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‘March for the Alternative’ - 26th March - London

I'm not disputing it's bollocks, I'm just talking shit on the interweb about whether it's possible (which I think it might be, although probably stupid and pointless).

My point was that if you have the plunger slightly extended, then when you pierce the housing, the liquid would be pushed in, equalising the pressure.

Which doesn't take away from the pointlessness, stupidity or fiddliness of the whole exercise...

OK I'll shut up about light bulbs,soonish,how the fuck can you inject something into a glass structure without destroying that structure,this is a challenge,try it.
 
OK I'll shut up about light bulbs,soonish,how the fuck can you inject something into a glass structure without destroying that structure,this is a challenge,try it.

Dirty Harry made a bomb out of a light bulb, he heated up the metal and removed the fillament and filled the bulb with a flamable liquid, baddie entered the room, turnd on the light and boom.
 
What gets me most about this is that undertaking political violence is a big, BIG step to take, it's as serious a thing as it's possible to get. Yet people on here are happy to treat it almost as something ephemeral, as if to them it sits easily within the natural course of events at a demonstration and that being called on to justify the use of it is somehow an affront.

Imo you have to go a hell of a lot further to justify the use of political violence than the weak attempts we've had so far on here.
 
What gets me most about this is that undertaking political violence is a big, BIG step to take, it's as serious a thing as it's possible to get. Yet people on here are happy to treat it almost as something ephemeral, as if to them it sits easily within the natural course of events at a demonstration and that being called on to justify the use of it is somehow an affront.

Imo you have to go a hell of a lot further to justify the use of political violence than the weak attempts we've had so far on here.

Many don't see occupations and destruction of property as violence.
 
What gets me most about this is that undertaking political violence is a big, BIG step to take, it's as serious a thing as it's possible to get. Yet people on here are happy to treat it almost as something ephemeral, as if to them it sits easily within the natural course of events at a demonstration and that being called on to justify the use of it is somehow an affront.

Imo you have to go a hell of a lot further to justify the use of political violence than the weak attempts we've had so far on here.

You are an incredibly dull and po-faced individual Andrew Hertford. Have you eve been into role-playing games? Not the sexy kind, obviously.

the_it_crowd_moss.jpg
 
Smashing shit is dumb and the majority of the said smashers were quite young looking, under 25.

Only over 25's with a clean CRB check should be able to vote, that would weed out most anarchists and other antisocial types at least, eh?

You complete and utter cock :facepalm::hmm:
 
Quite. Would rather not do it to the scum though...

Mind you news international are well known for this sort of thing, didn't scum journalists used to pay England fans to start causing trouble back in the 80's and 90's? I thought it an idea to show them up for being stupid by pointing out that a sky news journalist has been trying to incite violence to further the aims of his company and another of the "rioters" is an undercover dibble. Still haven't been able to find out his name though. According to the Evening Nazi, Newscorp are denying it. Still no closer to finding out his name.
 
Many don't see occupations and destruction of property as violence.

Occupations aren't acts of violence, destruction of property is totally an act of violence. Anyone who thinks it isn't is on cloud cuckoo land and needs to go back to the dictionary.
 
some of my witterings on the day. Already forgotten half the things I was meaning to mention ha


Like many others on here I started off on the Kennington feeder march. The immediately noticeable thing was the utter lack of OB. One of the people of our coach even joked they felt disappointed as it didn’t look like the coppers were taking us seriously. The atmosphere was most relaxed and jovial. Speaking to a number of people during and after it was this combination of little police presence and relaxed atmosphere which meant they decided not to mask up.

I was with the LAWAS lot at the front of the march when everyone broke off from the designated route to go over Westminster Bridge and the stewards seemed more concerned than the coppers. The most feeble attempt was made to hold the lines but quickly this was given up. Whether this was because they thought they had too few to hold the lines safely or just weren’t that bothered, knowing we were just walking to a higher concentration of Police I don’t know (though I suspect it may have been more of the second).

Aside from the failure to deal with the Black Bloc and kicking things off on Piccadilly later, I thought policing was unusually intelligent on the day. Hell, the first lot of TSG on the scene at F&M even had their sergeant calming his troops down etc. Will be interesting to see if this is a tactic we’ll see more of, or if it was just a result of being so outnumbered.

We wandered up to Oxford Street to have a gander at Ukuncut stuff and came across the black block. Was amusing to see a guy in a new Jag XK do a very rapid u-turn, followed a few minutes later by a couple of coppers finding an excuse to investigate something up a side street away from the action.

