Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by 23 » Mon Mar 21, 2011 9:36 pm
by 2012 Countdown » Mon Mar 21, 2011 10:15 pm
by vanlose kid » Tue Mar 22, 2011 5:17 am
Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square
Student activists draw inspiration from Egypt protests and call for 24-hour occupation of London landmark
Matthew Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 March 2011 08.01 GMT
Article history
Campaigners against public service cuts are calling for a 24-hour occupation of Trafalgar Square – drawing inspiration from revolts in the Middle East – to coincide with Saturday's trade union protest in London.
Student activists who organised last year's demonstrations say there will be a rolling programme of sit-ins and protests on the day and have called on people to occupy the central London square turning "Trafalgar into Tahrir" – a reference to the gathering point in Cairo that was at the heart of the revolution in Egypt earlier this year.
"We want Trafalgar Square to become a focal point for the ongoing occupations, marches and sit-ins that will carry on throughout the weekend," said Michael Chessum from the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts. "There are a lot of smaller scale demonstrations and actions planned and, just as we have seen in recent protests in the Middle East and north Africa, we want to create an ongoing organising hub."
Saturday's main demonstration has been organised by the TUC and is expected to see more than 200,000 people – including public sector workers, families and first-time protesters – take to the capital's streets to oppose government cuts.
This month the TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, promised a barrage of protests against the cuts, ranging from industrial strikes and "peaceful civil disobedience" to petitions by Tory voters in the shires.
The plan to occupy Trafalgar Square is the latest in a wave of proposed sit-ins, occupations and "people's assemblies" that activists have branded a "carnival of civil disobedience".
"We have seen time and again that marches from A to B do not achieve their objectives," said Chessum. "This is about creating an ongoing movement that will put pressure on the government. This is the start of what is going to be a hot summer of protest against the ideological nature of what this government is doing."
The call for an occupation of the London landmark is backed by student groups, activists and two Labour MPs – John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn. In a joint statement they have called on people to "stay in Trafalgar Square for 24 hours to discuss how we can beat this government and to send a message across the globe that we stand with the people of Egypt, Libya, Wisconsin and with all those fighting for equality, freedom and justice.
"We want to turn Trafalgar Square into a place of people's power where we assert our alternative to cuts and austerity and make it a day that this government won't forget."
Alongside the main march, which will set off from the Embankment before making its way to Hyde Park for a rally, anti-cuts campaigners say they plan to occupy some of the capital's "great buildings", close down scores of high street stores and occupy Hyde Park.
UK Uncut, a peaceful direct action group set up five months ago to oppose government cuts and protest against corporate tax avoidance, is planning to occupy and force the temporary closure of scores of shops on Oxford Street on Saturday afternoon.
Meanwhile, student groups will meet at the University of London student union building in Bloomsbury at 10am. Some are then expected to make their way to the main assembly point in a "feeder march"; others will peel off to take part in various "direct actions" .
"Since Christmas the movement has become much more autonomous," one veteran of last year's protests told the Guardian last week. "There are smaller, semi-independent groups planning small-scale direct action against a range of targets. It will be a bit of a disappointment if we get to the end of the day and one of London's great buildings is not occupied. We have to make an impact."
Online, other groups are calling for more widespread direct action on Saturday. An organisation calling itself Resist 26 claims it will stage a number of "people's assemblies" along the route of the march. Under the banner "Battle of Britain" it is calling for a 24-hour occupation of Hyde Park and "after parties" at famous London landmarks including Piccadilly Circus and Buckingham Palace.
Scotland Yard says it has worked closely with the TUC to ensure the demonstration passes off peacefully and senior officers are due to give a detailed briefing on police plans on Tuesday morning.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... are-tahrir
by 23 » Tue Mar 22, 2011 2:19 pm
A deepening antipathy for the government's public spending cuts has been revealed as the head of the police union said officers patrolling next weekend's demonstrations against austerity measures would have "a lot of sympathy" with the protesters.
