Chris Coltrane

Google, Eric Schmidt, and the excuses of tax avoiders.

2013-04-22T17:59:59Z

If I went into the supermarket, bought every pint of milk, and publicly poured it down the drain so that everyone was fully aware that there was no milk left for anyone else, what would people think of me? Some might think it was a situationist satire on Thatcher, but mostly people would just think I was a dickhead. But if I then said "Oh, don't worry, what I'm doing is perfectly legal, and besides, by buying all the milk I've helped support the economy", do you suppose people would forgive me and accept my justification? Of course not. It's irrelevant. People can see I'm doing a selfish thing, and would rightly hate me for it.

In 2011, Google made £395 million in the UK, but paid only £6m in corporation tax. This is another very selfish thing to do - but when it isn't happening right in front of you, it can be a lot easier to be fooled by unrelated excuses.

For example, Google chairman Eric Schmidt justifies his company's tax avoidance by saying "Of course, that omits the fact that we also hire more than 2,000 employees and are investing heavily in Britain."

Well, yes, that does omit it - because it's completely irrelevant. That's like saying to your partner "Sure, I had an affair. I cheated on you after five years of marriage. But that omits the fact that I've done the washing up every day for a year!"

Just because you've done good things, like creating jobs, doesn't mean you've earned yourself a license to do bad things. Especially when those good deeds are just a consequence of business. Google didn't employ those 2,000 people out of charity; they employed them so they could make more money. Don't use your job creation as a way to justify your tax dodging, as if you've built up a store of brownie points for good behaviour that you can cash in when you want to be a prick. "Well, we created 2,000 jobs, we've given businesses the tools they need to be more productive, and we've invested heavily in infrastructure. Quite frankly, I think we've earned the right to cover the sun up with a big sheet of metal, and charge people for sunlight on a pay-as-you-go basis."

Good deeds don't buy you the right to do bad deeds. If it did, we'd have a system where you could apply to commit crimes if you were willing to do the time in advance. People would book an appointment with the local judge, to ask "I want to rob the Apple store of all their iPads, so can I do, like, four years in jail please?". (The advantage of that system would be that because you'll get the iPads AFTER the jail time, you get to enjoy the iPads while they're still technologically relevant. If you steal them first and THEN do the jail time, they'll be obsolete by the time you're out, which is clearly a waste of everyone's time. Under this new system, we could finally make crime pay again. Like in the olden days when Great Britain was truly Great.)

Besides which: sure, you employed 2,000 people. That's definitely a good thing. But do you know how those 2,000 people got their education? Do you know how they were kept alive when they fell ill? How they were kept safe? You can thank schools, hospitals, the police and fire-fighters for that. We pay for those through tax - the very same tax that Google avoids paying. We all pay tax so that the next generation can benefit in the same way we did. If you're not willing to pay your share to make the world run nicely, like everyone else, you shouldn't be allowed to make profit here in the first place.

Schmidt used another excuse. "We empower literally billions of pounds of start-ups through our advertising network and so forth. And we're a key part of the electronic commerce expansion of Britain which is driving a lot of economic growth for the country." That's true. But again, Google didn't do this because it is a charitable organisation. It did it because it was able to make vast profits - profits it then sends to Bermuda. "The amount moved to Bermuda is equivalent to about 80 percent of Google’s total pre-tax profit in 2011. " It's about a trillion times worse than pouring all the milk down the drain - but when it happens behind closed doors, it's not as immediately obvious to see just how utterly selfish it is.

There is one other unrelated excuse that tax avoiders trot out, which is that tax avoidance is perfectly legal. Schmidt said the arrangements "fully comply with the law". Actually, you can debate that. The whole point of tax loopholes is that you're getting around the law by being creative in some legal grey areas. The system wasn't designed with the loophole in mind. You're exploiting flaws in the system for personal gain. But even putting that aside: forget about legality. Stop justifying your filthy tax avoidance by saying it's legal. No-one, at any point, is claiming that what you're doing is illegal. We're saying that what you're doing makes you look like a twat. And when you look at the schools, hospitals and libraries that are losing funding because the government doesn't have enough money, I think Eric Schmidt would have a far more difficult time arguing his way out of that one.

Picture by GiselaGiardino on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

If you're going to have a protest, do let the police know. You know: so they can help.

2013-04-11T17:51:26Z

Considering how utterly absent their insider intelligence appears to be, I honestly believe that activists don't need to be scared of the police. For example, I've talked before about a friend who, at a UK Uncut protest, was asked by a policeman "So, er, where are you all planning on going next, then?"

Wow. That's some super-subtle intelligence gathering, right there. "Where are we off to? Oh, probably just to commit some crimes. You know: about the place. Nowhere specific. Just wherever there's an opportunity for illegal hijinks."

Today the police are asking anyone who plans to protest against Margaret Thatcher to "make themselves known" so that "their right to protest can be upheld", which is awfully kind of them. Always putting protesters first, before their own considerations.

Some of those protests will involve parties. Now, you will have your own opinions about whether a party is appropriate. As it happens, I think a party would be rather tasteless, but thank Christ that it isn't a crime to lack taste. If it was, my iTunes collection would have got me 40-to-life many years ago.

(I could have also said that throwing a party was rather classless, but I refuse to let Thatcher win that easily.)

Tony Blair also thinks that a party to celebrate Thatcher's death would be tasteless. Personally, I think it's tasteless to murder a hundred thousand innocent people in Iraq, but I suppose we all have our own moral compass.

But I digress: I wish no human any harm, and I hope her passing away was peaceful and painless. I also believe that that her acquaintance with dictators led to the deaths of thousands of people, her ideology led to the destruction of countless communities, and her policies helped turn us from a nation of sharing and compassion into a nation of spite. The people whose lives she ruined view her as a tyrant, and if those people want to celebrate the fact that there is one less awful person in the world, I have no problem with that. Personally, I'll celebrate not when one person passes away, but when we overthrow neoliberalism. (For those curious, I've pencilled that into my diary for mid-October, because I'm busy writing my Edinburgh show right now.)

Though if you do have a party, remember to eat lots of ice cream. She may have helped invent Mr Whippy, after all, so it's what she would have wanted.

But isn't it curious how the police ask us to let them know when we're protesting so they can "facilitate" it, yet they never ask us to let them know when we're doing other things that are perfectly legal. I want to see the police asking protesters to let them know when we're popping to Sainsbury's, so they can facilitate our right to buy Kinder Eggs, or to inform them when we're thinking of visiting our grandparents, so they can facilitate any conversations that might prompt our Nan to say something racist.

Because if protest is legal, why is it necessary to tell the police? It's true that some protests can turn violent, but then again, anything that we ever do could potentially turn violent. By that logic the police should have been stationed outside cinemas when the first new Star Wars film was released. Where were the riot vans on standby when people saw Jar Jar Binks for the first time? That shit can make you go from 0 to Violent in a second.

A good protest would be for us to choose a day in which we all constantly tell the police everything we're about to do, so that they can safely facilitate it. "Hello, Metropolitan Police? I'm just about to do some DIY. There's a chance I might accidentally put a nail through my finger, so I was hoping you could come and facilitate me building this cupboard. Actually, I need to go to Ikea to buy it, and that bloody shop feels like it could turn into a riot at any minute. Just thought I should let you know, so that you can facilitate my purchase."

"Oh, and I haven't put in my contact lenses yet, but there's a danger I might poke myself in the eye. Who knows whether a slip of the finger will escalate into all-out war. I trust you'll be able to facilitate me in the bathroom?"

"Hello, Metropolitan Police? I'm going to make love to my husband later tonight. Now, I'm sure you know how he loves to be whipped and spanked, cos you'll have seen it in our internet history that you've been listening in on, but you must know how BDSM can go wrong. At the very least there's a danger of cramp. Any chance you could send round a few police constables? Yes, in uniform."

I also like how the police claim to have police spies and informants deep within a whole load of protest groups, and yet they don't even know which protesters are planning to have a party at the weekend. They know so little that they have to ask the protest groups they're supposed to be spying on! Their spies must be the least popular people in the group they've infiltrated. From now on I guess we can all spot the police spy, because they'll be the ones no-one invites to parties.

The police say they're worried that protesters will ruin the funeral. Ruin, improve, we can debate over terminology all day, but surely we can all agree that a good way to tell whether a leader was popular with the working classes is to see how many people feel the need to celebrate her passing away. Actually, maybe a better way to tell how popular a leader was is to see how many armed guards need to look after her casket.

But anyway, "Downing Street said it would only confirm how much the funeral will cost the public once it has taken place." You know: like all good democracies.

Thatcher was, of course, very pro-private finance, and abhorred state spending. Who knows whether she would have felt comfortable with the lavish funeral being put on at taxpayer's expense, the state funeral in everything but name.

But in a way, it is exactly what she would have wanted. The funeral has zero democratic accountability. The police will be stopping people from expressing themselves. The theme is a celebration of war. Or a celebration of murder, depending on your world-view. Maybe she would have preferred the funeral be funded privately. But in terms of the respect the procession will have for democracy and freedom of protest, I think it's exactly what she would have wanted.

