NHS staff in Unison show their support for the protest | Image: SERTUC
Assemble 11am at Victoria Embankment for march to Hyde Park
Click to download leaflet
As top bankers pay themselves 30% salary rises and million-pound bonuses, the Con-Dem Coalition has launched a programme of cuts designed to destroy the welfare state.
The clock is being turned back to the 1930s. The cuts will deepen the crisis and foster racism and scapegoat politics.
Instead we need investment in jobs, homes, transport, public services, and a sustainable economy.
We have to meet the Con-Dem attack with a wave of demonstrations, occupations, and strikes powerful enough to stop the cuts.
The students have shown the way. The speculators, the tax-dodgers, and the rich should
pay for the crisis. The national demonstration called by the TUC can be the launch-pad for creating mass resistance among millions of working people.
The Coalition of Resistance calls on all opponents of the cuts to start building for the demonstration now.
Let’s make Saturday 26 March the day we begin to turn the tide on the Con-Dem Coalition of millionaires.
Volunteers Need for the day of the demonstration and in the week before
Loads of helpers are needed on the day of the TUC National Demo and in the week before to make placards.
Can you help ?
Please give us a call and let us know :
Sam : 0787 248 1769
Romayne : 07985 053 907
Andrew : 07939 242 229
TUC Information
TUC Flyers and posters can be downloaded here.
The TUC Facebook event for the March is here
Transport
The False Economy website has a great list of transport to the demo complete with a map to help you find transport from near where you live.
On the day, the TUC have set up a call in centre at Congress House in conjunction with the Metropolitan police.
All TUC stewards will have any information they call in directly fielded by the cops.
If the TUC leadership co-operates with the police in the event of a confrontation at this march then they will show once and for all that they are on the other side. It is time to stop pandering to these lazy, unless sellouts.
A pathetic march from A to B with a load of chanting of “tories out” is meaningless. We need to go beyond protest to actual resistance. So lets start on 26th! Get roads blocked, don’t let them kettle us and do not stick to the planned route.
If we are to stand any chance of resisting these cuts then we have to end the old failed practices of the left.
find something else to do on the 26th March
this comment is incitement to public disorder
so stay away or if you do turn I hope you get the hiding you deserve
You must be quite well off, i guess:
Public disorder is closing a library, school hospital,selling arms to Lbya, not paying taxes.
totALLY AGREE
occupy hyde park
you dont get it do you this isnt just a protest by far left groups wanting the overthrow of the government,but a peaceful protest by as many people as can be mustered,coming from all walks of life.If groups of indisciplined,and perhaps police agent provocateurs cause trouble,that gives the tory press and its allies in parliament an excuse to say “oh its just a group of louts causing problems”.Whereas if a million people+ turn up and there are no problems then that is the victory it is called passive resistance and has been very effective down the years.So please come with a smile and smile with the police on duty,remember,whatsherface ms may has upset our boys in blue lately,so give them a easy day and you will get converts to the cause.Just being there is all that is needed.
Well said, flipper, can we all remember please, this is the TUC’s march, hopefully supported my their members from all professions. It would be theft for it to be hijacked by troublemakers – does anyone really want our nurses, classroom assistants, lollipop ladies and bus and train drivers to be kettled just because the hooligan element cannot control themselves?
To those who want a violent protest, may I suggest you arrange your own and DO NOT bring this fine organisation into desrepute?!
Yea! Thats gonna work!
Not
Its folks like you that cause peaceful protests like this to go tits up..
Go back to the hole you so obviously crawled out of
I agree just rust if this is happening its will be mega enough without planning disorder…make it seem normal to turn out no so bolshevik…then you will get the middle classes involved too….all ages and colours…and really get something moving..by mere size….I vote for a revolution in education and will bring loads of people if the agenda is not overly violent insurrection we intend to chant and deafen everyone with very loud prayer !!!
I truly hope not, unless it is to help demonstrators! Anyone told Bob Crowe about this?
The boys in Blue will be right with you – Ms May and her Government has well and truely shafted us too. I will facilitate your march and you have my full support. Good luck
Hey thanx for the info
myself and 11 others are leading a student
political collective and aim to get about 200
down there for the day. Most of us are studying
in the humanities and are aiming for B.As rather than Bsc’s. i am doing modern government and politics and this government really stiinks, however unless we do something more radical we’ll end up with someone worse.
Its already moving like a dictatorship, one of the first things Cameron did was extend the election interval from 4 to 5 years. I urge everyone to bring posters and banners and to take up as much of the roads as possible, i was there on the last major protest in october and we were there for hours and hours in the snow!!!!
Cat and Mouse does work well but last time we all got split up and so did not have the desired effect.For this to work well we will have to put up with the kettling because this is what will get us noticed, taking up huge proportions of londons major streets, suffering in the charge of the Met.