Emphasising the growing opposition to the speed and breadth of the cuts programme, the chairman of the Police Federation, Paul McKeever, said that officers on duty at Saturday's March for an Alternative in central London would be feeling a sense of solidarity as they policed the event, which is being organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC).
"The great irony is that officers policing marches like the TUC are actually facing greater detriment than many of those protesting against the cuts," said McKeever, whose union represents 140,000 rank-and-file police officers.
"We're not members of the TUC and have to be careful about having too close an association, though there will be a lot of sympathy towards those marching."
The march, due to be held in London's Hyde Park, looks set to be the largest rally to date against the coalition government's policies, with organisers hoping for more than 100,000 people to attend.
Along with the unions and other campaigning bodies, a plethora of other protest groups has sprung up as the strength of feeling grows against a package of issues as diverse as tuition fee rises, the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance, bankers' bonuses, tax evasion by big business, library closures and arts and public spending cuts.
One peace activist, and veteran of the anti-war marches in 2003, told the Observer: "We will get a lot of first-time protesters on Saturday because people are getting more confident that protest is for them. It's not for a bunch of anarchists, it's families, students, old people, maybe now even the odd police officer, who don't want to put up with cuts and unfairness in Britain any more."
Groups are using technology and social media to share expertise and information as well as co-ordinate and manage direct action more efficiently. The day is expected to see traditional protests take place at the same time, with sit-ins at high street shops and banks and occupations of public buildings and universities.
In the past five months, the protest group UK Uncut has staged a steady campaign of sit-ins against tax dodging that have forced the temporary closure of branches of Barclays, Vodaphone, Boots, British Home Stores and Topshop up and down the country.
"26 March is going to be a really important day," said Anna Walker of UK Uncut. "We had the student protests and we have seen the growth of UK Uncut, but this is the first time we are going to have people from all over the UK together whose lives are being turned upside down by these cuts. It is going to be the start of something powerful."
Scotland Yard has already suggested that "troublemakers" could attempt to hijack the protest. The Met was criticised for its tactics at student tuition fee protests last year, when dozens of people were arrested during violent outbreaks. This time, members the of human rights organisation Liberty will act as independent observers.
McKeever suggested that, far from being hostile to the protesters, many police officers would share the frustrations of the day. He said that a massive march of police officers themselves could not be ruled out if the home secretary, Theresa May, pushes forward with government plans to cut back on police pay and perks.
More than 20,000 police officers marched through London in 2008 in protest about their pay, the biggest demonstration in police history.
"We had 23,000 officers on the streets on a point of principle. Imagine how many might be involved with the level of feeling at the moment. Nothing is ruled out," said McKeever.
He also warned that attempts by the government to force through changes in pay and conditions might lead to legal action. "We are exploring every avenue to make sure officers are treated fairly.
"The first duty of any government is the protection of its citizens. Yet it is being vindictive against a police service it seems to hold in very low regard.
"Mervyn King has said that it's not those in the public sector who are to blame for the crisis, but it doesn't feel like that in the police service."
He added: "They don't seem to be so accusatory towards those where the blame actually lies. There seems to be a dislike of policing with this present government – the so-called party of law and order is dead, it's buried, it's gone."
by 23 » Thu Mar 24, 2011 12:14 pm
by vanlose kid » Sat Mar 26, 2011 8:27 am
Protest march against coalition cuts expected to attract 300,000
Police braced for high numbers in London with 800 coaches and at least 10 trains chartered from around the country
Polly Curtis , Matthew Taylor and Vikram Dodd
The Guardian, Saturday 26 March 2011
More than a quarter of a million protesters against public sector cuts are expected to flood central London today in the biggest political demonstration for nearly a decade.
Police sources, normally cautious about estimating numbers, said last night they were braced for up to 300,000 people to join the march – far higher than previous forecasts from TUC organisers.
More than 800 coaches and at least 10 trains have been chartered to bring people to the capital from as far afield as Cornwall and Inverness.