Picture by Danny Birchall, used under a Creative Commons license.

Lolitics Podcast - Episode 5!

2012-10-18T09:25:53Z

Great news for anyone who likes fun: there's a new episode of my podcast!

This is a recording from Lolitics, my political comedy club in Camden, on 19th Feb 2013, with stand-up from me, Tiernan Douieb, Robin Ince, Mark Stephenson, Josie Long and Kate Smurthwaite. Imagine getting that for free. WELL IMAGINE NO LONGER!

Download Episode 5 directly here!

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes here!

Subscribe to the podcast in non-iTunes here!

If you like the podcast, there's some things you can do to support it:

- Come to the gig in real life! It's on the 3rd Tuesday of every month.
- Give us a lovely iTunes review.
- If you really enjoyed it, go to chriscoltrane.com, click the PayPal button, and donate some currency. Anything you can spare goes on paying my hosting bill, and stops this from being a loss-making operation!
- And most importantly please share the podcast with as many people as you can! Tweet this link, Facebook it, email it to people you think might like it. I'd be so, so, so grateful if you did.
- Oh, and follow me on Twitter! I'm @chris_coltrane. If you liked it, send me a tweet to say hi, it's always nice to know who's listening!

Atos: A Privatised Service Provider In A Post-Satire World.

2012-09-06T15:45:29Z

Last Friday I took part in the protest outside the offices of Atos, the company who won the contract to decide whether disabled people are disabled enough to receive benefits.

In the UK, Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is being replaced with the controversial Personal Independent Payment (PIP). DLA fraud stands at a paltry 0.5%. Nevertheless, the government wants to bring fraud to an end. To do this, the government has commissioned Atos to remove the new PIP from 20% of disability claimants. Which is a bit like punishing one child from skipping football by setting fire to the gym.

Of course, a far higher percentage than 0.5% of MPs were found to be cheating their expenses. But it would be wrong to punish MPs, because, you know. Because. Wait, what was my point again?

The consequences of Atos's decisions are sickening. My friend Polly has a severe form of Crohn's disease. She's been given countless different medications, and operations to remove parts of her small intestine. In fact, her Crohn's is so resistant to the strongest medications and surgery available that she was referred to an experimental chemotherapy and stem cell transplant medical trial. If Crohn's were a video game, she is playing it on hardest difficulty, with no cheat codes and a broken controller.

Atos sent a doctor to assess whether she could re-qualify for benefits. On arrival, he told her that he'd never heard of Crohn's Disease. Forgive me for being pedantic, but a doctor who hasn't heard of Crohn's Disease isn't a doctor. That's like a dentist who hasn't heard of gums, or a plumber that's never heard of pipes. Imagine police officers coming to your house after your telly has been stolen, only to find that they'd never heard of "burglary". They then suggest that you shouldn't complain because you've got enough possessions to be getting on with, after which they hand you a bill for wasting police time, and make you work in Poundland for free to pay it off.

I had heard rumours that Atos doctors mark people down if their illness isn't visible. Which seemed ludicrous even for Atos. As if the only three kind of illnesses are eczema, nosebleeds and an unfortunate haircut. Cancer? Look mate, unless you've got cancer of the face, we're not interested. Get back to work!

Sadly, Polly has confirmed the rumour. One of the very few notes the Atos doctor wrote was "No obvious external signs of generalised systemic disease found". Because for most people, their intestines are an external organ. Fashionistas like to stylishly wrap them around their hips, like a kind of pulsating belt. I hear the trend in Milan this season is to wear your intestines as a scarf, to keep your neck warm.

I reckon the doctor was there on a workfare scheme. Perhaps even the people who set the criteria for what constitutes as an illness are unqualified workfare temps. That might explain why we suddenly seem to have forgotten the past 150 years of medical and social progress, and are instead guessing whether someone is ill based on whether they can raise their arms, and walk five metres. (Those are genuinely the only two physical tests Polly's Atos doctor used to see if she was disabled.)

Atos must have just told the doctor to learn medicine on the job. It's obvious if they're ill: just look for open wounds. If you can't see directly into their heart, they're good for work. Accept nothing less than four missing limbs. And if you get stuck, just remember this handy mnemonic: If The Patient Isn't Bleeding, They're Probably Misleading™.

If the aim of this exercise truly was to rid the system of the 0.5% of fraudulent claims, the government wouldn't need to give everyone such shockingly inhumane treatment. They certainly wouldn't need to take the benefit away from 19.5% of genuinely disabled people. They wouldn't need to send doctors who are woefully under-qualified. And Atos definitely wouldn't need to get their doctors to sign the Official Secrets Act to stop them from whistle-blowing.

But, like all their policies, their real motivation is not the one they claim in public. Their motivation is simply to reduce government spending, to reduce their own personal tax bill, and to sell public services to the companies they themselves own, to become even richer still. And if disabled people have to suffer, and die, to make it happen: well, who cares?

Not the Tories, that's for sure.

In support of the UK Uncut street party outside Nick Clegg's house.

2012-05-27T11:07:39Z

I'm truly amazed at how many people were outraged at UK Uncut's protest yesterday. Here are my thoughts in support of the action, in response to some of the criticisms I saw.

A politician's job isn't a harmless 9 to 5 admin job with no consequences. A politician's daily decisions have a direct impact on people's lives.

We are over two years into a government that is implementing some of the most vicious and brutal cuts in living memory. The decisions of Clegg etc can make people poorer or homeless, they can shorten their lives, they can increase their misery, and they can even kill. A poor policy can ruin the planet. It can destroy communities. It can foster sexism and racism, and it can destroy and displace families.

In short, a politician's decisions have profound consequences. When you take public office, you must accept that you wield a power that can utterly transform people's lives, for the better or for the worse.

A street party outside someone's house might be an extreme tactic if you disagreed with the way that your colleague Dave in admin filed things by date rather than by name. Dave's job is of no consequence to the world. But when your policies ruin people's lives, and when your policies have ruined people's lives and communities to this extent, and when so many other tactics have failed, I think it is reasonable for those people to make their voices heard outside that politician's house.

"The protest targeted Nick Clegg's house" screamed the headlines, as if people were smashing his windows and burning his sofa while his kids cowered in fear in the corner. IT WAS A FUCKING STREET PARTY. There was bunting and cake. There was a play section for children. There were Tory trolls on Twitter calling this an act of terrorism. With these people, a sensible dialogue is impossible.

Chances are that you are more sane, and that you just thought it was inappropriate to take a protest outside of the realm of work, to someone's house. To that argument, I say this:

Think of the horror you feel at the idea of a hundred people having a street party on Nick Clegg's street. Actually stop reading, and take ten seconds to think about what emotion that concept makes you feel.

Now think of the horror you feel at disabled people being forced to work for free if they want to keep their benefits. Think of the horror you feel at the idea of the NHS being privatised, of your healthcare being taken away from you because it isn't profitable. Think of the horror you feel at the thought of your police being privatised, of your schools being cut and your libraries closed, of your children having to go into £27,000 of debt just to get a degree – and all to pay for a financial crisis caused by banks and rich speculators, who are still dodging tens of billions of pounds in tax every year.

Again, stop reading for a second, and think about those concepts. How do they make you feel? Are you more or less outraged by those things than by the street party?

If you honestly feel that having tea-and-cake outside the house of one of the architects of the Coalition's cuts is an extremist response to all of these things, then you and I will simply never agree. Our notions of morality are too far apart for a compromise to be reached. But don't sit at your computer or phone and sneer at the activists, without doing something different yourself. Remember those emotions you felt when you thought about the cuts, the privatisation, and the tax dodgers. They're not just news stories; they're things that are actually happening in the world. If you disagree with them, do something about it.

I've been on marches, I've signed petitions, I've non-violently occupied, I've debated. I've gone to Tory HQ to give them an award for enabling tax dodging. I've tried shaming them through stand-up and street theatre, I've given out leaflets. I've visited the chief tax guy at HMRC while he was at work. And my friends and I have had small victories here and there. A cut reversed, a tax dodger boycotted.

But The Cuts are still in place. All the usual tactics have failed, and that's why the protests are escalating. If you disagree with the street party, if you genuinely think that eating cake outside Nick Clegg's house is a Step Too Far, then fine. But don't just sit there and tell other people what they should be doing instead; go and do it yourself. Step away from the internet, and go and actually physically do it.

Protests happen because people make them happen. If you think there are less extreme tactics that can still be explored, then do it. Tell us you're doing it, and we'll be there. But for Christ's sake, do it soon. We are running out of time.

And if you can't think of anything? Then I'll see you in Chipping Norton.

Photo taken by MissEllieMae on Twitter.

My Application To Write For UniLad.

2012-02-19T16:27:48Z

You know UniLad. The website that was shut down after they posted a "joke" suggesting that men should rape women if they can't pull them, because rape conviction rates are so low that they'll probably get away with it.

UniLad took some time off to think about their actions (or more accurately, in the hope that the controversy would somehow magic itself away). And now, they're back - and hiring! According to their Twitter page:

"We're looking for banterous new writers to join our team. Give us a shout on contact@unilad.com. Cheers. #LAD"

So I've decided to apply. Do you think I'll be in with a chance? If I do hear back, I'll let you know.

