Hallowe'en Communique from the New Chartists

[Udo Erasmus]

HALLOWE'EN PROTEST - BAIL OUT PEOPLE NOT BANKS

Assemble 5 pm, Nye Bevan Statue, Queen Street, Cardiff
Friday 31 October

The free market is crumbling, yet the ghosts of the past are desperate to prop up the system. Billions of pounds of our money has been diverted to the vampires of the banking system, who are sucking our wallets dry.

After nationalising the banks we've continued to see home repossessions spiral. In Wales, court actions against late mortgage payers have tripled in the past year. Every single hour, four people in Wales are told they will lose their house. Not many of the bankers will be losing their luxury castles with velvet-coated coffins, while ordinary workers feel the bite.

On Halloween 2008, we will be protesting against the government's so called nationalisations of banks - nationalisations that are only in the interests of the rich. They think that we're too stupid to realise what's going on, that we're a bunch of zombies who will quietly pay for the crisis which they have created.

Come along on the Friday 31st of October and demand that nationalisation of banks should mean nationalisation in our interests. If we own the banks, why don't we get a say in what happens to our money? Giving billions of pounds to the same people who drove the economy into the crypt makes about as much sense as asking the Wolf Man to safely herd sheep.

We will assemble at 5pm at the Aneurin Bevan statue on Queen Street, right by Bradford and Bingley. We will then have a torch-lit march from bank to bank, exorcising the ghouls and ghosts of the free market and stamping our claim on our banks!

Many people will be coming in fancy dress, though that's not essential. There'll also be music and street art in abundance, please bring drums, pots, whistles or anything else to add to the cacophony!

 

[Udo Erasmus]

Hallowe'en Communique from the New Chartists #2

Peaceably if we may - Forceably if we must - Old Chartist slogan

WE NEED CARDIFF QUEEN STREET TO LOOK LIKE THE THRILLER VIDEO SO FEEL FREE TO DRESS UP! ALSO, PLEASE INVITE ALL YOUR FRIENDS!

Halloween is fast approaching and the need to make a noise about what's going on with the economy is growing every day. You'd have thought that we'd have got something out of nationalising the banks but just look at the case of Northern Rock.

Since being brought back from the brink of death by having our money pumped into it, this undead entity has repossessed FOUR TIMES as many houses as the industry average - that's more than 20 houses every day!

Meanwhile, the economic slowdown has left 760,000 new homes in the UK empty. While these houses stand empty like they're in some kind of ghost town, more than one-and-a-half-million people are waiting for council housing to become available. Many of these empty houses are on the books of Britain's biggest buy-to-let lender, Bradford and Bingley which, surprise surprise, is also nationalised!

Why the hell are nationalised banks repossessing houses and putting people on the streets when there are already three-quarters-of-a-million empty homes already? Gordon Brown's policy is a mishmash of ways to make us pay for the crisis, a Frankenstein's Monster that bails out bankers whilst kicking poor people out of their homes.

We need an end to home repossessions and to start using these empty houses to accommodate people who need shelter. The protest on Halloween will be a good place to start demanding that things change, and meeting other people to organise for that change.

 

[Udo Erasmus]

Campaign for a Debt Amnesty

Saw this on another site:

David Ellis from the newly formed Campaign for a Debt Amnesty explains the rationale behind its thinking.