This is all very naive. We need cuts to the size of the sate. The huge increase in public sector jobs by the last govt stifles grown and not sustainable.
A robin hood tax is daft, it will tax the govt in taxing the state banks & why tax the banks that didn’t take public money? Did you demand a robin hood tax on the miners in 70s & 80′s when the govt bailed them out? how about taxing steel workers, ship builders? Or is it based on petty class inverted snobbery?
Why not save the lowest earners money by demanding the commercialisation of the BBC & remove the licence fee, maybe full privatisation?
Why not save low earners by supporing a local income tax for all and remove the unfair council tax?
These are far more progressive actions than campaign for a cut in VAT which will save the lowest earners very little.
duke
Get real, if you like capatilsm so much go to Russia
Please do not attack the miners, they built this country and only had fair treatment for about 40 years despite making millionaires of countless pit owners over centuries, literally off the sweat off their backs and their blood!
My dad was a milkman in Barnsley in the strike of 84, he gave them milk as they had nothing else to give their children otherwise; he went bust! My grandad and great grandad worked in the mines and died prematurely from inhaling coaldust.
Where was this so-called “bail out”?
I guess we won’t be seeing you on 26th March Duke, at least hope not!
We don’t need to call the tax the banks owe “Robin Hood” or anything else, it’s called paying your dues! They took the bail out, now give themselves bonuses and expect us to suck on that? Think you’re on the wrong site and wrong side mate!
Semi-retired and just discovered this website
Couldnt agree more with the main sentiment of the above discussions. As a trade unionist for all of my working life I know you just collectively have to keep campaigning and demonstrating time after time. Lets make govt cuts have the same end as the poll tax had. As Jayne says, we have to fight with ideology and words — thats what the govt are doing through their media instruments. We know that all these cuts are ideological and will lead to privatisation and all that that implies
I am opposed to all the cuts but to be honest will be sat at home watching the news as there will be a riot. The amount ov coverage it will have will give seperate groups time get a point over and not all there groups are piecefull.
There are always such groups. The only way to get our point across is to turn up. If the Egyptians we have seen over the last week had taken your stance Mubarak and his ilk would stay in power for ever.
Its about time we all stood together against these ridiculous cuts. The country cannot sustain the cuts and all the other things that are happening to our country anymore. We want our country back and our people treated fairly. I shall be joining the protest. I agree ian above and would comment to the other Ian that if everyone thought like him we would be in dire straits!
Ian it is true that there is always the chance that the police will get violent; usually based on the actions of a tiny minority. But don’t you think that these cuts are worth fighting against? Personally I don’t mind taking the risk of being involved in a riot if it means our present ‘government’ re-thinks what they are doing.
And, Ian x 2, we owe it to our children. What a dreadful legacy the life-stealers are bequeathing, can Cameron et al really tuck their kids in at night and know they’re giving them a future? Perhaps Cameron’s kids, after all their grandpa owns a bank, but mine, yours, what future? Please turn out, be respectful, but Be There! Care! And yes, Take Care!
totally well put Jayne
The sick are starting to die prematurely.
The theft of tax payers’ contributions must stop. They are intended for those in need, not for large, super rich, foreign organisations.
Check out the DWP’s Nov. 2010 accounts…
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/supplying-dwp/transparency-in-procurement/what-we-spend/
Cut the Number of Politicians to Zero.
It is these Ivory Tower People who have made the
UK the Cloud Cuckoo Land it is.
Demonstrations should be going on Every Day
Not Just once in a Blue Moon.
The Arrogance of this Regime makes my Blood Boil
i agree with you its like being in a game of manopoly when somebody holds all the money and owns all the property but they still want you to carry on playing the game even if you are hating it, peaceful protests do nothing, the coalition already know what and who they are and just like protests in the middle east they have the police and the army to protect there interests, the only way to get there attension is for everyone to stay at home call in sick at work and sit it out, they want you to shop and work it brings in the taxes that pay police wages and the army and supports the economy they love so much,buy out of the system its the only way. regards Gerry.
i agree
Coaches from Newcastle, organised by Gateshead Public Services Alliance and Coalition of Resistance – Tyne & Wear, £25/£10. To reserve places contact Tony: toe.knee.dowling@gmail.com or 0771 994 6814
I detest and oppose all violence, not least because I am a wimp. Though I can understand it as a defence when peoples lives are being trashed by an unelected coalition of millionaires. Lives of all ages. Most especially the thousands upon thousands of young people being denied a future. Whilst the bonus sick bankers etc, laugh a little more each day on their way to the bank.
Who are these ‘minority’ groups seemingly referred to here, accused of causing trouble? They are you and me. All of us. We may each have our particular angle on this but we are all on the same side. Though some of us have been seeing this happening for 30 years in the UK and are still fighting it all the way.