=============

Oi oi lads!

Saw your tweet looking for some "banterous new writers". Let me tell you, I am WELL interested! Nothing I like more than a bit of banter between lads!! Like the other day, I was down the boozer with my boys after the game, out on the lash. My mate Barry dropped his bag on the floor, and a BOOK fell out, so we called him gay and pushed him into a bin! HA! It was well jokes, he was crying and bleeding and shit because the bin had glass in it or something. What a dickhead! We called him a "glass bastard" for the rest of the night, and then we went for a kebab and got our dicks out and did fighting. Fuckin' smashed it bruv!!

Anyway, long time fan, first time mailer. I love UniLad! I totally get your sense of humour: it's like you're making all these points about the world, like how men are better than women, and how we should do everything we can to pull them, even if it's illegal; but you don't really mean any of it. But also, you TOTALLY mean all of it! It's genius, it's exactly what I'm like. It's like this t-shirt I've got, it says "Federal Boob Inspector"! It's like FBI, yeah? But it doesn't mean FBI, it means "Federal Boob Inspector"! And I'm not really an official boob inspector, but also, I totally AM a boob inspector! I'm always looking at tits! Hey, imagine if that job actually existed!! You'd have to be all like "Here love, have you got a license for those"? HA!! Mate, it'd be mental.

See, that's the kind of banter you'd get from me! Top bants, yeah? Sick bants! Here's another one: "Here, you know girls that like dubstep? I tell you what, I'd well put a wob on them!" Haha! I meant like a wob is my penis!

I love jokes about women, and gingers and the French. I've got all the Frankie Boyle DVDs and books, and I've even got all the old classic Bernard Manning live shows on VHS. He knew how to banter, didn't he? I loved how he took foreigners down a peg or two! I bet they'd be fuckin' running the place if he weren't for him. He'd talk all about how they were stupid and how they stank. But he didn't really mean it! But also, he definitely meant it. But it was okay, because it was a joke! Hang on, I've forgotten what my point was… Wait, you shouldn't analyse it too much, because then the joke stops being funny, and also because you might learn truths that you don't want to learn about yourself, and then the tears start coming again, and lads don't cry, which means thinking about jokes is for queers.

I definitely think I should write for you. Like yourselves, I have an irrational fear and hatred of women. The way I see it is, feminism has gone too far the other way, you know? Like, how's it fair that women want equal pay (thank god they are still so far from it! A 22% pay gap is nowhere near enough! I want a pay gap so big I can shove my dick in it AND my friend's dick in it! But not in a gay way), but they STILL want men to hold the door open for them? It's stupid! Either you take lower pay, or you let me slam the door in your face. You agree, right? I know you do, I can tell, cos you and me, we're both lads, right? Just having a joke about slamming a door in a woman's face! That's just what I'm like, I'll make a joke out of it because it doesn't even matter because I don't even care! You've got to smash 'em to keep 'em keen, am I right? You know I'm right, don't you? Please tell me I'm right.

I tell you what gets me, is when women have their own sexual autonomy. OH THAT MAKES ME SO MAD. I saw an advert the other day where a woman looked all sexy and the man looked like an idiot. I was like, hang on, how's that fair? If it was a bloke in the advert making a woman look stupid, everyone would say it was unfair! I said to my bird, I said "Right, I'm not buying that Cif kitchen cleaner ever again." But then she started squealing something about how capitalism and marketing exploit both the sexes, so do you know what I did? I just shoved my cock in her mouth!

NOT REALLY! What actually happened was, I just ignored her, and felt uncomfortable and confused, and I got all these sudden dull pains in my tummy that I didn't know what they meant. But if I wrote for UniLad then I'd totally say I just put my cock in the bitch's mouth to shut her up. Yeah, I'd call her a bitch! I mean, I love her and all, but it's just a joke! Cos I'm a banterous lad! It doesn't hurt anyone, does it? Because everyone's smart enough to know it's just a joke!

Well, that's what I told my bird. She said something I didn't understand about "propagating rape as acceptable" and then she walked out on me, and now I'm alone, so I really need this job. I don't even mind doing it for free. I just need to vent the anger out. You're a lad, you know how it is. We can't let 'em win, can we? We're better than them. Come on, let me write for you, and then we'll properly put women in their place. You are gonna let me write for you, yeah? Seriously. I need this.

Cheers,
Chris.

A Letter I Never Sent to Vodafone.

2012-01-26T22:33:17Z

I was recently very lucky to be a part of a wonderful radio show called Letters You Never Sent, where people pen a pretend letter to someone based on a theme. The most recent episode was letters to corporations, and I had a couple of things I wanted to say to my old friends Vodafone.

The show is online here, and I'm on at 49m11s. And if you like karaoke, why not read along to my words, as I say them? I hope you enjoy it!

"Dear Vodafone,

This is a letter to a corporation. Of course, a corporation won't read this letter, because a corporation isn't a human being.

And yet, as a corporation, you are, in the eyes of the law, a legal person. You can buy and sell land, you can sue and be sued, you can own buildings and sign contracts and employ people, and you have many other rights and privileges that you would have, if you were flesh and blood.

Dear Vodafone, I wonder whether any of your board of directors have ever watched Joel Bakan's enlightening film, The Corporation, in which Bakan explains how it came to be that corporations became legal persons in the eyes of the law, through transferrable shares and limited liability, and then poses the question: if a corporation is a legal person, what kind of person is it? If we performed a psychological analysis of a corporation, what would we discover?

In his analysis, Bakan recalls corporate behaviour over the years. To name just a few examples, he mentions IBM's involvement in the holocaust, the use of child labour and slave labour in sweatshops; the fact that Coca Cola invented Fanta for Nazi Germany; the lies of adverts, and the psychological manipulation of children too young to understand otherwise; and exposing entire populations to dangerous chemicals like DDT or toxic waste, and then denying all responsibility.

His conclusions are shocking. Consider the corporation's personality traits:

- Reckless disregard for the safety of others
- Callous unconcern for the feelings of others
- Incapacity to maintain enduing relationships
- Repeated lying and conning others for profit
- Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviours, and
- An incapacity to experience guilt

These are not Bakan's words. Nor are they mine. In fact, they are the formal descriptions that the American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organisation use to diagnose a psychopath.

Of course, not all corporations have to behave this way. But, dear Vodafone, I wonder how your behaviour compares?

Perhaps we could talk about January 2011, during the pro-democracy Egyptian demonstrations, when you shut off all your voice and data services at the request of the government, disconnecting Egypt from the internet, and from the world. Does colluding with tyranny sound like the action of a person who cares for the feelings and safety of others? Of someone who conforms to social norms, or can feel guilt?

Or perhaps we could discuss the Private Eye article of October 2010, which alleges that you bought a German telcoms company called Mannesmann, but routed the acquisition through a Luxembourg subsidiary. Private Eye claims that this was done specifically to avoid paying tax in the UK. If the claims are true, then you avoided a tax bill of six billion pounds. This tax avoidance was entirely legal, but utterly immoral.

How unfortunate for you that, at the same time in 2010, the government announced that, in the name of austerity, it was to cut welfare spending by seven billion pounds a year. That means that your one tax dodge could have paid for almost every cut to welfare. Alternatively, your tax dodge could have paid for us to keep open hundreds of libraries, or schools, or hospitals. In other words, when a school or library closes, it is your fault.

If you cared for your home country, for its people and its future, the idea of tax avoidance would be anathema to you. But clearly, the feelings of others are not an issue that troubles you.

I am a member of UK Uncut. We're the protesters who come into your stores, sit down in the doorway, and shut you down. We do this nationwide, all at once, to stop you from trading. We take direct action against tax dodgers like you.

Dear Vodafone, You may think I'm writing to ask you to start acting ethically. Well, you'd be wrong. I know now that, as a corporation, you do not feel guilt or empathy. You cannot be reasoned with. Instead, I'm writing to remind you that we are here, and that we will always be here. My friends around the country will never stop fighting you. The decisions of your corporation have caused international damage. We will not forgive you. We will keep protesting. And we *will* win.

Yours sincerely,
Chris Coltrane, UK Uncut, and the direct action activists of the world."

Rick Santorum, Climate Change, Libertarians and Freedom.

2012-01-04T20:15:42Z

We sometimes forget that the rights and freedoms can conflict with each other.

So for example, someone's freedom of speech to call for the murder of a certain ethnic race conflicts with the freedom from fear and persecution that those people should enjoy. In those cases, we as a society have to choose which freedom is the most important: freedom of speech, or freedom from fear. We correctly believe that a person's right to a life free of violence is more important than someone else's right to call for their death, and so laws regarding hate speech are introduced to deal with the matter. No reasonable person feels that their human right to freedom of expression has been denied, because we understand that on balance, it is reasonable. Two rights conflicted, and we chose to prioritise the one that stopped people being hurt or attacked.

This idea of conflicting freedoms is essential to understanding how to defeat the arguments of right-wing libertarians, who will often claim that government interference is stopping them from living a life of freedom and liberty. For example, Rick Santorum, Republican presidential candidate and turbo-douche, claims that global warming is a myth. "It's just an excuse for more government control of your life", he says, wrongly.

