UKUncut wants to "ensure government and big business do not get away with making ordinary people pay for a crisis they did not cause. It was the greed and recklessness of the banks that caused the economic crisis, yet the government is making ordinary people pay the price in the form of unprecedented cuts to public services. There are alternatives to the cuts, for example, making the banks pay for a crisis they created and stopping tax dodging by corporations and the rich." (website www.ukuncut.org.uk)
“What it did on Saturday was typical of how it operates. At a Boots store, supporters dressed up as doctors to transform the shop into an NHS hospital in protest at the £20bn cuts to the NHS. Outside Philip Green's BHS store on Oxford Street (accused of tax avoidance) actors and musicians protested against arts cuts with Sam and Timothy West performing a high-street staging of an extract from The Voysey Inheritance by Granville-Barker.” Andreas Whittam Smith, The Independent 30/3/2011
The redtop tory media regard these events as the beginning of the end of the world. They seem to argue that those involved in the protest should be strung up. The Tory Home Secretary lumped the 139 peaceful protestors arrested from Fortnum and Mason with the 11 ‘protestors’ arrested for violent acts elsewhere together, thereby giving the appearance of a more effective police operation. It has emerged from the UKUncut protestors arrested that the order to arrest them came from on high. The bobbies on the spot seemed baffled and unhappy to be involved locking up, ‘decent people.’ Can you be guilty of ‘aggravated trespass’ in an open shop?
One of the ironies (among many) was the report of several big name brands complaining about lack of police protection. Many of these complaining brands are the ones who use offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes in the UK. So who pays for the police?
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