Maybe one day, if we can stop writing the front page of 27th March ‘Sun’ newspaper(?) for them – even before the event – and realise most of us with two eyes and a heart really are in this together, we might get somewhere.
Somehow I cannot see any of the right wing rags reporting a peaceful and orderly demonstration by passionate opponents of the cuts. Whatever happens. Can you?
This is not about a Govt rethink? They know exactly what they are doing and mean it. With menaces. Tell me then, what voice do people with our passionate concerns have in this ‘democracy’ of ours right now?
If they only leave us the street, as they have, do not be surprised if it gets smashed.
March 26th. Be there. Stay safe. It is only the beginning.
We must have a peaceful, utterly respectable protest and I for one will intervene if I see violence begin on our side, even if it means I take a slap. This is far too big an issue for it to be allowed to be misreported. It really is the future of our children, our very civilisation and we have had the good fortune to live in and further develop the most civilised, caring nation on Earth. It Must go forward and not back, please!
see ya there jayney!!!
agree with everything you say!
Protests should be Going On Every Day so that
Enough Pressure is Created for the Scrapping of
Destructive Social and Economic Policies and the
Formation of a New Government
How have we come to this? All I can contribute is a poem by Martin Niemuller that is apt.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
The Anti Terrorism laws have turned any radical thinking person to an enemy of the state.
Mass protest has never worked in this country, governments just ignore them here. The only way is to target MP’s by writing, phoning etc. If they think their seat is at risk they will take notice. They are professional politicians, the majority of them are not there to help the people, only to help themselves.
Best of luck on the 26th.
just to let you know we live in a democracy
not the Third Reich nobody gets disappeared for
demonstrating
Yes the police can get heavy handed but they wont be using live ammo on the 26th
Try rioting in Bahrain and see what happens
target practice for the military
Gary, if you think “we live in a democracy” I think you have to look up that word; we have a government no majority voted for that is doing nothing we wish it to do; the Liberals have broken pretty much every manifesto pledge and hey, ho, so have Dave and his lot. But that, on their own admission, is because they didn’t realise what it would be like when they got into power (and we all know what power does…). But then what would overgrown spoilt public schoolboys with no clue of real life know what to do with power? Pull legs off spiders – or the NHS, if you’re really big enough!
WE DON’T LIVE IN BAHRAIN, WE HAVE THE LUCK TO LIVE IN THE MOST ADVANCED SOCIETY ON THE PLANET! KEEP IT THAT WAY!
Oh, and Geraint, mass protest have worked in the past: Poll tax, Anti Nazi, I was there on both!
But good point about contacting your local MP, if you can catch the right slippery bastard! Mine is Paul Murphy, Labour, great bloke, been in seat for about 15 years, can you name yours?
Jayne. I was at the same school as Paul Murphy in the 60′s. I know my local MP well. He’s a government whip and he’s a good bloke. They nearly all are on a local level. They are professional politicions its their job to be nice to constituants. Thatcher did’nt get rid of poll tax because of the protests, she was worried they were becoming unpopular re loss of seats, check it out. The only way to change anything besides contacting your MP is to join the Bullington club. Within the year conservatives will begin to realise that Cameron is not up to the job. Its happening already. Sit back and give him enough rope. Have a nice day on the 26th, I’ll be the one in the checked shirt……..
Thanks Geraint, that made me laugh in a forum that usually makes me very sad indeed – that we have to be here at all!
Yes, of course I know they’re all slippery as snakes; I was a mature student in May 1997 and was receiving phone calls and visits from excited friends til 6am, knowing that I had to have my small children ready to leave home for school/nursery and be in my Crim Law lecture 20 miles away by 9.30! It was gonna be so great though, the New Labout Govt, wasn’t it? I cried when Hariet Harman said no reversal of student loans, tuition fees on way … Try telling your newly adult kids that a Tory whip was a really nice guy in the 60s – Everybody was nice in the 60s, that’s called rose tinted spectacles! They have no clue what that world was like and surely never will have! (Lots of things actually not so nice, sexism, racism, domestic abuse tolerated!)
I truly think that there’ll be a general election in 2013, this shoddy shower can’t hold together!
Before I lived in Wales I lived in loads of places in England. Barnsley was one and the results from yesterday’s polls from there and the Referendum here in Wales are surely telling the shower of shites they can stuff it! However, can we afford the time to feed them rope inch by inch?
Btw, well done Wales, good decision! Oh, and Barnsley too!
I am lucky enough to live in Wales, a lot of the cuts will not affect us. And my daughter will not be charged stupid amounts to go to a Welsh university. But then, last time I marched was in the late 1970s, about racism and I’ve never been black!
This is so huge! It’s not about NIMBY, I’ll come back to England and be with you, stop cuts of service You Need! We Need! This is still one nation, one humanity!
PLEASE DON’T LET IT DESCEND INTO VIOLENCE! Please, this may be our last chance for decades (though I actually think this stinkiing coalition has only about 2 years before we kick it out).