The Metropolitan police, under fire for their use of kettling in previous protests, said "a small but significant minority" plan to hijack the march to stage violent attacks. Organisers, however, insist it will be a peaceful family event. Union members are expected be joined by a broad coalition, from pensioners to doctors, families and first-time protesters to football supporters and anarchists.
Ed Miliband said the government was dragging the country back to the "rotten" 1980s. Labour is calling today's event the "march of the mainstream".
The opposition leader will address the rally – his biggest audience ever – in Hyde Park to set out Labour's alternative to the cuts, accusing the government of fomenting the "politics of division" not seen since Margaret Thatcher's 1980s.
His remarks are reinforced by a Guardian/ICM poll that shows the public divided over the cuts. Of 1,014 people questioned this week, 35% believe the cuts go too far, 28% say they strike the right balance and 29% say they don't go far enough; 8% don't know.
Two other polls put the balance more strongly against cuts. A YouGov survey for Unison found that 56% believe the cuts are too harsh and a ComRes poll for ITV showed that two-thirds think the government should reconsider its planned spending cuts programme. Just one in five disagree with that view.
The TUC organisers of the event said they had organised a family-friendly demonstration with brass, jazz and Bollywood bands. But with unofficial feeder marches, sit-down protests and a takeover of Trafalgar Square planned, there was increasing nervousness that acts of peaceful civil disobedience could lead to stand-offs with police and outbursts of violence.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, which is providing 100 legal observers along the route to monitor the scenes, said she had been heartened by advance co-operation between the TUC and police, but added: "Events around in the world show the precious nature of peaceful dissent guaranteed by our Human Rights Act. This fundamental freedom was hard won and is still much envied elsewhere. It must not be jeopardised either by over-zealous policing or anyone looking for trouble."
Miliband said in a speech in Nottingham: "I thought the politics of the 1980s were rotten because they divided our country. I fear that this government is practising the politics of division."
He argued that the government's policies divided rich against poor, public sector workers against private sector workers and north against south. "These aren't the voices of people marginal to our country but the voices of the mainstream majority in our country and that's why I'll be addressing the rally tomorrow," he said. He had been told not to join the march because of safety concerns.
The Tories called on Miliband and the TUC leader, Brendan Barber, to take responsibility for any disruption on the march. Michael Fallon, deputy chairman of the Conservative party, said: "Under Ed Miliband, Labour are abandoning the centre ground, retreating into their comfort zone of left-wing protest and cosying up to the unions."
Barber will tell the rally that no part of the public realm is protected from the cuts, highlighting the proposals to radically change the NHS. "Today let us say [to David Cameron]: we will not let you destroy what has taken generations to build," he will say.
The bulk of the march will be made up of trade unionists, with virtually all of the TUC's 55 affiliated unions represented. Also among the marchers will be a coachload of mothers and toddlers from Hampshire demonstrating against the closure of Sure Start centres in the county.
Catherine Ovenden, 31, said the decision to cut the service would have a devastating impact on families. "So many people rely on these centres and we are going to lose a third of them," she said .
The demonstration is timed to mark the new financial year next week, when many of the cuts kick in. Research by the Fabian Society suggests that taken with the wider tax and benefit reforms announced since the election, this week's budget would in fact force large number of working families into tax, instead of lifting them out as the coalition has claimed.
Tens of thousands of the lowest-income families will lose around 6% of their net income in the next year because of the government's tax and benefit changes with the bulk of the cuts kicking in next week, the analysis by the Fabian Society shows. From next week the childcare element of the tax credit system will be reduced from 80% to 70% of qualifying families' nursery bills. A family with one child and one earner earning up to £23,000 will lose between 5.7% and 6.4% of their net income, compared with last year. This would cost such a family with an income of £6,000 £1,362 a year and a family on £23,000 £1,710 a year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/ ... uts-300000
by vanlose kid » Sat Mar 26, 2011 8:30 am
Andrew Lansley takes rap from MC NxtGen over health policy in viral video
Success of YouTube video criticising Department of Health white paper prompts health minister to respond to rapper critic
Esther Addley
guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 March 2011 20.18 GMT
MC NxtGen and his track, which has proved a huge hit on Twitter and YouTube
Three years ago, when he was 19, a young rapper calling himself MC NxtGen hoped he was on the verge of the big time. Performing at a "battle" at a nightclub in central London, he rapped: "To be found you gotta be loud and have a different sound, step out from the crowd, just rise from the underground!"