It's a common argument that climate change deniers make. Government control of carbon emissions will impose on my freedom to ride my SUV, on my freedom to consume, on my freedom to pollute. But when we remember that rights conflict, we see that there is a problem with this argument. Rick Santorum's freedom to use his SUV conflicts with my freedom to breathe clean air. Rick Santorum's freedom to consume conflicts with my right to enjoy a planet with finite resources. Rick Santorum's right to pollute conflicts with my right to a healthy life.

George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian on this issue recently. He gave the example of a "Romanian lead-smelting plant I had visited in 2000, whose freedom to pollute is shortening the lives of its neighbours. Surely the plant should be regulated in order to enhance the negative freedoms – freedom from pollution, freedom from poisoning – of its neighbours".

The key is to understand the difference between positive freedom and negative freedom. Positive freedom is the freedom to fulfill your potential. This is the freedom that Santorum claims the government is stopping him from achieving. But negative freedom is the freedom to a live a life without interference from other people. In Monbiot's example, the positive freedom the lead-smelters want to enjoy, the freedom to pollute without government interference, conflicts with the negative freedoms of the Romanian people to live their life. Whenever conflicts of freedom exist, we must choose one - and in this case, anyone with a heart will choose that the freedom of people to live a healthy life trumps the freedom of a company to pollute.

Right-wing libertarians will tell you that a government of any size imposes on their liberty. But what they really mean is "A government of any size imposes on my liberty to do what I like, regardless of the consequences". And consequences matter.

Government regulation does indeed rob corporations, rich people and selfish people of the freedom to pollute. But this same government regulation gives humans the freedom to life a full and healthy life. As a society, we must choose which of these two freedoms we wish to prioritise. If climate change is real, then the answer is clear. And if climate change isn't real? Well, as this popular cartoon shows, the answer is still clear:

Rick Santorum picture by Gage Skidmore, used under a Creative Commons license.

900 police officers have a criminal record. But is that as significant as it sounds?

2012-01-02T20:20:41Z

Today we learned that over 900 police officers in England and Wales have a criminal record.

Personally, as a fan of internet memes, I'm sad that it's not Over 9000. In fact, I think it says something rather worrying about me that I'd rather we had ten times the number of ex-criminals working in the police force, just so I could quote a meme. Perhaps I am not the crusader for justice I like to think I am.

If the papers are to be believed, this is big news. It was on the front page of a few online broadsheets, and a significant number of the people I follow on Twitter were furiously sharing the story. Having said that, my Twitter feed probably isn't very representative, as most of the people I follow protest, make a nuisance of themselves, and shoplift/murder on a regular basis. Wait, scrap that last one. Pretend you didn't read that.

I do worry that my Twitter timeline is an echo chamber of my own opinions. Every time a friend says something I agree with it reinforces the idea that my opinions are the majority's opinions, and that's hugely dangerous. But I tried following Tories for balance, and it made me so angry that I started planning a bloody and violent revolution. It's safer for everyone if I just stick to what I know.

Anyway. 900 cops have a criminal record. Now, I'm no fan of the police. I want to be a fan, I'd like to be a fan, but when they beat up my friends, murder innocent people without punishment, and let bankers and media proprietors get away with utterly ruining the country, they make it terribly difficult to like them.

But as much as it pains me to say it, I think this is a misleading figure. The BBC says that the police service in England and Wales was 143,770 strong in 2008-09, the most recent stat I can find. This means that about 0.65% of police have a criminal record. Even with the cuts, the number is probably close enough.

In the UK, 9.2 million people have a criminal record. I couldn't find a statistic just for England and Wales. I know what you're all thinking: the number of proven criminals will be too high if you're including Glasgow. This is true, and there isn't a single person in the world who would query or question that fact. But I put it to you that by also including Edinburgh, we bring the stats back down again. Not all Scots are criminals. Just literally anyone who come from Glasgow.

The population of the UK is 62,218,761. So, 14.8% of the population has a criminal record.

We should certainly expect our police force to be the highest calibre of people. Upstanding, honest, good people, with respect for society. But even so, 0.65% is a ridiculously small number, and far lower than the national average. And once again, I should be worried that this disappoints me. What I really want is for this number to be high, so I can have a go at the police. But alas, the crime figures are too small. Such a shame that more people didn't get burgled or assaulted by the police. I blame David Cameron.

"Many forces could not provide details of criminal records dating from before their staff joined the police, meaning the true figure will be significantly higher", says the article. True. But unless "significantly higher" means "thirty times higher", we can still say that the average is much lower. And that isn't even to mention that a criminal record could be something as small as shoplifting as a teenager. In fact, one of the charges mentioned "a constable convicted of burglary as a teenager". Sounds like a bad lad who came good to me!

It's a shame that the Press Association didn't mention this in their wire copy, because it meant that none of the papers which copy and pasted the PA's wire copy into their own newspapers bothered to mention it either. Check this link out, which shows that all the papers pretty much copied the PA word for word. (In fairness, at least the Guardian actually credits it to the Press Association.)

You will have your own opinion on whether the police should have even one officer with a criminal record. For me, if someone has served their time, I have no problem with them serving in the police. But in any case, don't be fooled: the numbers aren't as bad as the newspapers would have you believe. There are a great number of reasons to hate the police. The unaccountability, the protection of the privileged, the institutional corruption, the deception of undercover police, the unfairness of political policing, the blind eyes they turn to the crimes of the elite, their racism, and so much more. But, if the stats are right, their previous criminal records isn't one of them.

A far better question is the one my friend Molly asks: How many police officers should have a criminal record, but don't?

Picture by chrisjohnbeckett, from Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

My set at the ACMS.

2011-11-25T22:52:53Z

There is a joke that almost every open mic comedian has a variation of in their set. Many pro comics also often open with it. It's been around since the dawn of stand-up, but never before has it been so ubiquitous.

As it happes, I really like this joke when it's done well, but so often it's just a lazy, easy way to start a set. So pervasive has the joke become that I've decided to write a set satirising it. For the past couple of months, I've been taking it to open mic nights with the deliberate intention of annoying/educating/infuriating/alienating the other comics.

Occasionally I also do the set at gigs where the audience is full of fellow comedy geeks, who get the reference. One such gig was the Alternative Comedy Memorial Society last month, which I recorded. Even if you're not aware of the joke, hopefully the setup will let you in on it. If you fancy, give it a watch. And if you like it, share it around!

Blog at New Internationalist: Tax Dodgers Beware!

2011-11-22T23:06:47Z

http://www.newint.org/blog/2011/11/10/tax-journal-conference-vodaphone/

Forgot to mention that I blogged at New Internationalist about a cheeky little UK Uncut protest we did recently. Dave Hartnett - the man who it is alleged let Vodafone off of billions of pounds of tax - was the keynote speaker at the Tax Journal Conference, a place for the 1% to learn how best to be tax efficient. We paid him a visit. Give it a read for more info, then watch the video of us giving it some activism!

Edwina Currie says no-one in the UK is starving. She should read the journalism of Nick Davies.

2011-11-16T01:03:27Z

In 1997, Nick Davies - the man whose relentless determination exposed so much of the phone hacking scandal - wrote a book called Dark Heart, in which he exposes child prostitution rings, drug gangs, organised inner-city violence, and UK poverty on an unfathomable scale. He paints a picture of desperation and alienation, of people driven to such depths by a society that has utterly abandoned them, a world of no opportunities, of no family, of no love.

It was written fifteen years ago. With the cuts the government are making to welfare, schools, playgrounds and all the essential life support systems the very poorest people have, the book feels every bit as relevant today.

Part of the book tells the story of Hyde Park Close, a council estate in Leeds which slowly transformed from a strong, safe, vibrant community, to a ghost town, with abandoned shops, with landlords who didn't care about the flats they converted into even smaller flats for short-term rents, with community centres and youth clubs left to fall into disrepair. Burglaries were a daily occurrence. No car would survive for an hour without being stolen or burned. Arson was a constant threat. So were muggings, and murder. Few people were employed. Even fewer had enough to survive.

The book tells some truly shocking stories: about the council man who forced women to have sex with him in exchange for being bumped up the waiting list for council houses; of the man stabbed to death in a fight, whose murder tape was traded around the estate; of the mother, forced to move herself and her two children out of the house of their abusive father, who couldn't leave the house to work, and who fell into such a deep depression that she never left her bed; the skilled carpenter who could find no work, and who couldn't feed his family on benefit money, and so slowly had to sell all his tools to keep his family alive; of the woman who tried setting up a community support group, and was thanked by being labelled a grass, with muggings, burglary and attempted arson.

Two pages near the end of the chapter jumped out at me, not only because they are deeply upsetting, but because they are so relevant to the current controversy surrounding Edwina Currie, who, despite massive evidence being presented to her from social workers, councillors and people working on the frontline with the most impoverished people, refuses to believe that there are people starving in the UK. She believes it is simply a matter of managing your money more sensibly, and finding work.