See you all on the 26th then!
It is truly great to see a dialogue in here. My experience thus far on this site is we fire off and spout one post and it lie’s untouched and not added to. Maybe you like me have to spend so much time with others who seem to be sleepwalking in all this. So it is all the more wonderful if we can share our anger and thoughts here.
Jayne. You really write from the heart. Does me good. I only wish I could believe your ‘peaceful utterly respectable protest’ – so sincerely meant – could get us anywhere. Even Ghandhi backed up his non violent passive resistance with massive industrial strikes against British Rule. A vital point utterly missed in Attenborough’s famous film. Like you I resist violence and will urge others on it too. But what do we do when we see friends kettled, truncheoned and beaten, charged with police horses etc? Even pregnant women have faced that in the recent protests. We have massive forces against us. All of the State and the interests of corporate finance. Even if we attract 5 million on just a loud leisurely stroll through the streets of London, it will sadly only be just that. Even then the majority of the right wing press would be vitriolic against us. Still hoping you are right. Still searching though for the last time a peaceful march, or even a tick on a ballot paper every 5 years, last achieved any meaningful improvement for the majority in this island factory of ours.
Geraint. When I have quoted the famous Pastor Niemoller poem in these circumstances, I just get a bemused luck – as in deranged over the top leftie. Reading you quote it here was wonderful. Thank you. Divide and rule is exactly what we face. We have done for decades. The poem is as relevant now as in the early years of Hitlers Germany.
Adding to it -
‘We live in a lifeboat, we have one loaf of bread. We can fight over it, trade it or we can share it’
Tony Benn
There is a massive alternative to fighting over it or just trading it. There is so much more than just crumbs for all on this planet. Poverty and deprivation is man made. People in power, the haves, design it to be this way. The obscenely poor are only poor because the obscenely rich are rich. No one without the other.
Sadly they are not likely to give up their criminal privelage without a fight. Wish it could be otherwise.
We can have a nice chat and cup of tea with the burglar we find in our living room, we can politely ask him to leave. Or we can just throw him out.
What is the point of ringing the police when they are paid to be on this particular burglars side.
See you in March.
Thank you for responding Leon, I want to believe it CAN be a peaceful protest, I went on many such in my teens. I’ll be there with my 74 year old mother and 17 year old daughter, and a placard explaining to police that we know our rights, courtesy of a post elsewhere on this site from a lawyer (thank you for that). Perhaps another between us demanding a peaceful protest, or I believe it means nothing and makes us as bad as them!
If it becomes too much I will protect my mother and daughter and retreat. I sincerely hope that won’t be necessary – police are facing near 30% cuts too. Will their heart be in it if we stay peaceful?
Finally, what happened to the great bands that used to accompany us on marches or greet us at our destination? They could really do so much to make this count in every way, as back in the day Aswad, Buzzcocks, UB40 did! Diffuses tension to have a festival at the end! Wishful thinking that today’s “artistes” would do owt for nowt I suppose!
we cannot have this. there are 1000s of us and very few of them and we shall fight back but we will not use violence.We will not let them pass the law on cuts we will stand united and fight
Cannot have what? As I explained I am also against violence in all it’s forms and will try to play my small part urging others in this.
I think you sum it up though. ‘We will not use violence, but then go on to say ‘we will stand united and FIGHT’……..forgive me if I work on that one.
We may be thousands. Hopefully millions. But we do not have even a fraction of the combined forces of ‘those few’ against us. The state, the police, the judiciary and the army.
All we have is Unity. Nothing else. That includes all of us seeing through the front page of the ‘Sun’ when it selectively spouts – ‘demonstrator kicked new born kitten at Demo’.
Whether there is violence or not. They will report there is.
Don’t bloody let them! Give them nothing to condemn us with! Leon, we used to shout “Black and white, Unite and fight, Smash the National Front!” We were united but as friends, we fought with ideology and words, not weapons, and for a couple of decades there was union between races and religions. It is the Sun and Daily Mail and the likes spout rubbish and stir hatred, all I ask is that we give them nothing to report, just peaceful heads to count!
As a disabled man who is a wheelchair user I would like to tell people, why it is not possible that many people with disabilities can attend…. plainly it is the cost… As I cannot access a coach, and travel on the tube, I would have to go down a day early, three nights in the nearest Premier Inn (an extra night to relax after dealing with the march,Police etc. (£363 – WITHOUT BREAKFAST) That is nearly all my D.L.A. Never mind trainfares, Food, Taxis!
I was always brought up to support the unions, and I have always respected them, but their lack of forsight means that those who are really on the receiving end of Camerons Cosh cannot attend easily… What a pity!!! Next time ask us what we need and we will be able to support you all!
