keybored
Well done. You remember cat good.
"Matt, what's the address? I can't remember it off the top of my head..."
Fucking hipsters, they're so prolific that they can't even work out exactly what area they are gentrifying at any given moment.
Fuck Gentrification - Join the Fuck Parade...Part 3!
- Thread starter ClassWar2015
- Start date
Fucking hipsters, they're so prolific that they can't even work out exactly what area they are gentrifying at any given moment.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
Down with big business, support your local independent loan shark.
grit
an ugly force for good
I thought that at the start, however bone's point of them protesting at more traditional targets doesn't get the headlines has merit.
I thought it was interesting he acknowledged the cafe milking it for all its worth (pun sort of intended!)
I fondly remember my first independent landlord, after hearing him bullying the bloke over the hall with learning difficulties for an hour for making a complaint he'd always make sure to drunkenly bang on my door as well and threaten me a bit. When I was a bit late with my rent, to save me any hassle, he had his mates break in and nick my stereo to cover the rent. You just don't get that kind of personal attention from bland faceless corporations like Foxtons.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
put a starbucks next to an independent coffee shop / cafe, and Bone's saying he'd target the independent in preference to Starbucks.
It may get more publicity, but wtf is the politics behind it?
or was bone just attempting a defence of the action after the fact / being controversial for the hell of it?
if its a wanky independent coffee shop that locals cant afford then the politics behind it is the same as targetting Starbucks over gentrification, except you get more publicity
free spirit
more tea vicar?
the politics is very different to the justifications that used to be used.
Little wider political agenda other than fuck anything you view as in some way not being for the people of the area / possibly making the area seem attractive to others. Leave it as a shit hole that nobody with a choice would want to move to and everything would be just hunky dory I suppose?
I get the justification in terms of rents being pushed up and forcing people out etc but there have to be better ways, better policies to campaign on than this haven't there? Rent controls being the obvious policy to stop improvements in an area from forcing up rents and forcing locals out.
Though I guess as a howl of outrage this has worked to get people thinking about the issue to some extent.
grit
an ugly force for good
The medium is the message perhaps.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
my politics have always been anti-neoliberal capitalism.
I've also always viewed being self employed as the least bad option in the current political / economic landscape for any anarchist wanting to work outside of the system, other than a workers co-op.
Apparently that must be wrong, it'd be better if we all just worked for the big tax dodging, zero hours contract using, minimum wage paying companies instead, and lump it.
That's the message that's coming across from this to me anyway.
Theres a difference between beig self-employed, and employing others. This wasn't an attack on the local plumber.
Better to become the tax dodging, zero hour contract using, minimum wage paying employer yourself you mean? On a small scale of course. Like a shit version of Tesco.
ska invita
back on the other side
Ian Bone? Never!!
Can't be arsed reading 200 more posts, so here's a stupid question.
Is there no one of more recent times as respected or at least accorded the same academic attention as Marx that brings a contemporary class analysis of Capitalistic, economic relations? Because time and again when differenciating between the working classes and Petite bourgeoisie, with ideas ascribed to Marx, we get stuff that just doesn't seem to fit today. Or at least, ideas so abstruce and seemingly out moded with reference to many types of work people just can't relate.
TL/DR
Marx. Still bloody Marx? Where's the new lot?
Is there no one of more recent times as respected or at least accorded the same academic attention as Marx that brings a contemporary class analysis of Capitalistic, economic relations? Because time and again when differenciating between the working classes and Petite bourgeoisie, with ideas ascribed to Marx, we get stuff that just doesn't seem to fit today. Or at least, ideas so abstruce and seemingly out moded with reference to many types of work people just can't relate.
TL/DR
Marx. Still bloody Marx? Where's the new lot?
free spirit
more tea vicar?
and when the plumber decides they're too busy to do it all alone and takes on an apprentice /plumbers mate they're suddenly fair game?
small companies have far less opportunity to dodge tax, and aren't moving billions of profits out of the UK.
But no, there's no requirement to pay minimum wage or use zero hours contracts. I can't find figures on this, but I'd suspect that small businesses would employ less people on minimum wage and zero hours contracts than big businesses, as the owner works directly with the workers, and it causes far more disruption proportionally everytime someone leaves due to the shit wages / hours.
Not saying that shit small businesses shouldn't be a legit target for protest, but deliberately choosing to hit small businesses as a preferable target to big businesses is bullshit IMO (which is what Bone was suggesting in that article).
8den
No I'm pretty sure that was 8ball...
Jesus fucking christ what an absolute dickhead, who's allowed open a business around bone?
I've never met a small business person who doesn't dodge tax in some way
You'd be wrong, generally the larger a business the better it pays (I'd have to dig around the ONS website to find the stats but its a pretty generally recognised phenomena). More importantly, fuckloads of small businesses dont pay minimum wage, employ people as 'self-employed', have no HR departments and pay no heed to employment rights, don't recognise unions and are as heavily involved if not more so than big companies in workfare. Certainly some of the most exploitative shits I've worked for have been small/medium sized businesses. It's juvenile to make this distinction, and then to make another that okay bad small businesses are bad, but good small businesses are okay. Who gets to choose which is which? Getting sacked or being paid shit wages is the same whether its Tesco or your local newsagent, or you're local independent fucking wank shop selling snake oil or overpriced hippy tat stolen from Africa. Fuck the lot of them.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
His defence of the action isn't quite that though. He says it wasn't his choice - that it was a choice that emerged on the night. Not for him to tell people how to vent.
Is an anarchist Katie Hopkins such a bad thing? It's just one strand in a wider struggle, and provocation has long been a successfully employed tactic - including in this case, as the bungled reaction from the Jack the Ripper Museum to recent events shows. Class War have never pretended to be the entire solution, they are not a vanguard, the only reason this very mild bit of property damage has received such attention is because of the absence of anyone else doing anything vaguely interesting.
fredfelt
Mostly unknown member
You might find this an interesting start - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b013r2ld
"Karl Marx may have been wrong about communism but he was rightabout much of capitalism"
free spirit
more tea vicar?
I know, but then he goes on to say this, which basically is him saying that they should target small businesses in preference to big businesses for the publicity, unless he's being misquoted.
8den
No I'm pretty sure that was 8ball...
Precisely, he appears to want publicity for publicity sake. Its odious.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
Maybe so, I've scoured the ONS website and can't see any relevant stats.
No argument that there are bad SMEs, virtually all the businesses that have been prosecuted for not paying minimum wage are small businesses, but there are 5.2 million SMEs in the UK so hard to judge the entire sector by the few on that list.
So what makes a bad small business compared to a good one? Is the cereal cafe a bad small business? Is it okay to break the windows of bad small businesses like its okay to break the windows of Starbucks? Am I allowed to take action against the people who are exploiting me, in my life, on my doorstep, or should I apply to the Green Party or someone for a list of ethically approved targets?
free spirit
more tea vicar?
do what you think's right, but be prepared to have to justify it afterwards, and if your actions are going to change the situation then you need to be sure that they're not going to backfire and turn the community against you / act to publicise and benefit the business you've attacked.
That was the lesson I learnt up in Stirling after the smashy smashy brigade turned the entire town against us overnight.
Do you think what's left of working class Shoreditch have turned against Class War because of this? I suspect most of them haven't noticed, and some of the ones who have probably thought it was quite funny. Some of them were there. All I've heard is whining yuppies. Good, fuck them.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Doesn't John Lewis feature highly in surveys about job happiness, feeling valued etc.?
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