The last place a 50-year-old civil practice lawyer should have been last week was running away from tear gas, rubber pellets, pepper spray and riot police on Seattle’s Sixth Avenue. But there I was, hoofing it down the street next to demonstrators half my age, some of them dressed as sea turtles.

According to the ever optimistic ex-pugilist and current World Trade Organization head Mike Moore, also 50, the WTO ministerial talks were “doomed, doomed to success.”