All Debts Are Off

Every country in the world will suffer from the global credit crunch but Britain may well suffer more than most. We have all been living beyond our means but the City of London speculators, in a fit of hubris and in order to prove to the world that they were still the centre of the financial universe have been buying the debts of foreign countries, mainly America, hand over fist. They are the ones left holding the parcel of shiny beads so beautifully packaged by Wall Street now that the music has stopped. So, whilst every other nation will have to tighten its belt Britain is technically bankrupt. There is no way now to sell-on the trillions of dollars’ worth of toxic Debt Swap Certificates, or Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction, our City geniuses have purchased and there is little chance of them being made good. The US government’s decision to let Lehman Brothers go under was one of many hostile acts which have ensured Wall Street will survive to the detriment of the City of London. The only way to make the City remotely solvent again is to take it out of the hide of the British people. To this end the City is denying credit to businesses and individuals, despite the billions made available to them by the government, in order to force them to liquidate their assets and pay back their debts to the banks or take out new prohibitively expensive loans. This is why the stock exchange and house prices continue to tumble as everybody seeks the cash they need to continue trading or paying their company or individual debts. It is why unemployment and repossessions are taking off. There is no way that the City institutions can be nationalised because to socialise their debts, many times more than our GDP, would leave each pound worth little more than about three cents each. There is now only one way forward for Britain and that is to let the City go to the wall. It is literally us or them. To that end the Campaign proposes an immediate amnesty on all mortgages, personal loans and credit card balances. In addition, the debts of small and medium enterprises to the banks must be written off. Large corporations must be nationalised to prevent them from shedding jobs and their debts to the banks repudiated. Most are unprofitable and are in any case, one way or another, propped up by the taxpayer anyway. The few cash rich ones, such as the purveyors of rubbish food, are waiting to buy up their insolvent competitors, such as the purveyors of quality food, and either asset strip them or close them down all together. Unemployed workers must be absorbed into these large companies and into government and council departments. Hours, but not pay, should be cut in half in this new state sector to accommodate them. A new state bank, under the democratic control of the people, would then make cheap credit available to those individuals and enterprises that can demonstrate a need or are proposing social and environmentally beneficial projects. There will be no more loans for profligacy or for decadence such as for those buying 4×4s, yachts or multiple housing which ever way this crisis unfolds. Unfortunately, many pension funds are holding huge amounts of the toxic debts and are also in reality bankrupt. Paying further contributions into them is throwing good money after bad. The private pension system has collapsed. Again, to prop it up would ruin the nation as a whole to the benefit of a few private individuals. A new state pension fund must be established into which future contributions can be paid. Production for private profit has ceased to function. It is time for production for the social good.

The Campaign for a Debt Amnesty will be joining a demonstration and street party organised by the Cardiff Chartists at 5.00 next to the Nye Bevan statue on Queen’s Street Cardiff on Halloween Night, 31 October.

 

[Udo Erasmus]

Speaking about the demonstration to the leaders of the worlds media about the historical precedent for a moot of this kind, Dr Erasmus commented

"In a sense, the cacophony we have demanded for in the "call-out" is what would have been called in the 18th Century - "Rough Music" (see Customs in Common, by English historian EP Thompson for elaboration)."

"As an example of what we are describing, Mr Thomas Hardy in his admirable novel, The Mayor of Casterbrige, speaks of "the din of cleavers, tongs, tambourines, kits, crouds, humstrums, serpents, rams horns, and other historical kinds of music". A Leicestershire dialect dictionary adds, "Pokers and Tongs, marrow-bones and cleavers, warming-pans and tin kettles, cherry-clacks and whistles, constables' rattles, and bladders with peas in them, cow's horns and tea trays" as well as "yells and hisses".

He added,

"Or as Bill Haley and his Comets put it in the revolutionary year of 1956, "Get out in the kitchen an' rattle those pots and pans"!

 

[Udo Erasmus]

There's a rumout that this has now been endorsed by the Cardiff University Flashmob Society, these are the people who organise mass pillow fights in the city centre and other shenanigans. Good to see them coming out against the Rich.

 

[butchersapron]

They are the fucking rich.

 

[Udo Erasmus]

They don't seem too bad a bunch of kids, maybe illusions in social democracy

Wednesday 22.10.08 Flashmob! 5:30pm The praising of Aneurin Bevan
For those of you that don't know, Aneurin Bevan is the statue at the bottom of town, by SPAR and PIZZA HUT

He invented the NHS and was a Welsh politician- we dont think people pay him enough attention,
So we the many flasmobbers; meet at the bottom of town (outside Superdrug at 5:25 ish) walk together to the statue at 5:30pm, bow down to Aneurin beavan, praise him and leave