The crowd liked him but the title of Britain's Next Urban Superstar was not to be his. He failed to make the final, and returned home to his dreams of superstardom and his job as a binman in Loughborough.
This week, however, Britain might just have been offered a second chance to turn NxtGen into a star, in the very unlikeliest of circumstances. The rapper, real name Sean Donnelly, has found himself a viral YouTube and Twitter celebrity after recording a track that certainly offers a "different sound". Eschewing the traditional hiphop themes of bling, booty and babes, Donnelly has recorded a caustic three-minute rap about the Department of Health's white paper "Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS", and dedicated it personally – highly personally, one might say – to the health minister himself.
"Andrew Lansley, greedy! Andrew Lansley, tosser!" runs the refrain, repeated throughout the song, over a sample taken from The House of the Rising Sun. "The NHS is not for sale, you grey-haired manky codger!" But if Donnelly is far from polite in his political protest, he has certainly done his research.
"So the budget of the PCTs, he wants to hand to the GPs / Oh please. Dumb geeks are gonna buy from any willing provider, / Get care from private companies."
Later, he offers a helpful parse of the white paper, saying Lansley's plans are that "we'll become more like the US / and care will be farmed out to private companies, / who will sell their service to the NHS via the GPs / who will have more to do with service purchase arrangements / than anything to do with seeing their patients."
MC NxtGen (real name Sean Donnelly). Photograph: Fabio De Paola
Finishing his shift on the bins on Friday ("I don't think this is really anyone's career choice"), Donnelly said he'd been overwhelmed by the response, which had seen his Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages "going crazy" and even contact from TV companies. "I didn't really plan for it all to be about me," he says. "I just did it basically so I could speak to the youth."
The song came about, Donnelly, now 22, told the Guardian, because he has "close family and friends" – his girlfriend is one – "who want to work in the NHS in the future hopefully, but they're worried about the cuts. So I researched it on the internet and I just did the song. I feel for the people that are ill in hospital. If they were privatised they wouldn't be able to afford it." And why focus on Lansley in particular? "Because I'm peed off with the guy."
He insists he'd rather rap about "truth" than money, fast cars or sex. "That's what sells, but I'm just not like that."
Donnelly started MC-ing when he was 11 or 12, he says, when he first saw Eminem, whose wit he immediately loved. "It was just the funniness and this complete truth at the same time." The Detroit rapper's influence might be detected in the video to Andrew Lansley – which has been viewed on YouTube more than 30,000 times in 24 hours – in which he enlists shoppers in his home town to wave placards, wear David Cameron and Nick Clegg masks and mouth "Tosser!" and "greedy!" at the camera at apposite points in the song.
At one point, railing against Lansley's involvement of the fast food industry in formulating health policy, Donnelly dons a mask of the health secretary and throws crisps at his face.
He even riffs on the health secretary's expenses record, and – in what has a reasonable claim to be the unlikeliest rap lyric ever – on the controversial donation to Lansley's office by the chairman of a private health company. "He's been given cash / by John Nash / chairman of Care UK, / a private healthcare provider, / who, if they have their own way, / will be the biggest beneficiaries / of Conservative Lib-Dem policies / to privatise healthcare, pull apart the welfare state …" It's some distance from 2 Live Crew's Me So Horny.
He is now trying to release the track on iTunes – "I've had so many people saying, 'Let's get it to number one!'". Then he'd love to quit his job on the bins. "The older I've got the more I've been worried, thinking I'm not going to make it."
