Anticapitalista in the City posted by Richard Seymour

I could not, for various reasons, stay too long, but here are some pics (and footage shortly) from the protest. At one point, a group of demonstrators managed to get into the Stock Exchange building, and - despite the best efforts of some burly and aggressive City Police - the crowd of perhaps a couple of thousand people successfully broke through the blockades they kept trying to create. You can see there's a great deal of struggling with the police knocking people about a bit, but if the effort was to undermine the protest it didn't bloody work. They seemed to like grabbing people by the shoulder and tossing them about, for no obvious reason. I had one donut-munching oaf do it to me while I was filming, and it was dreadfully annoying. They clearly had a bit of aggression and frustration to get out.








Also, see the reports from today's solid London-wide bus strike.

Labels: anticapitalism, banks, capitalism, city of london, neoliberalism, protest, spoilt city brats

Think of the victims posted by Richard Seymour

Won't somebody please think of the victims?:

And when they do get home, how long can they afford to stay if the rent is high or a mortgage outstanding? What about the builders remodelling the kitchen? The nanny and the cleaner? How will they pay for the private school? The private health insurance? The car, the clubs, the tennis lessons? Dining out, theatre, opera? Christmas presents, holidays, charities? The accumulating pile, which to a banker serves as a report card, means many different things to those who help to spend it and to those on whom it is spent.

For every vanished pile there will be crying children, an angry spouse, unemployed builders and domestic help, goods left on shop shelves, flats and houses available to rent or buy, empty restaurants, and villages in Africa that don't get their new water pump after all.

Labels: economy, financial sector, neoliberalism, spoilt city brats