I'm sure she will never read this. Even if she did, there's no reason why it should change her mind, when actual evidence has been presented to her. But I wanted to write those two pages out, so that you can share it with other people who think it's simply a matter of saving and working. If you hear people say that poverty isn't a problem in the UK, that there aren't people starving, make them read this:

======================

"There were not many who were literally starving. People often talked about running out of food in the last few days before their giro came from Social Security, but most of them managed to make do by borrowing off friends or family. But there were a few who had no one to turn to, who would reach a point where simply they had no food and they were condemned to be hungry until the next giro appeared. They were the ones who really suffered, and they were the ones who tended to turn up on the doorstep of the Methodist church at the back of Hyde Park Close.

Some of them knocked on the caretaker's door. There was one young woman, probably in her mid-twenties, who lived in a house in Autumn Avenue which, in the eyes of anyone passing by, appeared to be derelict. It was dirty and overgrown, some of the windows were cracked and broken, guttering hung down like broken branches in a tree, there were gaps in the roof through which the darkness of the attic leaked out, there was never any light in the windows. But this young woman lived there with her brother and, from time to time, when they had nothing, she would turn up at the door by the side of the church, with a weak smile and a simple request.

"Will you give me money?" she would say.
"We can't," the caretaker used to say, honestly enough.
"Will you give me food?" she'd say.

And the look on her face meant no one could doubt that she needed it, so the caretaker would give her something to go away with. The young woman didn't come every week, but there were others. Five or six times a week, someone would knock on that door - a young boy on drugs looking for 50 pence, an adult needing £5 for an electricity token, an old man so hungry he could barely move until the caretaker gave him baked beans and lemonade.

Others found their way to the home of the Methodist minister, Gary Hall, a young and thoughtful man who worked part time as the chaplain to the prisoners in Armley Jail. Several times a week, he would answer the door of his terraced house in Hyde Park, and find one of his parishioners standing there, begging for food.

He knew these people. He knew they were living to the last penny. He knew there were others who managed better to survive on what they had, but he knew equally well that there were a lot of families in his parish who really were very hard up, who were struggling to find some of the basic necessities of life. He knew because he saw them in their homes - short of food because they had run out of money, living without fuel because they had run out of tokens, the children small and wiry and skinny because habitually they ate too little. He knew because in wintertime, when their electricity tokens ran out and the cold got to them, he was called upon to bury them and supervised far more funerals than during the warmer months. He knew they suffered not only a lack of material things but also a deep lack of opportunity to do anything about it. There were many people here who would never escape and who knew that to be the fact of their lives; they felt a deep despair which occasionally erupted into aggression and crime. He knew that because they had broken into his own home along with everyone else's. He was not going to pretend: he found it very annoying to have his possessions stolen. But when he spoke to them, it was terribly clear that they really had no idea of the people they were hurting. They came from a sort of shadow world where it was normal to survive by burgling and shoplifting and twocking. And by begging.

The ones who turned up at his door were the most serious casualties from a war that had swept across most of this community. Some of those who came to him were children. They had fallen foul of an adult at home and found themselves pushed out on the street until things calmed down and they could creep back inside. Some of them were the parents of young children and it filled him with horror to think that life in his prosperous society could possibly have sunk to the point where mothers and fathers had to go begging at a priest's door to find food for their children's bellies. So he gave them what they wanted and sent them on their way with a prayer for their safety and a surge of frustration for whose who liked to pretend that there was no such thing as poverty in Britain in the 1990s."

Political conferences, corporate sponsors, and the liars in power.

2011-10-03T21:39:54Z

It surprises me that people take keynote conference speeches so seriously. Personally - and forgive me if this sounds facetious - I don't understand the benefit in listening to the declarations of liars. Surely people realise that the promises they make aren't legally binding?

For example, we have no particular reason to trust Ed Miliband. He has taken over a party which for the majority of its time in power was so dedicated to spin that it was possible to write an entire book documenting their lies. We should trust Ed only when he earns that trust. And yet commentators who I respect will analyse his speech, discuss the points made, reflect on the quality and the tone, as if it were real and sincere, as if it were anything other than a fabrication that he could totally disregard if he became Prime Minister.

We know for a fact that Nick Clegg and David Cameron are liars. Owen Jones cites a small selection of the most horrific lies in the Sunday Mirror. Two examples: Cameron says he won't cut in a way that hurts those we most need to help, then sends letters to 700,000 terminally ill patients telling them their benefits may be taken away. He says the NHS will be safe, then he practically privatises it. If David Cameron pledges something which then goes on to actually happen, then it happened not because he said it, but by chance.

Endless column inches are dedicated to the whole spectrum of pundits, shovelling out their predictable opinions for money. Did Osborne succeed? Can we trust Ed's vision? All these questions are irrelevant. Stop analysing theatre as if it were news, because there is something far more interesting which is almost never discussed: who foots the bill.

An issue rarely picked up by the mainstream media, though frequently detailed by Private Eye, is which corporations sponsor events at conference. This fortnight's Eye (issue 1298, p9) informs us that the Lib Dem conference sported a meeting on the Eurozone crisis which was sponsored by CitiGroup (who needed a $1bn bailout after the subprime collapse); that the Tory conference has a security lecture sponsored by BAE Systems, and a meeting to tackle youth binge drinking sponsored by SAB Miller (makers of Fosters, Peroni and Grolsch); and that Labour hosted a discussion on competition in public services, sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers, who "helped draw up the last Labour government's PFI and contracting out plans and seems to be promoting more of the same".

To me, this is infinitely more interesting than a single word on this page of commentators analysing George Osborne's speech. An article on who bankrolls our political parties is an article on who owns our democracy, on who can buy influence and laws. I can hardly think of a more important story.

And yet, year on year, it receives almost no mainstream media coverage. You will have your own theories as to why this is. All I know is this: that the media's silence comes at a great cost to society, and that party activists should ask themselves some very serious questions about whether they can have more influence on their party's policies than a global, multi-billion dollar FTSE 100 company.

Rid yourself of sponsorship. Yes, you'll lose some money. Perhaps you can make it back up by turning your party into a party that people will want to pay to be part of. Just a thought.

The morality of Istyosty.

2011-08-21T13:08:55Z

I love the lengths people go to in the name of denying the Daily Mail profit. Since Istyosty has closed, my favourite strategy for sharing their articles comes from the people who just stitch together screenshots of the page, blur out the adverts, and upload it as a jpeg. These people would rather take time out of their lives to de-monetise the article in Photoshop, than give the Mail those precious few pence of ad revenue they so dearly crave. That's dedication to the cause. When the revolution comes, these are exactly the sort of people we need on side. Although, you know it's only a matter of time before the Daily Mail cottons on, and tries to sue every single picture host on the internet. I look forward to the Daily Mail vs 4chan court case, if only because we'll be able to legally show that the Mail hosts more pictures of kids in bikinis.

Istyosty was a remarkable site. It took a cache of a page, with adverts removed, from those right-wing newspapers like the Mail or the Sun that regularly vomits out lies and bile. People could share racist, sexist, homophobic articles, without giving any hits and ad-revenue to the paper responsible, which meant that people who care about the national discourse could raise awareness of the vicious hate these papers would pump out, without adding to the handsome bank balance of the French-For-Tax-Purposes Lord Rothermere.

The Daily Mail is the world's second most popular news site, and liberal outrage certainly makes up for a significant minority of that traffic. I, for one, don't want to contribute to their power and their profit. I want to know what the Daily Mail has to say in the same way I want to know what the BNP has to say: it's important to know what they're saying, I want to hear their arguments so I can defeat them, but I don't want to pay them for the privilege.

I have heard it argued, from people whose opinions I respect, that Istyosty is inherently unethical in all cases. One person I follow on Twitter said "if you read the content, the least you can contribute is a click."

Although I don't agree, I have sympathy with this argument to a certain extent. For example, I have some friends - left-leaning friends, who quite frankly should know better - who will tweet about something, then link to the Daily Mail as a primary source. Now, I would argue that we should never do this. The Mail has been proven, time and time again, to lie. If it's true, other websites will be running the same story. Link to somewhere else. If the Daily Mail happens to be your only source for a story, then wait until someone you can trust verifies it. But if you absolutely must insist on linking to the Mail just to share some news, then yes, I can have sympathy with the argument that Istyosty is wrong.

But for sharing offensive, horrific, abhorrent articles, I think Istyosty is entirely justifiable. I have no time for the argument "If you want to tell your friends that someone is being homophobic, then you can at least give the homophobes some money". The Mail should not receive any reward for polluting people's minds.

Fundamentally, the reason we care about what the Mail says is because it's the second most popular newspaper in the country, both online and in print. The things the Mail says matters, because their noxious opinions infect millions of people around the country, and that has a profound effect on the way people vote, on the things people demand of government, on their happiness and on our collective fear, on their willingness to trust their neighbour, on the things they buy and the way they lead their lives.

It's extremely unlikely that Istyosty will return. Perhaps someone clever might create a peer-to-peer version that can't be closed. Until then, I hope people will keep trying to find new, mischievous ways to deny the racist misogynists the traffic they crave. Take screenshots, and blur the adverts out. Use Ad-Block Plus. Write blog posts, quoting the important parts. Print out inspiring blog posts by your favourite media bloggers, and give them out in the street. Do whatever you can to show the world how evil the Mail is, and how powerful an effect it has on our society. And do it without giving them a single penny.