He's made a wider impact now. By Friday night the viral video had infected the Department of Health, and Lansley himself was moved to comment. "We will never privatise the NHS," he told the Guardian. "But I'm impressed that he's managed to get lyrics about GP commissioning into a rap."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011 ... -mc-nxtgen
by 23 » Sat Mar 26, 2011 10:43 am
by 23 » Sat Mar 26, 2011 11:14 am
by vanlose kid » Sat Mar 26, 2011 2:06 pm
Anti-cuts march swells to 400,000
London hosts largest protest since Iraq war as workers and public demonstrate against government spending cuts
* guardian.co.uk, Saturday 26 March 2011 13.53 GMT
Around 400,000 people have joined a march in London to oppose the coalition government's spending cuts.
In what looks like being the largest mass protest since the anti-Iraq war march in 2003, teachers, nurses, midwives, NHS, council and other public sector workers were joined by students, pensioners and direct action supporters, bringing the centre of the capital to a standstill.
Tens of thousands of people streamed along Embankment and past police barriers in Whitehall. Feeder marches, including a protest by students which set off from the University of London in Bloomsbury, swelled the crowd, which stretched back as far as St Paul's Cathedral.
The biggest union-organised event for over 20 years saw more than 800 coaches and dozens of trains hired to bring people to London, with many unable to make the journey to the capital because of the massive demand for transport.
"I'm sure that many of our critics will try to write us off today as a minority, vested interest," said Brendan Barber, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, which organised the march.
"The thousands coming to London from across the country will be speaking for their communities when they call for a plan B that saves vital services, gets the jobless back to work and tackles the deficit through growth and fair tax."
Barber is expected to tell this afternoon's rally in Hyde Park that there is an alternative to the "brutal" spending cuts, which have already led to the threat of 170,000 council job losses and another 50,000 elsewhere in the public sector.
"No part of our public realm is to be protected. And don't believe it when ministers say that the NHS is safe in their hands. With over 50,000 job cuts already in the pipeline – nurses, doctors, physios, midwives – in the name of so-called efficiency savings of £20bn, the NHS as we know it is already in intensive care.
"With David Cameron talking about selling it off to any willing provider out to make a profit, the NHS is facing the gravest threat in its history. Today let us say to him: we will not let you destroy what has taken generations to build. Let's be brutally clear about these brutal cuts. They're going to cost jobs on a huge scale – adding to the misery of the 2.5 million people already on the dole."
The education secretary, Michael Gove, acknowledged the public's concerns about the planned cuts, but insisted they were necessary.
"Of course people will feel a sense of disquiet, in some cases anger, at what they see happening," Gove told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "But the difficulty we have, as the government inheriting a terrible economic mess, is that we have to take steps to bring the public finances back into balance."
Labour politicians will join the march, and party leader, Ed Miliband, will address the rally in Hyde Park.
Dave Prentis, general secretary of the Unison union, will tell demonstrators that the government faces being wiped out in May's elections.
"Every month when a library closes, a care home shuts its doors, or services for struggling young people are withdrawn, I want them to feel the fear, and anger of the people who have come here today from every part of the UK to vent their frustration and to stand up for a fairer future."
Banks and stores in Oxford Street are being targeted by the anti-cuts group UK Uncut. There are also plans to target a secret location with a mass occupation.
Around 4,500 police officers were on duty, with the human rights group Liberty sending 100 legal observers to monitor their actions.
The senior Scotland Yard officer in charge of policing the protests, Commander Bob Broadhurst, has pledged that the controversial tactic of "kettling" protesters into a confined area will be kept to a minimum. "The issues will be with the fracture groups who might want to spoil the party," he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... lls-400000
by vanlose kid » Sat Mar 26, 2011 2:07 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sat Mar 26, 2011 3:30 pm
by Stephen Morgan » Sat Mar 26, 2011 3:33 pm
by norton ash » Sat Mar 26, 2011 4:03 pm
by gnosticheresy_2 » Sat Mar 26, 2011 6:24 pm
Stephen Morgan wrote:That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were.
-- Nye Bevan
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 164 guests