Occupy! Occupy!
I have watched, with increasing amazement, the occupation of various “symbolic” venues by people representing “99%” of society, in protest against the greed of the remaining 1%.
I don’t know who this mysterious 99% is, because 99% of the people I know think that the occupiers are f***ing idiots. And the only symbolism I can find is that the protestors are symbolically disconnected from reality.
The same people who have organised these occupations to protest against greedy, multi-national corporations have used products and services provided by greedy, multi-national corporations to do the organising. In a spirit of proletarian equality, groceries are being delivered to the occupiers by Ocado. Trendy hipsters sporting stupid beards and casually dressed in Armani are complaining earnestly about rampant capitalism. Smug idiots are delivering utterly vacuous platitudes to camera.
If I didn’t know better, I would swear that the whole thing was a Brass Eye parody.
Thaddeus J Wilson
October 20, 2011 at 08:34
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gladiolys, I agree that the protesters are getting up and ‘doing
something’. However I would disagree with your comment about them challenging
the establishment. It seems to me they want more establishment to provide
everything they want without them actually having to contribute
themselves.
The only change they want is instead of government giving tax payer’s money
to banks they want the government to give tax payers money to them. Not
exactly revolutionary.
They need to ask two questions.
1) Why did the government bail out the banks?
Because banks buy government bonds.
2) Why does the government have to issue bonds?
Because people demand more from the state then they will/can
contribute.
Dirty Eddie
- October 20, 2011 at 11:33
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I think the actual answer to your 2) is, so they can squander ever larger
amounts of money on projects whose only value is to stroke the ego of said
government, usually to the detriment of the people.
- October 20, 2011 at 08:02
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The trouble with their protest from my point of view is that it sounds an
awful lot like “hope and change” or perhaps in this case “change and
hope”.
That has tended not to be a recipe for improvement in the USA, and I
doubt it can translate very well to UK.
I prefer my political overthrows to be rather more factually based,
addressed by people who look like they, at a minimum have the ability to get
up, have a wash, comb their hair and go to work in the morning. Thats an old
fashioned idea, I freely admit.
- October 20, 2011 at 07:19
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Thaddeus: Who wrote: “There is no significant difference between Labour,
Tory and Lib Dem policies. There is no difference between their mindset. All
that differs is that the various supporters of the tribes get to yelp
baboon-like approval or disapproval of the bullies in power based on the
colour of their ties.
If you’re not happy with politics in the UK today, the most likely cause of
the problem is the person who looks back at you in the mirror every
morning.”?
May I point you to here: https://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/imagine/
You may neither like nor understand what the protestors are doing, but they
are doing something, and it is something that is not playing along with the
rules as they are established so far. Maybe they were unhappy about the person
who looked back at them from the mirror every morning and decided to try to do
something about it.
- October 19, 2011 at 20:04
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Not a parody, more a tragedy.
The aimless, soap and comb-free throngs remind me of the “student rioters”
of the late 1960′s attempting to change the style of government. I fear
history is repeating itself complete with incoherent and unstable governments
and looming hyperinflation seen soon after the 60′s.
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October 19, 2011 at 14:06
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No wonder…..many are just simply clueless, and the ones that aren’t appear
to be to mentally challenged.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tsJPKMvWDmY
- October 19, 2011 at 14:02
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haha Brasseye. Fantastic, do you know where your kids are tonight? I
do…
- October 19, 2011 at 13:47
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Can’t help feeling that they are protesting at the wrong targets.
If governments hadn’t borrowed so much, banks wouldn’t have lent so much
and had to get central banks to print more. Neither would the same governments
have had to appropriate taxpayers’ cash to bail out the creaking banks.
The villians of the piece are high-borrowing, high-spending governments,
and central bankers who didn’t rein them back. The same central banks who are
now allowing inflation to erode the savings of the prudent – stealth-taxing
the innocent to bail out the debt-heavy feckless.
Vodaphone may be guilty of many things, but if you don’t want to buy their
services, you don’t have to. You have no choice whatever about your savings or
pension being robbed by inflation.
- October 19, 2011 at 13:17
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Least they are not sheeple …. like some on here …
- October 20, 2011 at 12:26
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What is it with this pathetic Icke-esque phrase? Please desist from using
it, it is not clever nor big.
- October 19, 2011 at 12:57
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Certain types of people have probably been protesting against reality since
the dawn of time. It’s just today’s modern media (and internet) that gives
them such a high profile.
- October 19, 2011 at 13:06
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Odd it took the US media nearly three weeks to notice them. ;o)
- October 19, 2011 at 13:10
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But they’ve been noticed and everyone knows about them now. Quite a
result for them, I think.
- October 19,
2011 at 12:27
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Interesting the urge to protest is moving up the class system (such as it
is.) You would expect those on the lowest incomes experiencing the worth
levels of poverty (as in starving, and before anyone starts bumping their gums
about being starving AND owning an MP3 player or ithing; you’re priorities are
wrong.)
That said, I’m giving this crowd the benefit of the doubt and supporting
what they’re doing/saying because people who genuinely have nothing (not even
bug-infested rice to eat) can’t afford to or simply don’t have the personal
infrastructure to do this sort of thing.
So fair play to them. (Except that burd getting her macbook pinched, if it
was a two year old laptop they wouldn’t have bothered. You’ve paid the price
for your pure affectation which is really what Apple tech is all about.)
- October 19, 2011 at 14:12
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The Sofa Class are a bunch of can’t be arsed, hence why the likes of
Jonny Marbles and his ilk are out protesting for them.
- October 19, 2011 at 12:11
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And I thought the “99″ refered to the fact they’re all flakes.
- October 19, 2011 at 11:28
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The way I see it, the occupiers aren’t necessarily against corporations
selling stuff to make money. I thought their main beef was against the
so-called “wealth creators” in the financial sector who broke the system and
then had to be bailed out by the 99% so they could carry on as before.
- October 20, 2011 at 06:17
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Indeed. But it’s so much easier to sit on one’s backside and type
misinformed diatribes based on cynicism. Good luck to people who do
something about their wish to change the world.
- October 20, 2011 at 13:53
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That would be reasonable if the 1% “had to be bailed out”.
But they didn’t, numerous other options existed, a range of which would
have kept all the banks operating.
Best to protest against the utter fuckwits that _chose_ to steal from the
poor to bail out the rich, the then Labour government.
- October 19, 2011 at 11:01
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And with exquisite timing – from the New York Post…..
It’s a den of thieves!
Occupy Wall Street protesters said yesterday that packs of brazen crooks
within their ranks have been robbing their fellow demonstrators blind, making
off with pricey cameras, phones and laptops — and even a hefty bundle of
donated cash and food.
“Stealing is our biggest problem at the moment,” said Nan Terrie, 18, a
kitchen and legal-team volunteer from Fort Lauderdale.
“I had my Mac stolen — that was like $5,500. Every night, something else is
gone. Last night, our entire [kitchen] budget for the day was stolen, so the
first thing I had to do was . . . get the message out to our supporters that
we needed food!”
Chortle, chortle.
- October 19, 2011 at 11:46
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They are obviously associating with the wrong sort of people!
- October 19, 2011 at 12:09
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Look, these people are only redistributing wealth among themselves. It’s
what they believe in.
- October 19, 2011 at
12:42
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Aww, you beat me to it.
It’s scary that someone can’t see how ridiculous they look when saying
that at a demo against poverty!
- October 19, 2011 at 15:21
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- October 19, 2011 at 10:51
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It’s funny you should mention that: we’ve had a similar problem in my neck
of the woods:
http://caedmonscat.blogspot.com/2011/10/occupy-eyed.html
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