I agree with Jayne above–we have to fight with ideology and words. That is what the govt are using through their
media instruments . I am semi-retired and have always been a TU member when I was full time in the workplace. I demonstrated relentlessly against the poll tax and thats what we have to do with the cuts. Lets make the cuts the Tories poll tax!!!We know what will happen if everything is privatised and what that will cost us dont we — every bit of privatisation has cost us more in the long run…
Dear All
Would it be possible taht, as part of the demonstration, and in a prearranged place, we stage some sort of conference where experts can make the argument against the cuts?
Maurizio Catulli
Hi Maurizio, think the place you’re describing is called the Palace of Westminster and, lovely though I’m sure Ed Miliband is, he’s astonishing by his silence!
The only “experts” who are vocal about the cuts are the Health Professionals, who have seen Labour’s reforms – though by no means perfect – actually work in cutting waiting times for treatment and thereby deaths! Now they want to squander a quarter of the NHS budget on reforms no-one wants, least of all the GPs who – wonderful as they are – themselves admit they gained massively but are not experts in ongoing health provision on a case by case basis. You can see the debate any week on Question Time or This Week or Newsnight.
But perhaps you are right, if the professionals came along and supported us, it would give the whole case more validity. I very much hope they do.
I actually agree with Jayne too. Everything said here. But sadly I happen to recall Sheila that the death of the poll tax only happened after incredibly violent riots in the centre of London woke people up and scared the establishment imposing it on us. I do not like it any more than you do.
Yes it also needed countless thousands resisting it in imaginative passive ways not to pay it. Brilliant. Without that we would not get anywhere.
Though can I remind anybody we only scared them enough to get rid of Thatcher,saving their own necks. To fight another day. They are still here and acting like bloody ‘Marie Antoinette’ now. Call it Tory, Labour or Lib Dem. I prefer the term ‘The Krays’ myself. Whoever you waste your vote on. Rupert Murdoch gets in. Money with menaces.
Even Mervyn King. Governor, Bank of England, today expresses surprise we have been so compliant as the financial sector caused this crisis.
They know our words. They know our ideology very well already. Some of ‘The Krays’ in Westminster wrote some of it.
Hope we can just agree one day they are taking the pxxx now just as far as it can go, till it affects them of course.
My choice at the Chip Shop is an indefinate General Strike. Precious little has changed since 1926. Except the smoke and mirrors of the like of the X Factor. Personally my vote every week is to ban it.
The first dictum of victory is to know the enemy. They know you more than you know.
Excellent Leon, and they know because we bloody post it all on here! They probably know to within a couple of thousand how many will turn up, I told them there’ll be 3 of us, may be a couple more.
However, they shoot their mouths off too, just said police pay, overtime and bonuses are going to be massively slashed, as are our Armed Forces. So will their hearts really be in bullying us if – to return again to this point – we are PEACEFUL? Yes those who joined those forces to give vent to their bullying nature may still want to pull our legs off, turf the disabled out of their wheelchairs. BUT if we behave with dignity and show our concern for them as public servants – I don’t want less police on our streets, I just want GOOD ones – what have we to fear? (Yes Answer: Being kettled at best, coshed or trampled at worst and whatever you do don’t be walking innocently home with hands in pockets having sold all your newspapers and have a heart condition!).
I know this enemy; it is son of Thatcher. I could not bear her then and will not take this now!
This Coalition of misery and Evil is built on the foundations of lies and deceit. Just watch this clip of The Final Televised Electoral Debate 2010 live.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UvqmZlaAPY
This entire country has been conned and taken for a ride by this EVIL Coalition.
Keep this march peaceful otherwise you will play into the hands of the government ! The public will have a lot more sympathy if there is no trouble ..
I’ll be there. I’ll be peaceful. If there is violence I will leave (hopefully – if not kettled). so will many people especially those with children. The viciousness of some posts on sites like this must put many people off marching.
I tend to agree with Geraint(19 Feb): mass protests are not very successful (especially if violence breaks out)writing to our MPs and councillors may work better. But marching brings us together and also I feel inspired by the protesters in Egypt so will be marching.
Really interesting dialogue here now.
Though sadly 2 things worry me about some thinking here. There seems to be so much pinned on March 26th as if it were ‘make or break’. No surprise after a year of incredible frustration. A year in which, if it were not for the students, this so called Govt would really think they have a license to put kids back up chimneys. I only see the 26th as a long waited start to massive protest. Do not be surprised if the Govt does not fall on the 27th.
Not sure about your workplace. I work in the public sector and even there only a tiny minority of work mates are doing the march. Sleepwalkers most. I am even left wondering – if the employer decreed tomorrow that the employee must pay the employer, rather than the reverse, for the privelage of working they still would. Hold your breath and save your energy for the long fight after 26th. Right now Jenny I doubt many even yet know of the protest, let alone reading stuff here.