Ended up outside F&M just as Ukuncut activists were entering. By the time we’d got across the barriers the coppers were on the doors. Everyone, including many going past on the march at that time seemed very positive about it. First lot of TSG turned up shortly after and behaved well. Second lot coming up from Jermyn Street a few minutes later were not. Few people passed through their lines before they decided to twat some teenage lass with their shields and there was a rush through. The line of about 10-15 TSG then got caught in a Blakelock sandwich and started to shit themselves and rather panicly started to lash out. Weird moment when one copper twatted a female photographer with his shield, knocked her arse over tit and then apologised and asked her if she was ok!??!

After a short time they retreated against a wall of F&M where they got a bit of shit, including some, I presume, FBU lads getting stuck in.

Worthwhile pointing out how few people at this point were masked up and how many were what some on this thread would call ‘normal/proper’ protesters.

I left at this point but assume it was much the same for the next few hours.


The whole feeder march tactic was good and something which should occur every large demo. Definitely had a positive effect splitting police forces and control etc.


Interesting to see the Met had produced leaflets which were handed out explaining the policing on the day etc. Never seen that before.


Twitter really was a useful tool. Cheap disposable phones with twitter access would be a great tool


The IWW alternative event didn’t appear to happen in Hyde Park which is a bit of a shambles. I assume people got caught in the mass and didn’t get there in time. This was surely predictable and people who organised it should have just gone straight there.


Maybe it was just ‘cos of the route we were on but the normal mass of lefty paper sellers were noticeable by their absence.


UKUncut

A couple of us were talking about this before hand saying the opportunity of having so many of the ‘main’ ukuncut activists in one place would be too easy a target for the state to pass up on. Looks like we were right. Is this going to be the end of the relatively easy ride Ukuncut actions have had so far?

The arrests appear to be pure intimidation and data gathering. They appear to have got their targets slightly mixed up with the bail conditions – I’d have thought they’d have blocked ‘em from accessing big Ukuncut targets (Topshop, F&M etc) rather than the Royal Wedding.

Interesting that this time it would have been hard for the OB to kettle on Oxford Circus and the environs. It was slightly surreal to see protesters, Japanese tourists, Saturday shoppers and TSG all mingling/


Black Bloc

Ignoring for the moment whether their actions were strategically sound (I’m not convinced they were the greatest idea for the day) and just focussing on their tactics of the day and some other thoughts.

The vast majority masked up and partaking in actions were clearly young which was nice to see. Suggests that there is an increased radicalisation of students and young people, and fuck me, they seem to learn quickly! From my position (and I was only around them at a few different times of the day) they seemed to run the OB ragged. Admittedly stating the obvious but constantly moving made it hard to stop them, especially when the TSG were limited by where their vans could go. Twice we saw TSG vans having to do u-turns due to the way being blocked. It did appear the coppers were genuinely struggling to deal with them as opposed to working to some pre-determined agenda.

Having said that there as a bunch of pointless stuff – pulling bins behind you on pedestrian streets etc is just daft and makes you look stupid. Also, the seemingly age old problem of anarchos not dealing with the media. If someone had bothered to put out a brief press release Saturday night it would have been quoted a bunch. Not going to get far lobbing traffic cones at riot vans either. The TSG copper who got out the one just appeared faintly bemused by the whole proceedings.
 
Oh, and one of my main impressions of the march was that many people saw this as the start of things to come, a warning shot across the bows if you like. Bit weird
 
some of my witterings on the day. Already forgotten half the things I was meaning to mention ha


Like many others on here I started off on the Kennington feeder march. The immediately noticeable thing was the utter lack of OB. One of the people of our coach even joked they felt disappointed as it didn’t look like the coppers were taking us seriously. The atmosphere was most relaxed and jovial. Speaking to a number of people during and after it was this combination of little police presence and relaxed atmosphere which meant they decided not to mask up.

I was with the LAWAS lot at the front of the march when everyone broke off from the designated route to go over Westminster Bridge and the stewards seemed more concerned than the coppers. The most feeble attempt was made to hold the lines but quickly this was given up. Whether this was because they thought they had too few to hold the lines safely or just weren’t that bothered, knowing we were just walking to a higher concentration of Police I don’t know (though I suspect it may have been more of the second).

Aside from the failure to deal with the Black Bloc and kicking things off on Piccadilly later, I thought policing was unusually intelligent on the day. Hell, the first lot of TSG on the scene at F&M even had their sergeant calming his troops down etc. Will be interesting to see if this is a tactic we’ll see more of, or if it was just a result of being so outnumbered.