PS - Wasn't it ironic that the Daily Mail would shut a website down for copyright violation, and then yet again use someone's photo without permission.

The 50p tax rate "only" brings in £750 million? Imagine the libraries you could build.

2011-08-07T18:56:07Z

The Tories have devised an ingenious new way to pay off UK debt: cut taxes for the rich. To be honest, I'm surprised no-one thought of it sooner. It seems obvious when you say it out loud.

The Guardian reports: "David Cameron and George Osborne could cut the 50p tax rate as soon as next April… Within the year, the prime minister and chancellor may move to cut 5p off tax for high earners…"

In fact, some mathematicians have estimated that by cutting tax, we may bring in as much as five times the previous tax revenue! Unfortunately we can't verify their claim because, when asked to show their workings, the mathematicians quickly shoved their paper in their mouth, chewed it, swallowed it, snapped their pens, smashed their calculators, set fire to all their books about tax, and then declared that they didn't even know where they were, how they got there, or how to count. Still, I see no reason to doubt the core thrust of their argument.

Cutting tax for the rich during a time of deep, vicious, debt-repaying spending cuts is sold as being perfectly logical. And it is logical, as long as you remember that the Tories are lying to you. Their motivation for the cuts is not debt repayment; it's small-state libertarianism.

Of course, the Tories deny this. The cuts are necessary if we are to become debt free, they say. Well, if the cuts were coupled with a historic crackdown on tax avoiders, and a concerted effort to make the rich pay as much tax as they can - in other words, if every single person in the country had to suffer as much as the poor are being asked to - then we could at least believe them, and argue on those terms. But the government is doing neither of these things. The poor suffer while the rich get richer. Cutting the state, AND cutting tax for the rich, is pure ideology.

"…the Independent said a Treasury analysis suggests the 50p rate – introduced by Labour in 2009 – was generating only marginal returns for the exchequer. The paper said the difference between the 50p tax and a 45p tax might only be £750m a year."

Only £750 million a year. That's hardly anything, isn't it. It's barely worth the trouble it takes to even collect it. After all, what can you do with a mere £750 million? Nothing of value. Nothing at all. Except, you know, run two-thirds of the UK's libraries. Or build 35 schools. Or give free wheelchairs to kids who need them, but who the NHS currently won't help. Or keep people like Larry Newman alive - the fellow who died soon after being declared fit for work, despite needing to wear a ventilator to help him with his terminal lung disease.

Regardless of your political belief, anyone can see that this makes no sense. And then we read that "Rightwing Tories want the government to go further and reduce the rate to 40p", and I just think to myself: this policy is so diametrically opposed to the rationale behind the cuts that surely, surely the country's newspapers will point this out. And then I recall who owns the country's national newspapers - Rupert Murdoch (Sun, Times), Richard Desmond (Star, Express), and the French-for-tax-purposes Harold Jonathan Esmond Vere Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere (Daily Mail) - and I remember: this is exactly how they get away with it.

Apparently this is part of a "tax simplification package". This surprises me. I would have imagined that 50p tax would be easier than 45p tax. After all, 50p is a nice round number. Easier to do the maths in your head, you see. And in fairness to the Tories, it is true that the tax system becomes much more simple when no-one actually pays any tax. Self-assessment is a breeze when tax doesn't actually exist. In fact, my fictional treasury contacts tell me that they'll soon be simplifying tax even further by employing a PWYF (Pay What You Feel) system. There won't be any tax inspectors, but there will be a small team of Big Society volunteers who will give out lolipops to whoever offer to pay the most tax that month.

There was one other extraordinary quote from the treasury analysis:

"[When tax is high] the incentive increases to retire earlier, emigrate, contribute more to a pension or invest in tax avoidance schemes."

Then stop allowing people to avoid tax! You're the fucking government! You can't use "high taxes encourage tax avoidance" as an excuse to scrap high taxes when it's your JOB to stop people from dodging tax. That's like the government saying "Arresting murderers is a waste of time, because all the walls in prison are made out of cake. They'll just eat their way out, and kill again." Well, stop building prisons out of cake, and stop building a tax system that anyone rich can easily sidestep by swinging a few quid to Ernst & Young.

=======================

This government either doesn't understand, or is pretending not to understand, that £750 million is, in a very literal sense, the difference between life and death. It is the difference between someone who is terminally ill getting their medicine, or being left to die in brutal pain. It's the difference between a strong lively peaceful community, and a fragmented, isolated, violent community. It is the difference between whether or not tens of thousands of children get to learn to read and write. It's the difference between a single parent being able to feed their child. We're not mucking about here. This isn't some silly Prime Minister's Questions-style dick-swinging Liberals vs Tories bullshit. Actual people, real life people, are dying because of the things this government is doing.

£750 million is a lot of money. You would like to think that such an obvious fact wouldn't need to be stated so explicitly, but the Tories win their arguments by hoping that people will forget the obvious. Things like how the economic crisis was caused by the banks. How tax dodgers cost us tens of billions of pounds a year. And how £750 million is an awful lot of money.

We must never stop reminding people of the bleeding obvious, because you can bet your last pound that their newspaper won't. The Tories will only win if we're silent enough that they can get away with their tricks. Don't let them. Be vocal, be loud, be clear, be logical, and never stop arguing. If we keep talking about it, and if we keep fighting, we will surely win.

PS Just as I finished this blog post, @CurmudgeonlyBlu on Twitter said it better in 140 characters than I did in this entire post: "Funding cut for Sheffield Rape Crisis centre. The place is a literal life saver - am testament to that. But hey. Tax breaks for the rich…"

The most important argument against the death penalty, and hypocritical Tories claiming democracy.

2011-08-04T14:33:34Z

The meme of the hour is capital punishment. Some dickheads have said that we should kill criminals, and now my Twitter feed is full of astonished tweets, rightly condemning the idea, commenting on how inconceivable it is that we could genuinely be debating this in 2011.

As it happens, I'm not convinced that capital punishment is genuinely back on the agenda, or that the movement is even gaining traction. From what I can gather, the idea is being projected by a few vicious, inhumane right-wing bloggers, and being vocally supported by some Tory MPs. I think the right-wing bloggers in question are experts at PR, and have identified that mentioning such a thing during Silly Season is an easy way to get into newspapers looking for column inches to fill. I think that the disproportionate amount of press the issue has received is leading to many people talking about it ("death penalty" and "capital punishment" are both trending on Twitter at the time of writing), and this is giving the illusion of it being a genuine issue.

Perhaps I'm wrong. And if the press keep reporting on it, this could change very quickly. But I know this much: at the time of writing, the online petition that caused all this fuss has gathered 686 signatures.

But the debate comes round every so often, presumably because people forget why it's an utterly dreadful idea. The Guardian ran a piece today with a notable quote:

"MPs must not shy away from debating capital punishment if a groundswell of voters backs a petition demanding it be returned to the statute books, the Commons leader has said.

Sir George Young warned that it would damage democracy to ignore strong opinions among members of the public "or pretend that their views do not exist".

I agree. If millions of people sign a petition, it should be debated. And when it's debated, our MPs should say "Stop being fucking mental", and dismiss it immediately.

But millions of people aren't signing a petition. A significant percentage may think it's a good idea when polled, but that isn't the same thing as a large group of people being actively vocal in their campaigns, like when, oh, I don't know, more than a million people took to the streets to protest agains the war in Iraq, or hundreds of thousands of people marched against the cuts. You'll remember the march, because Vince Cable replied to say that the government was listening to protesters, but wasn't going to change its economic strategy. Hundreds of thousands of people marched, and the government refused to debate it in Parliament. Would Sir George say that these two events also damaged our democracy? I certainly would.

...yes, you're right, it's not fair to compare the two. Vince Cable didn't ignore the people on the march. He listened to them, THEN ignored them.

====================

When arguing against the death penality, only one argument is required. Interestingly, it isn't to do with the ethics of an-eye-for-an-eye, or to do with the ethics of state-sanctioned murder in general. If we could be convinced that state-sanctioned murder were morally justified, it would still be wrong to re-introduce the death penalty.

The only argument we need is that the justice system is not perfect. There are countless examples throughout history of people being condemned to death for crimes they didn't commit. If you believe in capital punishment, it means that you have complete faith in the system to always decide, with 100% accuracy, whether or not someone is guilty. And when I say "the system", I don't just mean a judge and jury. I mean the police, I mean forensics, I mean the press. The entire system. This is simply an impossible, illogical position to hold. There are too many points of failure.

It's especially bizarre when you think about how much scrutiny the justice system is under at the moment. The Metropolitan Police have shown themselves to be thoroughly corrupt over Murdoch, over police spies, over killing innocent people and trying to cover it up. But even if the police weren't corrupt, it would still be impossible to build a perfectly reliable justice system. With the best will in the world, there will always be a margin of error, and innocent people can die in that margin. I would sooner pay tax to feed a thousand dangerous criminals in prison for life, than kill one innocent person.

