The view from inside the bubble

The Prime Minister has just appeared on the large monitors at the front of the room, his opening remarks to business leaders in downtown Toronto beamed in to the media centre here. Clusters of reporters are gathered around smaller TV screens with news footage of the protests downtown—reports of smashed storefronts and now images of a rather menacing-looking fire. And every so often a great roar goes up from elsewhere in the building where, one assumes, people are watching the World Cup.