We wandered up to Oxford Street to have a gander at Ukuncut stuff and came across the black block. Was amusing to see a guy in a new Jag XK do a very rapid u-turn, followed a few minutes later by a couple of coppers finding an excuse to investigate something up a side street away from the action.

Ended up outside F&M just as Ukuncut activists were entering. By the time we’d got across the barriers the coppers were on the doors. Everyone, including many going past on the march at that time seemed very positive about it. First lot of TSG turned up shortly after and behaved well. Second lot coming up from Jermyn Street a few minutes later were not. Few people passed through their lines before they decided to twat some teenage lass with their shields and there was a rush through. The line of about 10-15 TSG then got caught in a Blakelock sandwich and started to shit themselves and rather panicly started to lash out. Weird moment when one copper twatted a female photographer with his shield, knocked her arse over tit and then apologised and asked her if she was ok!??!

After a short time they retreated against a wall of F&M where they got a bit of shit, including some, I presume, FBU lads getting stuck in.

Worthwhile pointing out how few people at this point were masked up and how many were what some on this thread would call ‘normal/proper’ protesters.

I left at this point but assume it was much the same for the next few hours.


The whole feeder march tactic was good and something which should occur every large demo. Definitely had a positive effect splitting police forces and control etc.


Interesting to see the Met had produced leaflets which were handed out explaining the policing on the day etc. Never seen that before.


Twitter really was a useful tool. Cheap disposable phones with twitter access would be a great tool


The IWW alternative event didn’t appear to happen in Hyde Park which is a bit of a shambles. I assume people got caught in the mass and didn’t get there in time. This was surely predictable and people who organised it should have just gone straight there.


Maybe it was just ‘cos of the route we were on but the normal mass of lefty paper sellers were noticeable by their absence.


UKUncut

A couple of us were talking about this before hand saying the opportunity of having so many of the ‘main’ ukuncut activists in one place would be too easy a target for the state to pass up on. Looks like we were right. Is this going to be the end of the relatively easy ride Ukuncut actions have had so far?

The arrests appear to be pure intimidation and data gathering. They appear to have got their targets slightly mixed up with the bail conditions – I’d have thought they’d have blocked ‘em from accessing big Ukuncut targets (Topshop, F&M etc) rather than the Royal Wedding.

Interesting that this time it would have been hard for the OB to kettle on Oxford Circus and the environs. It was slightly surreal to see protesters, Japanese tourists, Saturday shoppers and TSG all mingling/


Black Bloc

Ignoring for the moment whether their actions were strategically sound (I’m not convinced they were the greatest idea for the day) and just focussing on their tactics of the day and some other thoughts.

The vast majority masked up and partaking in actions were clearly young which was nice to see. Suggests that there is an increased radicalisation of students and young people, and fuck me, they seem to learn quickly! From my position (and I was only around them at a few different times of the day) they seemed to run the OB ragged. Admittedly stating the obvious but constantly moving made it hard to stop them, especially when the TSG were limited by where their vans could go. Twice we saw TSG vans having to do u-turns due to the way being blocked. It did appear the coppers were genuinely struggling to deal with them as opposed to working to some pre-determined agenda.

Having said that there as a bunch of pointless stuff – pulling bins behind you on pedestrian streets etc is just daft and makes you look stupid. Also, the seemingly age old problem of anarchos not dealing with the media. If someone had bothered to put out a brief press release Saturday night it would have been quoted a bunch. Not going to get far lobbing traffic cones at riot vans either. The TSG copper who got out the one just appeared faintly bemused by the whole proceedings.

The average age of a UK Uncut protester seems about 17. Probably explains why they want to destroy the only remaining private sector businesses that are actually generating any wealth in the economy.
 
350 people and counting say they are attending a mass occupation of Trafalgar Square this Saturday...

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=137568376313742

For those not on facebook...

On Saturday the 26th of March 2011 Trafalgar Square was occupied by anti-cuts protesters with the intention to stay peacefully overnight. We plan to make another attempt at a occupation of Trafalgar Square on Saturday 2nd of April to show our continued peaceful resistance, and do so with a clearer purpose and approach, and a greater level of organisation.

The people united will never be defeated. If they push us we will come back... and if they knock us down then we will get up again. If we choose to resist an attempt to remove us, then it will be non-violently; through passive resistance. We refuse to use violence when it is violence done to our society that we are trying to resist.

