Suits vs Hippies

100% yes, blutac

100% yes

the only thing i care about is whether it's a good enough excuse to skive off work tomorrow.

Its a shame the SWP spend so much time organising students to protest, instead of moving into electoral politics. The time is perfect for someone like Martin Smith to step up and start taking votes off the disenfranchised who see the BNP as the only alternative to 2/3 party politics, purely because the BNP are the only other party with a media presence.

Sadly protesting doesnt work, theyve won. A couple of porn movies rate higher than how fucked most of Northern Britain have it at the minute.

I bumped into the protests on Saturday, I was walking from Saville Row to Dover Street to look at very expensive clothes. I felt like the enemy of the great unwashed scum taking to the streets, it felt good.

Also, there was a wonderful mix of signs in the crowd, everything from destroying the rich, freeing Palestine and putting our children first. Then the Socialist Worker walked passed, shouting, "we want to get rid of the rich" and "revolution!" so I lolled and walked off.

Shaun Wright Phillips has done what now?

  grinningcat said:

  David R James said:

This isnt just about hippies, its anyone. How dare u stereotype protesters.

 

the image left in my mind of protesters, or at least the most 'active' ones are middle class kids who want to fuck the system.

 

same generalisation made by the protestors towards bankers : all of them are fat cat, corrupt scum.

 

for the record I am not actually a banker. I work in technology for a bank. the thing is 80% of the people working in a bank are usually are normal hard working folk, and only a select top 10% fucked it up for everyone. same as any corporation to be honest.

 

 

Hey man thats cool, just kidding with ya.

this is funny.

why didn't you arrange a day off to wave a banner at your boss?

  Squee said:

Oh God that's hilarious but also terrifying because I know people who could end up like this given a couple more years...

  Dan C said:

I bumped into the protests on Saturday, I was walking from Saville Row to Dover Street to look at very expensive clothes. I felt like the enemy of the great unwashed scum taking to the streets, it felt good.

 

Also, there was a wonderful mix of signs in the crowd, everything from destroying the rich, freeing Palestine and putting our children first. Then the Socialist Worker walked passed, shouting, "we want to get rid of the rich" and "revolution!" so I lolled and walked off.

Oh did you go to DSM? Do they still have any Comme Des Garcons x Fred Perry polos?

+

bricks

=

tommorow

  fenton said:

= front page of every newspaper, movement over, moral high ground occupied by the police.

Anyone getting wasted or holding a knife and getting photographed and it's fucked. As for bricks I think that as long as it's corporate damage that's probably ok, no ones really gonna care if someones mercedes gets a smashed window, though I don't think I would get involved in that just yet.

  blutac said:

Maybe we need to stop maximising a bizzare monetary based form of utility, and start thinking about what is really important. No one should starve. We shouldn't destroy the planet. Success and reward shouldn't be based on the ability to make money, is it right that our tax lawyers get paid more than our scientists?

 

feel stupid writing something serious on watmm

isnt this very very idealistic though? the alternatives are things like communism / marxism and look how far they got

im not criticizing just thinking out loud here.

lol @ the windowlicker dilema

  idrn said:

basically, we come down to the windowlicker/come to daddy dilemma. if someone has developed a concise or deep appreciation of RDJ's music, do we look down at them because they got into it after seeing those tracks on mtv?

YES

concentration camps is too good for them

  Iain C said:

  Dan C said:

I bumped into the protests on Saturday, I was walking from Saville Row to Dover Street to look at very expensive clothes. I felt like the enemy of the great unwashed scum taking to the streets, it felt good.

 

Also, there was a wonderful mix of signs in the crowd, everything from destroying the rich, freeing Palestine and putting our children first. Then the Socialist Worker walked passed, shouting, "we want to get rid of the rich" and "revolution!" so I lolled and walked off.

 

Oh did you go to DSM? Do they still have any Comme Des Garcons x Fred Perry polos?

Yeah, of course i went to DSM. I don't think so my friend, at least I don't remember seeing them.

