Curtis has the glorious bounty of the entire BBC archives at his fingertips, he ranges across continents and across decades, and which voice dominates all of his programmes? The omnipotent narrator.

Last week the Italian precariat took a step beyond primitive rebellion and began to constitute itself as a politics. As its arguments take shape those involved must work to engage with communities outside of the activist world.

When people go home – what happens next? How do you canalise the tidal energy of a protest or social movement until it effects change? At a Podemos London event, we begin to find out.

Earlier this summer activists in Rome won the right to self-manage a vast lake in the city’s capital, effectively expropriating a private company from prime real estate. From marches and public debates to concerts and open dinners their campaign is an inspiring example of a rebel city at work.

The King is dead! Long live the giddy baby elephant of the people!

There is politics in any kind of collective cultural gathering, which is why attempts to repress youth and/or working-class culture continue to rain down from those with power, to those without it – just as they always have done, just as they did at Peterloo.

Looking for signs of life and the difference that was made, surely that dreary grey oblong could not have been the spiritual home of the 99%? But it was and it did.

Dan Hancox opens his new column saying good riddance to Britain’s 2012, as the country, caught in the grip of a return to Victorian levels of wealth inequality, exacts its revenge on time.