In occupying Trafalgar Square, we hope to create a space where alternatives to current policy can be discussed and learned about. We're looking in to getting some speakers for this purpose.

Over the last few months, a new dawn of resistance has swept the globe with huge crowds occupying Tahrir square in Egypt and the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. This has inspired millions, as the same shock doctrines and neo-liberal attacks threaten to devastate the lives of ordinary people the world over. Here, our own government has no mandate to cut and is also weak as its policy u turns have shown.

On April 2nd we are inviting everyone to join us to stay in Trafalgar square for 24 hours to discuss alternatives to 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.

Our aim is to ride the momentum of the actions from the 26th. Apologies to anyone who can't make it to London on this short notice but hopefully this will lead to further actions to keep the movement going. There will be a synchronised pitching of tents at 18.30 so a camp will appear as if from nowhere, banners included.

We want to show solidarity and support to those who were arrested for participating in non-violent protest on the 26th, including the 138 UKuncut protesters who were sitting on the floor of a tea shop. There will be a chance for individuals who suffered at the hands of police at the previous demonstration to let people know what happened.

To make the Square liveable for up to 24 hours we ask that everyone looks after the area and puts litter in bins provided. We will also aim to have a set space for a toilet.

It's up to you if you choose to bring and drink alcohol, but we think we should remember that we're here for serious reasons, and should try and keep a clear head. This is important for the perception of a demonstration or action by others and, in case events do take a turn for the worse, for keeping safe and avoiding further unpleasantness. We would like to emphasise that this is a peaceful protest and not a place for violence and disorder.

It would be good to see representatives of all anti-cuts groups at the Square to show solidarity and unity and, particularly in light of yesterday's March for the Alternative, representatives from trade unions would be most welcome. We see this action as an opportunity to show students, workers and all sections of the anti-cuts movement uniting together.

This is both a place to discuss alternatives and to peacefully protest against the current government's cuts program. Invite all your friends, this could be really big.
 
The average age of a UK Uncut protester seems about 17. Probably explains why they want to destroy the only remaining private sector businesses that are actually generating any wealth in the economy.

Thanks moon23 for posting that link to the video. Something tells me that you just watched the first minute or so. I found it very inspiring and think that UK Uncut has a lot going for it. What a difference from the tired old traditional opposition movements. They are young yes but mostly in their mid 20s and full of energy and of course anger. All they want is for those businesses to pay their taxes. They have costed the potential return against the fictional 'debt'. I wish them well.
 
Occupations aren't acts of violence, destruction of property is totally an act of violence. Anyone who thinks it isn't is on cloud cuckoo land and needs to go back to the dictionary.

Like I said earlier. Indiscriminate batoning isn't an act of violence, but actions that would be described as petty vandalism in other contexts become "mindless violence" if they an act of civil disobedience. Terminology.
 
What gets me most about this is that undertaking political violence is a big, BIG step to take, it's as serious a thing as it's possible to get. Yet people on here are happy to treat it almost as something ephemeral, as if to them it sits easily within the natural course of events at a demonstration and that being called on to justify the use of it is somehow an affront.

Imo you have to go a hell of a lot further to justify the use of political violence than the weak attempts we've had so far on here.

See, if you had posted about in support of the anti-cuts movement elsewhere and what you were doing to build that movement, or if you had posted poitively about other working class struggles, I might be inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. I might be inclined to believe that here was someone genuinely supportive of progressive struggles and who genuinely (but mistakenly) believed that the "violence" was a problem for those struggles in gathering wider and deeper support. But that's not how it is, is it?

Every single struggle, every single strike, occupation, protest - you're looking to condemn "violence", "troublemakers", "the irresponsible minority" or what have you and to distance yourself from those who go beyond peaceful protest. And that's all you fucking do. Ever. If it walks like a duck......

Which is why I called you Spymaster without the wit. However, I should have clarified - by "wit" I was not referring to humour, I meant without the wit to realise it. If you ever did have progressive politics, they've long since disappeared - you're now just reactionary cunt who lacks both self-awareness and the courage of their convictions
 
The average age of a UK Uncut protester seems about 17. Probably explains why they want to destroy the only remaining private sector businesses that are actually generating any wealth in the economy.

They want private sector businesses that are taking vast sums out of the British economy to pay the taxes they should be paying. You can spin that however you like but that is what it boils down to.

Why haven't you answered my earlier post yet Moonie?
 
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