Secondly, it worries me greatly that some peoples thinking is already writing the likes of the ‘Suns’ headlines for them here. As if any skirmish, nastyness or pent up anger on a march like this is worse than the foul crime we are protesting against. Just what Murdoch wants you to think. Even when the police cause the violence. We may be angry. But do most of us actually know the viciousness we face here for our society.
Said this before. How can I put it differently.
Uniquely this time this bastardised coalition Govt was not really elected and they have no mandate whatsoever for even half of what they are doing. The winner of the election was Murdoch, the City and Bankers. The politicians true masters. Not you or me. Peaceful loud walks and letters to your MP are already seeming like quite walks and warm beer in the country.
I can only speak for myself and my perspective. Before it is too late open our eyes to what is really happening. For my part if we even topple bloody Nelsons Column it is as nothing to the devastation planned on our civic society. The final wholesale trashing of the 60 year old welfare state. The sick, the old, the vulnerable.
Stop thinking and writing for ‘The Sun’ or Murdoch and get real. We are not the criminals. They are. Whatever happens. Even the Egyptians had to fight back with force in the end faced with clubs and gunfire.
Again like you I will strive to make the 26th peaceful. Do not be surprised whatever happens if it is totally ignored. Bloody hell even the TUC are half planning for that. An anger containment exercise. Paymasters of sell out labour front bench that they are.
‘Dear Messrs Cameron and Clegg, if I promise not to be nasty will you please change your policies’
Not got a ring to it as a placard has it?
Happy marching all.
The first law of criticism: you have no right to make it unless you can think of a viable alternative.
The UK is £1 trillion in debt, caused by the idiotic over-spending and totally irresponsible behaviour of LABOUR, who wasted public money (OUR taxes) on an industrial scale, which I saw first hand with several years in the public sector. This debt is growing at £43 million in interest every day. No matter how fast our economy grows, it could never keep up with that. So, if we keep spending the way we have been, we shall just keep sinking and sinking into economic oblivion, which will damage business, trade, commerce and our credibility in the world, and then there will be NO MONEY AT ALL for public services. You lot complaining about the ‘legacy’ the cuts are leaving your children might want to think about the far worse legacy that the debt will leave your children if it is not dealt with now. The debt that was caused by LABOUR.
So…if you don’t want the cuts (mainly focused on cutting the god-awful public sector waste), then, er, how would you go about reducing £1 trillion of debt? The only money our Government has comes from our taxes, based on the amount of money being made. Our current debt is practically equivalent to our GDP. Oh, dear, stumped are we?
No matter how hard you try to pretend you’re putting on a rational protest in the nation’s interest, it is staringly obvious that you are mostly a bunch of typical self-indulgent hard leftists with no common sense, no knowledge of economics and no grasp on reality. You think money magically springs out of pots from the ground, that the State is a bottomless pit; you can’t see beyond your own little lives and interests and clearly have a world-view the size of a broom cupboard.
Yeah, happy protesting. Those of us with a few brain cells have better things to do.
Yes, economics can be employed to resolve the difficulties we are in, so long as they are those of John Maynard Keynes and not the greedy idealogues in the city and now in government (Blair is hugely guilty too of self-enrichment in the basest terms) and those who seek to make profit here but not pay their proper taxes (Vodaphone, BHS, Top Shop among so many others – please boycott these companies!).
And Stella B, I know you will not have the right of reply, but for your information my mother, aged 74, will be marching for the first time in her life alongside my brother, my daughter and myself after, in later working life, being a very successful small business owner who treated her staff extremely well and certainly never sought to dodge her proper taxes. She is comfortably off now after decades of work but is marching for her children and grandchildren; not all of us see things through narrow, squinty eyes in terms of just ourselves.
I would be interested to know if Stella B, who in the “several years” she was employed in the public service, presumably drawing a salary from it, must have accrued some sort of pension fund, would happily forego it as she holds public services in such disregard? You never know, if people like her did, perhaps the nurses and porters could have a couple of pence a week more? Shame we’ll never know!
Looking forward to a very good natured show of quiet and dignified strength. As suggested above, smile at the policeman walking beside you, after all we are “all in this together”!
Oh my Stella, I am amazed that abusive dialogue got past admin here. Though pleased it did. It obviously did you good. I think I can assure you it does we ‘hard lefties’? here good too. It reminds us of the ‘Grimm fairy tale’ tissue of lies your Coalition Govt peddle each day. Not that we need it. Though it does keep us fresh. It’s not often ‘hard righties’ pop their head above Murdochs garden wall.
In answer I could discuss economics and statistics into the wee hours. Though I am not wasting my time when even your no doubt chum, Mervyn King, puts the economic problem and debt down to the Bankers and the City. Rather than LABOUR. No defender of Labour here. The last Govt was as mired in your nightmare ‘business world’ as you are. Though you are right about one thing. It was Blairs and Browns crime to free up and deregulate the spivs and gamblers you seem to support. Thatcher is proud of them.