We could debate forever with people who (incorrectly) think that killing criminals is morally justified. But on the issue of the reliability of justice, the evidence is completely on our side.

Freedom of Information isn't free enough for me.

2011-08-03T15:54:40Z

Over the years, the Freedom of Information act has revealed some absolutely shocking discoveries. For example, the time we learned the government makes £268,000 from using 0845 numbers on benefit helplines. The government lying about 70 police officers being injured by protesters to justify spending £6,000,000 policing one protest (the police were injured - but by bees, sunstroke, and by kicking car doors). The fact that 1 in 3 children receive no NHS funding for a wheelchair. The government claiming attendance to a theatre was two-thirds of the actual figures, to justify cutting its subsidy.

All of these facts were learnt because we, the people, are able to see the facts for ourselves. The concept of information being free is paramount to a functioning democracy. And it's with that in mind that I propose to you a new, radical policy:

Let's scrap the freedom of information act.

No, I'm not a Stalinist. Though I must admit, I do love a good five year plan. And don't get me started on collectivising farms,. You won't shut me up about them. I bloody love collectivising farms. And going after kulaks. And anyone who knows me will tell you how much I admire a good moustache. But despite all of that, I'm definitely not a Stalinist. I just subscribe whole-heartedly to the economic and moral opinions of Stalin. …I've forgotten what this blog post was about.

The reason I want to scrap the freedom of information act is because I believe it isn't adequate. Data isn't truly free when we have to request it. In effect, it means we have to write to the very people whose corruption we're trying to expose, to ask permission to expose it. It's as ludicrous as having to ask the Met police for permission to hold a protest about the police. Imagine that happening in real life!

It would be far more democratic, and transparent, if data was available to everyone from the point of creation. Doing this has two advantages: it makes government immediately more accountable, and it helps to re-ignite people's interests in politics, especially if the data is put into a searchable, downloadable format, that people can analyse, cross-reference, and do what they like with.

Giving people the raw data will allow them to call out the government on bad decisions. For example, when the Tories came into power, they claimed they'd be able make "savings" by cutting government waste. Clearly, they can only do this if there are situations where money is wasted. Most government spending is published on line already, but not always in detail. We may find out how much is being spent on administration, but sometimes you need FoI to find out what this actually means. This allows a government to make vague claims about money the previous government wasted. But if every single penny was accounted for on line, we'd all be able to see if the government was wasting money, from the moment they wasted it. We might even be able to see the notes about the decisions that might lead to wastage, and stop it before it happens.

People would start to actively trying to find ways that the government is failing - and that would be an excellent thing. This is the very spirit of the open source community. Let everyone see the infrastructure, let everyone inspect it and point to its failings, and let everyone help to improve it. Let's have a government run on Linux. Though more user friendly, obviously. And maybe with better driver support. And without a welfare state that only works on the command line. Okay, forget the Linux analogy. The point is: let's open-source the country.

Giving people the raw data will also get rid of some of the fundamental problems with the Freedom of Information act. For example, an FoI request only has to be fulfilled if getting the information will cost no more than £600, based on 24 hours work at £25 an hour. That means that if the information requested will involve collating multiple records, and those records are physically located in different places, the request can be refused - even if you're willing to pay for the extra cost! But if all the data was online, then people could collate it themselves. I don't particularly want to waste someone's time collating information for me, when I could do it myself. Give us the data, let us look through it.

An example of this failure in action: False Economy recently used FoI to find out how much money was being cut from charities. Some councils replied with the requested information. But some significant councils, like Leeds, Manchester and Westminster, said they couldn't reply because it would take too long to extract the information. So firstly, this means that these councils can't work out, in 24 working hours, how much is being cut from councils (or possibly 18 hours - the FoI rules for councils is slightly different). Presumably, this therefore means that they don't know how much money they're cutting from charities. That in itself is extremely concerning. Secondly, it also means that an extremely legitimate question cannot be answered. But it could, if the data was put online.

Doing this would, initially, take tremendous effort. For a start, great investment in infrastructure would be required, so that data was stored online, instead of on local disks, or paper. Secondly, there are all sorts of exceptions to FoI, many reasonable, many unreasonable, which would need to be considered. To pick just one example, FoI can be refused if it means that an individual person's information may be exposed, such as the time a local journalists FoI'd various information about weapons seized from schools. The request was part-fulfilled, but the information on specific schools was withheld, as there was a danger that this information could be cross-referenced against kids who were expelled. So clearly, not *everything* can go online, as there may be knock-on effects.

FoI also has exceptions relating to investigations, international relations, national security, and so on Fair enough. Other requests are refused for reasons of copyright, or for commercial confidentiality. Those ones can fuck right off. In my opinion, if a company wants to tender for a private contract, they should, from the point of tendering, be absolutely up front, transparent, and accountable. I couldn't care less about commercial confidentiality. If it's our money that's paying for it, you tell us everything. No exceptions. If you don't like it, you don't get to run our services. You will have your own opinion on whether or not I'm being reasonable there, but it's worth bearing in mind that I am definitely correct.

So it isn't as easy as saying "chuck it all online". There are complications, there are many factors to consider, and it would, initially, involve a great deal of effort and thought - two concepts which are, admittedly, often alien to Labour and the Tories. But what I'm arguing for is actually a complete paradigm shift, where the information about the way our country is being run is automatically given to people, where decision making is genuinely transparent, and where both government and the outsourced corporations are accountable by default, not by request.

Sometimes, News Isn't News.

2011-07-26T14:24:24Z

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jul/26/gdp-figures-economic-growth-targets

Some news reports feel less like reports, and more like colour-by-numbers templates, generated by Microsoft News Wizard. You can read these story a dozen times, and still not really be any more aware of what is happening in the world. This is because the story has been built primarily out of press releases, stitched together to create the illusion of a narrative.

Today, the government announced that between April and June, GDP grew by 0.2%. The article tells us that this is slower than the 0.5% growth in the previous quarter, but better than the 0.5% decline in the quarter before that. Incidentally, I'd also like to announce that between April and June, my penis grew by 0.2%. Unfortunately, I have to confess that this is a slow recovery from the 0.5% shrinkage I suffered during the winter, due to the unusually cold weather, and the "wrong kind of vaginas".

The Office of National Statistics tells us that the weakening in growth isn't anything to do with the inhumane economic Tory plans cutting back massively on spending; instead, it was to do with a series of one-off events: "the royal wedding, the additional bank holiday, the unusually warm April and also the impact of the Japanese tsunami on global supply chains."

The royal wedding!! It's official: if you're a royalist, you are unpatriotic and you hate your country. Suddenly, everyone who has ever kicked a royal car, or poked the Duchess of Cornwall with a stick, has been proved conclusively right. I heard that Prince William can actually be arrested for treason now.

The Sun - that reliable source of accurate information, and not at all currently acting as the government's propaganda piece - told us that the royal wedding would actually bring in £620 million. And that's a typical excuse for keeping the royal family: they bring money in to the economy. But apparently this is only true when they stay perfectly still. As soon as they want to do anything significant, they actually break everything and make the country poorer. So perhaps the right thing to do is to keep the royal family, but keep them in tanks of formaldehyde, Damien Hirst style. We can all pretend that they're in charge, and tourists and idiots can flock to the Tate Modern to look at our divinely appointed monarch, safe in the knowledge that neither the Queen nor her family can accidentally crash the stock market by having a birthday.

The extra bank holiday is given as another reason, separate to the royal wedding. I took a quick look at the ONS report. Just a quick look, because it was unbearably dull. But from what I can gather, this has something to do with the fact that manufacturing shrank slightly, and people worked 2% less hours. To be honest, I have no problem with this. If the reason the economy didn't grow as much is genuinely because everyone had an extra bit of leisure time, then I say forget bank holidays. Let's have bank holiweeks. I am happy for people to have more time to enjoy their lives, if the main downside is that rich men don't get the chance to be richer.

The economy didn't grow enough because of unusually warm weather. In the winter, when the economy shrunk by 0.5%, this was blamed on unusually cold weather. THIS IS BRITAIN. THE WEATHER IS ALWAYS UNUSUAL. SEASONS ARE IRRELEVANT. WE HAVE ALL WEATHER AT ALL TIMES. I dread to think what is going to happen in Autumn, when they tell us that GDP shrank because there was the wrong sort of leaves on the economy.

All the useful information happens in the first few paragraphs. We're then given a variety of opinions from notable people. "George Osborne welcomes the figures", with a quote from him which says the stats proves their economic policies are working. He doesn't explain why in detail, because it's a soundbite, and so there isn't time for proof. This is followed by Ed Balls, from the opposition, with a quote which says the stats proves that Tory economic policies are not working. He doesn't explain why in detail, because it's a soundbite, and so there isn't time for proof.

It finishes with a quote from a leader of a union, which essentially says "As every month goes on, it becomes more clear that the government is doing the wrong thing. They should do less of the wrong thing, and more of the right thing."

I suppose news articles like this are necessary, because they contain the facts that opinion pieces and analysis are based on. But in all honesty, the article could have been three paragraphs long and still been equally as informative. The quotes form Osborne and Balls aren't news. We know that the government will say this proves their policies are right. We know the opposition will disagree. It would be wonderful if the opposition ever did agree with the government, or if the government ever did admit they'd got it wrong, because then their quotes would have value. But they don't, so they don't.

