TUC National Demonstration Against Cuts

[OrangeBernard]

Who's going? I've just booked my train tickets. Its my first protest, any advice or tips? Bit worried about kettling.

Yes, the left have limited vocabulary and feel the need to swear a lot. It was ever thus.

"You don't have to signal a social conscience by looking like a frump. Lace knickers won't hasten the holocaust, you can ban the bomb in a feather boa just as well as without, and a mild interest in the length of hemlines doesn't necessarily disqualify you from reading Das Kapital and agreeing with every word."
? Elizabeth Bibesco

redruby my favourite was the punch and judy mock up

Xenia limited vocabulary and it was ever thus?
hmm yes as evinced by all those monosyllabic and sweary left wing authors, poets and political commentators... yeah. ok if you say so

I pity the people who have to clear up all the litter in Hyde Park. Why can't left-wingers put rubbish in bins?

Abr1de that's the least of our worries- who's going to provide the bins, collect the rubbish and deal with the rubbish in the shiny new future?

And I'm not entirely sure littering is exclusively a left wing trait, I think it's just antisocial people in general isn't it? Many of whom are not left wing...

Abr!de - I was in hyde park today looking for a bin to put our rubbish in and there weren't any. The park had removed them.

I think it's quite telling, though, how people leave the place after they've demonstrated. AFter the Countryside Alliance march there was barely a piece of paper left behind. I think there is a leftwing mindset of someone cleaning up after you that feeds into a more pernicious mindset that someone will always pay and that person won't be you.

I say that as someone who has had a very serious pay cut this year, and has a husband who will probably be out of work within months. We are feeling the pain but it's not the fault of this government. They are being the litter collectors for the previous lot.

Abr1de the foxes ate it all

QUite possible!

Abride I was involved in both the countryside alliance march and the anti cuts march today, both times I took my litter home.

An interesting analysis of the day by Economist. The timing of the small but violent side protest during Ed Miliband's speech was unfortunate for him, and a gift for the Coalition.

"....As I watch the television coverage of the march making its way through London, and of an HSBC branch being smashed up by anarchists, my eye is drawn less and less to the angry protestors and more to the ordinary people milling around looking perturbed. Some are foreign tourists. The rest are called voters"

Absolutely hallarious that someone up the the thread said that the left have to swear a lot.

From what I have observed over the past year on mumsnet, is in fact the complete opposite. More often than not it seems, the right wing sections seem to swear a lot more and also [but not importantly] miss out appropriate punctuation, thus making their comments rather diffficult to understand on more than one level.

The left swear a lot, the right make completely irrational statements (see longfingernails posts above). Well I know which I prefer.

Abri1e the bins were probably removed for security purposes.

Regardless I don't think it's all that telling how protesters leave the place. What I find telling is how people treat other people. Especially the poorest, most disenfranchised people in society. The current Government are making cuts that are affecting people who depend the most on public services. These will be the poorest, the disabled, the weak, the women and children ie. the people least able to stand up for themselves and ask for a fair deal. Meanwhile the are multi-million pound companies who don't pay the tax they are obliged to pay, are screwing the system through tax loopholes. Many of these companies make 'donations' to the Tory party. The poor and disenfranchised are paying at the expense of the rich. This utterly sucks.

The right are more cating. The left think they have a monopoly on care. It's a myth they choose to perpetuate. It's lke spoon feeding your child until it's 18. It has no self reliance. Encouraging responsibility for yourself, an internal mind set issue, rather than the hand of the state will always provide...

You don't really get it, do you Xenia?

The coalition and labour would make almost the same amount of cuts as each other - admittedly, the coalition are doing slightly more - but all parties are in agreement that there needs to be cuts. Labour squandered money and lost control of the finances during Brown's era even when he said there would be "no return to boom and bust" (well, he got that totally wrong).

So, it doesn't matter who is in power, it's going to hurt. Everyone can argue about who was responsible and who is accountable but the fact is, we are where we are and we have to deal with it. Yes, there's a potential difference in "how fast" the cuts would come in but labour may well have cut at the same rate - we'll never know because they are not in power.

Milliband and labour will try and say anything to get opposition to this and get anti-government protests kicked off. Their selfish agenda is to get back in power, not to support every member of the public - don't be fooled. If labour had been in power now and the cuts were taking hold, the march may or may not have happened due to the links between labour and the unions - but people would have still felt disenfranchised.

In any organisation, be it commercial, council, health service, we should constantly review jobs, job functions, processes, etc. to be as lean and mean as possible whilst being able to be responsive to changes where needed. There is so much deadwood in local government, so many middle management in the NHS, etc. and it's time to stop creating jobs and bureaucracy for its own sake and think of these things as businesses.

Of course people are going to be angry and losing jobs is the last thing anyone wants for themselves but if a job is deemed to add no value to the organisation (even though you may work your socks off for 40 hours a week), then the job should cease to exist.

Imagine if it was your company and your money and you had a department that wasn't providing any benefit to the company. What would you do? Keep employing them, costing you money for no reason at all? Move them to a different department (change of job) - but then they'll go to the union and complain like hell that they have to sit in a different chair because that's a change they don't like? Or make them redundant - again there'll be the union threats?

Every organisation has to make these choices, it just so happens that this is the largest one in the country and incitement from unions gets everyone thinking that their pals in labour would do it differently - well, they wouldn't do it that differently.

Sorry - rant over.

watch and be disllusioned Xenia as the cuts bite you'll see just how caring they are.

Someone up the thread wondered how much closing loopholes would save, Philip Green, one person, wangled himself out of 1/4 billion tax bill and there are many more like him. It would bring in a lot of money.

my fave placards:

Why did Clegg cross the road? Because he said he wouldn't.
Eton Mess
you can't open minds with closed libraries

"The right are more cating. The left think they have a monopoly on care. It's a myth they choose to perpetuate. It's lke spoon feeding your child until it's 18. It has no self reliance. Encouraging responsibility for yourself, an internal mind set issue, rather than the hand of the state will always provide..."

Do you mean like DLA Xenia? Paid to those with disabilities and illnesses to help them overcome the barriers to independent living and working in a way most of us taking for granted?

Shame then that the tories have plucked an arbitrary figure out of the air and decided that's how much they'll shave off the DLA bill, before they've even assessed the need. That really demonstrates how caring they are.

ohm - according to you Green's tax avoidance is 1/4 billion PA. According to the TUC our structural deficit is £40bn per year.

Anyone who can use a calculator can see that even if its possible - stopping 'billionaire' tax avoidance can only make a tiny contribution at best.

jack, the TUC reckon the total avoidance bill comes in at around £25bn, I think I heard yesterday.

No idea where they get the figure from mind you, just pointing out that there's more than Philip Green at it

So, the one off bank bail out was £85 bn. Phillip Green needs to pay £25 bn ( annually?). Trident will cost 3bn.

The welfare bill ALONE is £232 bn every single year and rising. The amount of income tax generated annually is LESS than the welfare bill.

FGS you don't have to be a leftie, a rightie or an inbetweenie to have the brains to see something has to change and that we cannot possibly, POSSIBLY continue like this.

Oh sorry, the TOTAL tax avoidance bill is only 25bn?? So a tenth of the welfare bill alone?

So, where is the money to come from?