Stella, when did you last talk about ‘Society’ rather than the ‘Economy’. They are different. Even Cameron knows he has to try smoke and mirrors on that one.
Your whole rant is the tail wagging the dog. Prescribing Arsenic for the patient dieing of Arsenic poisoning. More of the same that we have seen in the UK for decades. Where did that get us? The mess and debt you speak of.
It’s about political will and society. Not just economics. You just do not get it do you. I suspect because you don’t want to. The 1945 Govt faced a worse mess than this. Even more post war debt. In it they founded the welfare state that no doubt even you take for granted now. Happy times when economics served society.
As for your abuse on public sector workers. I am proud to have been one for decades. Your picture of corruption, greed and waste does ring a bell though. Because as I know it is Trillium, Capita, EDS and the rest who are guilty of it. Govt contracted Private sector sharks working to a quick buck and treating both customer and worker like shit.
Your world must really be a nightmare. How the hell do you sleep? Terminal Cancer patients are being found fit for work, in the name of your precious private Osborne exclusive gambling club. A whole generation of youth is being consigned to a life on the dole. Just to feed your habit.
March 26th could be a brave start on the road to rehab.
Stella won’t be posting on here again after the rabid, insulting comment we have just received.
Thank you admin, but a point proven I think by Stella: There may well be agitators with all sorts of motives who want to spark trouble at the March. To all attending, Please Don’t Rise to It – or do I mean sink to it?
I also am so heartened by the Observer’s article Sunday 20th March and the comment by Mr Walker above (10th March), both to the effect that the Police Force are in sympathy with our objectives and are more likely to participate than come in heavy-handed So Long As We Give Them Nothing to Come In Against!
Yes of course you get people with no sympathy for the common man’s common good coming on a site like this and spouting innanity, but a civilised society acts with reason and does not turn to vioence to achieve its objectives.
Remember, this is the TUC’s March, they are already regarded with contempt by those “in charge”, please do nothing to bring the reputation of such a fine organsation into disrepute and perhaps even threaten their already eroded voice in politics!
Keep you temper, keep marching!
Thank you admin, but a point proven I think by Stella: There may well be agitators with all sorts of motives who want to spark trouble at the March. To all attending, Please Don’t Rise to It – or do I mean sink to it?
I also am so heartened by the Observer’s article Sunday 20th March and the comment by Mr Walker above (10th March), both to the effect that the Police Force are in sympathy with our objectives and are more likely to participate than come in heavy-handed So Long As We Give Them Nothing to Come In Against!
Yes of course you get people with no sympathy for the common man’s common good coming on a site like this and spouting innanity, but a civilised society acts with reason and does not turn to vioence to achieve its objectives.
Remember, this is the TUC’s March, they are already regarded with contempt by those “in charge”, please do nothing to bring the reputation of such a fine organsation into disrepute and perhaps even threaten their already eroded voice in politics!
Keep your temper, keep marching!
Yes indeed admin. Thank you. Though Jayne I do hope I was neither ‘rising or sinking’ to it. Outright abuse has no place and is self defeating. But strident argument is inevitable at times like this. I find myself engaged in it most days this week, urging my sleepwalking work mates to join me on Saturday. 2 now are. Not sure they would have done if had just hugged them. We argue. we disagree. We still speak to each other. Hope you remember that when tieing your boot laces Saturday morning. This is not a picnic.
Just to reassure you. The local cuts march in my City was last November. Brilliant. Well attended even with short notice. Angry and good natured. Even the police were laughing with us. But my god if we could have bottled the anger we would have a cure for this mess overnight.
I hope for the same Saturday. But as I said above. Keep one day in perspective. Interesting what both of us might say this time next week. Lets see. TUC? Yes, potentially a wonderful channel for all this. If however you do not click that it was taken over by the Tories decades back then you are in for a very big fall indeed.
Enjoy the march.
Please allow a very personal response here to Leon: I am not a TUC member as my last work was in law and legal firms do not favour – in fact, in my exererience even permit – membership of any form of Trades Union. However, to suggest that any Trade Union was “taken over by the Tories” is absolute defamation! They were kicked from pillar to post, every time they won something in the Courts Maggie moved the goalposts and made their victory invalid. This is pretty much the first worthwhile, national thing they have done since the Miners’ Strike. It is their March, their hearts and souls and their reputation on the line! Me, my mum, brother and daughter will indeed be taking a picnic and smiling at the poicemen, you never know, as they’re being kicked too, they might just smile back!