Back from the protest, ended up spending most of the day in climate camp which was a great atmosphere. Sun, music, workshops and everything else hippy. Over at the bank of England it was more agressive, although this is probably because police surrounded the people demonstrating on all 4 sides, not allowing any to leave. As I was leaving the police presence increased dramatically at climate camp as the bank of england was winding down, and it appears that in the last hour, the completely peaceful demo there has also been surrounded with no one being allowed in or out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/geor...te-protest-riot

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/blog/2009...rseman-liveblog

cool, the blockade they're currently doing is just stupid and antagonistic. they've boxed everyone in and arn't letting them go home? pretty weak.

just been watched things unfold at home - those crazy anarchistic riots happened as predicted. see that super aggressive pushing? one terrorist shoved a policeman and he stumbled a bit and then they started shouting. it was fucking mental.

I support protests when they could change certain policy approaches. For instance, the Tibet protests showed that unmitigated support for China wouldn't go down that well with a lot of Britons. Same with the Gaza protests. Both worked quite well to distribute info about the suffering in Tibet and Gaza.

But I see no reason to protest against the government because the economy's fucked. The more unemployed Britons, the fewer taxes the government receives, and the bigger the public debt. It's not like the government conspired to fuck the economy.

I was fairly pleased the protesters attacked RBS though.

RBS, along with quite a few other banks, have fucked the economy through their incompetence, and as banks are the sole distributors of credit, essential to our economy, the government gives them money before your average recently unemployed Briton. And he or she only gets reemployed when the banks cover their losses, from government (i.e. our taxes) hand outs, and start lending to his or her potential future employer again.

Because the banks get quite a good deal compared to everyone else, even though they started the crisis, I'm glad the protesters are giving them hell.

so everyone there is just protesting the economic downturn? don't mean to call you out anything (well yes, i do) but you shouldn't make an opinion about the protests without knowing what people are protesting about (which is a plethora of things).

okay, that's true, my mistake.

  idrn said:

so everyone there is just protesting the economic downturn? don't mean to call you out anything (well yes, i do) but you shouldn't make an opinion about the protests without knowing what people are protesting about (which is a plethora of things).

thats one of the things that annoys me actually though... suddenly 'the enemy of the enemy is our friend' mentality is being used by these groups too, even though it is so often critised in governments, e.g. enemy governments being friends against a common enemy until it is defeated, then go back to being enemies amoungst themselves again

in the same way so many of these groups are acting

The BBC aren't even there anymore. The police and getting physical and the journalists have gone to bed. There's fucking dedication for you.

I'm watching a report on news 24 which is basically acting as if its all over instead of showing live footage of a peaceful protest being forcibly removed.

It finished with the line "after a hard day, the police haven taken care of the trouble in the financial district."

for fucks sake

wouldn't expect anything less to be honest

  Rambo said:

wouldn't expect anything less to be honest

I got my hopes up though because at one point the reporter was saying live at the scene that from what he'd seen and heard most of the violence was initiated by police tactics, and I kind of thought he looked like he wanted to get stuck into it.

ok, now i feel misinformed as ive just heard about other stuff that went down. battered police, a RBS bank broken into, 11 people arrested for attempting to impersonate policeman (whilst driving an armoured vehicle?). cityboys were waving £10 notes from the windows, which i guess is an improvement as during the last protests they were waving fifties and pouring champagne onto the street below.

police heavy-handed and antagonist of course, it plays in their favour. if only we protested like the french do.

I've heard that once the media left the police started beating people up. Oh well.

  idrn said:

ok, now i feel misinformed as ive just heard about other stuff that went down. battered police, a RBS bank broken into, 11 people arrested for attempting to impersonate policeman (whilst driving an armoured vehicle?). cityboys were waving £10 notes from the windows, which i guess is an improvement as during the last protests they were waving fifties and pouring champagne onto the street below.

 

police heavy-handed and antagonist of course, it plays in their favour. if only we protested like the french do.

Have you seen the video of the RBS window being broken? one guy surrounded by a ring of about 40 photographers egging him on. The armoured vehicle and the impersonating policemen are different things aren't they?