible centre who are afraid to speak. It should be the extremists who have to think twice in case their views shame them.

We also need to recognise services cost money and other resources, so idealism is not necessarily the basis on which to allocate them. We do not live in an ideal world and efforts to create one are probably doomed to failure. Instead, we need a good enough world which works for as many people as it can. Creating duties without recognising the cost these impose is foolish as taking that too far prevents the real work being done. Taking it not far enough results in increasing injustice, though there is also room to debate exactly what justice is. Tax is not either taking my money away or creating an ideal fair society. It should be paying collectively for the services from which we all benefit – a bill we all would pay willingly for the benefits we receive, from the protection of a functioning police and courts system to the collecting of our rubbish and the maintenance of our roads. Why are people so unwilling to recognise that?

Similarly, we need to address the drift over recent decades into what might best be described as a “compliance culture”. Once it was enough not to commit acts of misconduct. If people did and they were caught they would be punished, and that deterred it. However, determined or cocky people would always try, and would receive puinishment if caught. Now we are well into an age where prevention is seen as better than cure, and of course it is, but at what cost? It is not enough to do right. It is now expected we must prove we do right. We have to have complex procedures to make wrongdoing more difficult and demonstrate such procedures work. We need identity checks and proof we have never been found guilty of anything. We not only must not treat people unfairly but must have evidence we have complied with a whole list of equality bases backed up by policies to implement such compliance, overseen by staff whose sole duty is to ensure the policies and supporting evidence are up to date. Is it any surprise productivity is low?

Needless to say, this growth in compliance has resulted in a huge growth of compliance jobs, highly skilled and highly paid, and those who benefit from such jobs can live well and prosper, where those who merely provide practical services have less funding available and finish up over-employed and underpaid, while the huge army of professionals supervising them pocket the money their work earns. No wonder the Chancellor has difficulty balancing the books. No wonder businesses cannot thrive. The drain on their resources ensures that can never happen.

Yet it is hard to reverse this trend, for every time a suggestion is made to withdraw any of these requirements it is obvious it would reduce measures taken to prevent some group or other being victimised or, at least, it could be seen as potentially doing so, which is enough to stimulate vigorous opposition.

We have got our country into a mess. However are we to get ourselves out of it?

We need to find a way to move politics away from simple slogans to intricate discussions of the complex balances needed to make society work well. We need platforms which encourage discussion and understanding and recognise no problem is simple or soluble with a neat trick. We need to balance the services with what we must pay for them and recognise there is a subtle relationship between quality and cost. We need to find a way to lower the temperature so reasonable people can come to the fore with practical solutions rather than theoretical ones using our collective wisdom to steer a course to reason, rather than fanatics trying to push us to the edge. Perhaps a new platform on line could do this. Maybe something which can cover its cost without making enormous profits controlled by mutual demand rather than the benefit of the few is needed, but it will need protections against abuse, and if we’re not careful, there we will go again.

It isn’t easy, but if we don’t find a way, things will just go on getting worse.