I can’t re-open the pits or the wool, cotton and steel mills, I can just fight for what little we have left, which is a great health service – please read last week’s Observer in which it’s claimed Lansley is hiding a poll that says the majority think it’s functioning very well in their interests, a library service that welcomes kids of all ages, especially those older ones whose parents cannot afford for them to be on the internet yet whose school work requires then to have internet access, no matter how scary the lone librarian might find being alone in a dingy building with a group of sullen looking youths! And a friend of mine who’s a costguard and can’t march on Saturday because he’ll be jumping into the sea from a decrepit helicopter to save lives. He was really looking forward to jumping from a new one but 16 replacement helicopters have been scrapped in Wales alone, how many in England?
Stella B upset you? How many false economies, how many potential deaths, how many kids failing at GCSE because they did not have broadband does she know? It is enough for us to know she knows feck nothing about nothing and we go and we get our peacable heads counted.
See you there!
Big businesses and banking organisations have simply moved a lot faster to secure their interests than popular dissident movements have been able to (or perhaps been bothered to). It’s always going to be easier for whoever controls the wealth and its distribution and if governments (Tory/Labour/Lib Dems/whoever) object to the nature of that distribution, businesses can always threaten to pack up their swag and take jobs and investments elsewhere to benefit other countries.
We are hopelessly reliant on external global forces. The idea of a nation state beyond geographical borders is fictional. We are not simply fighting the British government we are fighting a deeply entrenched, global, extremely powerful economic system and ideology. That’s why it’s utterly pointless to throw bricks at high street banks and fashion retailers, or even to peacefully sing, dance and demand that these people pay their fair share. They will still get the tax breaks because they have the negotiating power.
This has to be a very long term struggle. One day of protest for ‘public sector jobs’ or ‘fairness’ isn’t a substitute for actually creating alternative, organised, long-term political structures (especially ones that don’t revolve around the traditional power bases) to unpick the worst of neo-liberal ideology. And how do we begin to fund the kind of sustained fight back that we need???
The comments in this thread strike me as either breathtakingly banal, or hopelessly naive, or an incitement to public disorder. Cuts are needed to thin out some of the non-jobs in a public sector that’s bloated, lazy, and inefficient.
Yeah right, just our point in CoR. That kind of ‘realism’ has been tried for 30 years. Private good. Public bad. I rest the case for the defence m’lud.
Jayne, love the ‘feck’. Love your passion. Love that we agree and you are 100% right on what matters. Just wanted to let you know there will be thousands of us marching tomorrow who are also doing so as a result of New Labour Policy and the TUC that funded it. Most agree if Labour was in Govt not alot would be different. In fact many of the current cuts in welfare, and the incredible distress caused by it, was already planned in legislation enacted by Blair and Brown. Cameron and Clegg just speeded it up. What a gift that was.
‘Defamation’? In my defence I would go further in court. I would try to prove criminal intent. That would include papers on dozens of union disputes where the members were utterly sold out by the union leadership of the past 30 years. A TUC not wanting to frighten horses or be seen to be ‘staining’ New Labour. The Tories latched on to that like a Bee to honey. Even changing our language. So much so if I may say so, our argument these days almost seems to begin with an apology.
For my part tomorrow the minute Milliband stands to speak I am coming home.
Call it billiousness. Call it lessons learned.
The day we call their bluff is the day we start the fight back.
Sorry if all this reads as glass half full. It’s just tomorrow will be all the sweeter if it is just the start.
Well, perhaps my last comment on this particular event but I have to say THANKS TUC ET AL FOR A FANTASTIC DAY! And yes Leon, THIS MUST BE JUST THE BEGINNING! I’ll be there at every event I can and, hopefully, not only the current shower of sh*tes get the message we will not suck it up but those following will also take note!
I did, as promised, smile and say hello to several police officers, and they did smile and say hello back. My brother described it as a “good natured shuffle”, if there was a wheelchair user or pushchair in front of you, you went at the pace of each, no barging, lots of smiling.
To follow each BBC news broadcast on the radio on an event I attended has been enlightening, they alternated throughout the 24 hours following between it being peaceful and good natured to an outright riot. Media schmedia, I know what I saw!
I do give credit to the TUC for the incredible organisation of yesterday. The 2 things that shout at me are the timing and the sheer diversity of people along side us. Even lawyers against legal aid cuts. Brilliant.
Above all as the guy to the end of this link says, we just said ‘No’.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/mar/27/tuc-protests-march-for-the-alternative-london
If we lose and the ‘Krays’ of Cameron and Clegg win the day, we really will know we are back in the gentrified aristocratic days of the 1920/30s. A society and economy run for the privelaged few. Maintained by you and me.
No.No. No. If anyone finds that answer difficult they are asking the wrong bloody question.
Proud to walk alongside you all.
A Shake Up and a Wake Up is what is Needed .
A Shake Up and a Wake Up is Needed
Wherever it is over the Too Long Lack of Decent Government or the Obscene Rip Off Costs of Postage Stamps, Railway Fares or Phone Calls from Public Phone Boxes because of Profit before People Slave Market Capitalism ,Enough is Enough