Most news reports based on government press releases will contain two key bits of information. The rest of the article will then be bulked out with a series of snappy TV friendly opinions which you could have guessed they'd say with extreme accuracy. And when that happens, we gain nothing. Opinions are only interesting when they're justified and sincere. Our leaders have given us no insight, other than that they are not interested in evidence-based policy. And I think that's rather a shame.

But if you ever see a news story like this, don't try to analyse it too hard, and don't feel sad if you come away none the wiser, or even feeling slightly empty. It wasn't really news you were reading. It was just narrative.

Two Anti-Rupert Murdoch Browser Add-Ons, Plus A List Of All The Websites News Corporation Owns.

2011-07-23T12:12:46Z

Rupert Murdoch owns everything. EVERYTHING. Every TV station, every newspaper, every song in the entire world belongs to him. He owns your legs, he owns your opinions, and he even owns your face. He owns everything. And by "everything", I don't mean everything. I just mean he owns a lot.

This makes it tremendously difficult for the committed Murdoch boycotter, as it's almost impossible to actually memorise everything he owns. So thank Murdoch for these two new browser add-ons which make it far easier to actively avoid his media.

For Chrome, there's Murdoch Block, which redirects you to a page telling you the website has been blocked "in the name of justice". (Sadly, it doesn't actually say that. But it totally should.) It also gives you the option to unblock the site temporarily; though of course, if you're an elite Murdoch boycotter you'll resist this temptation, and use a different website instead.

For Firefox, there's Murdoch Alert. Rather than blocking the site, this add-on just displays a tiny, tea-rose pink bar along the bottom of the page, declaring: "ALERT: This domain is controlled by the Murdoch Family. Your computer's ip address has been exposed and may be logged." Which, admittedly, is an odd message. Saying an "IP address has been exposed" sounds a bit like saying "Murdoch is stealing your megahertz!!".

Sadly, neither plug-in seemed to work perfectly. They both successfully detected my visit to thesun.co.uk. Chrome's Murdoch Block detected my visit to ign.com, but Firefox's Murdoch Alert didn't. Neither add-on detected my visit to the New York Post. And Murdoch Block for Chrome actually blocks telegraph.co.uk, which isn't owned by Murdoch at all! I guess they got confused between the UK and Australian papers that share the same name.

My friends and I were actually planning on making our own browser add-ons, doing exactly this. We probably no longer need to, now that other people have done the work instead, but I thought it would still be worth sharing the list we've compiled of all the websites Murdoch either owns, part-owns, or has a stake in, as you may be interested to see them all in one place.

Despite its length, the list is not complete. For example, we have wsj.com, wallstreetjournal.com and wallstreetjournal.net, but we may have missed other variations on the domain. We also don't have the domains for every movie and TV show that he's released, though there's a few random ones in there like xmenfirstclass.co.uk. It would definitely be great to gather more of them. I'm also sure there are more Australian newspaper domains, especially local papers. And the Australian TV section has barely even been started.

I invite anyone to use this list and do what they like with it, particularly the fine people behind the two anti-Murdoch plug-ins. If you see a domain I've missed, or if I've made any mistakes, please do leave a comment to let me know. And if you do use the list, it would be awfully nice if you could give a credit to the @BoycottMurdoch Twitter account.

NEWS - UK AND AMERICA
newyorkpost.com
nypost.com
thesun.co.uk
thesundaytimes.co.uk
thetimes.co.uk
the-tls.co.uk
timesonline.co.uk

NEWS - AUSTRALIA
aap.com.au
adelaidenow.com.au
couriermail.com.au
dailytelegraph.com.au
geelongadvertiser.com.au
heraldsun.com.au
news.com.au
ntnews.com.au
perthnow.com.au
postcourier.com.pg
theaustralian.com.au
thedaily.com
themercury.com.au
weeklytimesnow.com.au
whereilive.com.au

FINANCIAL / BUSINESS NEWS
allthingsd.com
barrons.com
dj.com
djindexes.com
djnewswires.com
dowjones.com
efinancialnews.com
factiva.com
marketwatch.com
smartmoney.com
vedomosti.ru
wallstreetjournal.com
wallstreetjournal.net
wsj.com
wsj-asia.com

LOCAL AMERICAN PAPERS (DOW JONES)
ack.net
barnstablepatriot.com
capecodonline.com
dailytidings.com
gazettenewsonline.com
hathawaypublishing.com
mailtribune.com
poconorecord.com
recordnet.com
recordonline.com
seacoastonline.com
southcoasttoday.com

NEWS - INTERNATIONAL
postcourier.com.pg

AMERICAN TV CHANNELS (NON-FOX, NON-SKY)
babytv.com
bigtennetwork.com
fuel.tv
MyNetworktv.com
natgeoadventure.tv
natgeochannel.co.uk
natgeotv.com
natgeowild.com
speedtv.com

FOX
Fox.com
fox.co.uk
foxbusiness.com
foxconnect.com
foxinternational.com
foxinternationalchannels.com
foxmovies.com
foxnews.com
foxonestop.com
Foxsports.com
foxsports.com.au
foxtvasia.com
fxuk.com
thefoxmoviechannel.com

SKY / UK TV CHANNELS
attheraces.com
challenge.co.uk
comedycentral.co.uk
crimeandinvestigation.co.uk
history.co.uk
nick.co.uk
sky.com
sky.de
sky.it
sky3d.co.uk
skyarts.co.uk
skyboxoffice.co.uk
skyliving.co.uk
skymovies.co.uk
skynews.com
skynews.co.uk
skyone.co.uk
skysports.com
skysports.co.uk
thebiographychannel.co.uk

GAMBLING
skypoker.com
skypoker.co.uk
skyvegas.com
skyvegas.co.uk
skyvegas.net
skybingo.com
skybingo.co.uk
skybet.com
skybet.co.uk
skybet.net

AUSTRALIAN TV
foxtel.com.au
skynews.com.au
skynewsbusiness.com.au

BOOKS
authonomy.com
avonromance.com
collinsbartholomew.com
collinseducation.com
collinslanguage.com
collinsrevisionapps.co.uk
curiouspuppy.com
harpercollins.ca
harpercollins.com
harpercollins.com.au
harpercollins.co.in
harpercollins.co.uk
harpercollins.co.nz
harpercollinscareers.com
harpercollinschildrens.com
harperteen.com
hc.com
littlehousebooks.com
timesatlas.com
tolkien.co.uk
voyagerbooks.com

ONLINE
AskMen.com
GameSpy.com
Hulu.com
IGN.com
myspace.com
scout.com
stats.com
truelocal.com.au
WhatIfSports.com

RELIGIOUS
goodnewsbible.com
zondervan.com

MAGAZINES
gq.com.au
vogue.com.au
wishdreamweddings.com.au

ASIAN TV / BROADCASTING
asianet.co.in
asianetindia.com
asianetnews.tv
channelv.com
espnstar.com
foxcrimeasia.com
foxhistory.com
fxtvasia.com
indya.com
ngcasia.com
starjalsha.com
starmajha.com
starmoviesasia.tv
starnews.in
starone.in
starplus.in
starpravah.com
starselect.com
startv.com
starworldasia.tv

MISC
careerone.com.au
carsguide.com.au
goldcoast.com.au
homesite.com.au
milkround.com
nds.com
newsoutdoor.com
nrl.com
propertyfinder.com
smartsource.net

MOVIES / TV SHOWS
americanidol.com
familyguy.com
mrpopperspenguins.co.uk
thesimpsons.com
xmenfirstclass.co.uk

This list was last edited 24rd July 2011, 7.54pm

Selling Out, Walkers, Stephen Fry, Tax Dodging, and Comic Relief.

2011-05-26T15:31:56Z

When I was a teenager, I fully aligned myself with Bill Hicks's view of what constitutes selling out. "You do a commercial - you're off the artistic roll call, forever. End of story. Okay? You're another whore at the captialist gang bang, and if you do a commercial, there's a price on your head. Everything you say is suspect and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink." To an anti-capitalist teenager, his words were like catnip to me.

Twelve years later, I still agree with the spirit of his words. I'd also expand on the idea. To me, selling out is when an artist exploits the trust of their fans, and deceives them, in exchange for money. I don't have any problem with someone being paid to endorse something they genuinely believe. The act of taking cash to sell something isn't in itself a problem to me. It's the act of taking your fanbase, cultivated over years of gaining their trust and admiration through your art, and then accepting cash to lie to those people.

Some comedy friends of mine, people who are my peers, have been in adverts. They need to pay rent, after all. But I don't consider them sellouts because my friends, as a general rule, don't have a fanbase of thousands of people. No trust relationship has been broken, as far as I can tell. For that reason, I have absolutely no moral problem in principle with my friends and peers doing an advert. I'd consider them doing an advert in the same category as working in a shop, telling people what to buy.

Stephen Fry, on the other hand, has been in numerous adverts over the years - Orange, Twinings, Marks and Spencer, Direct Line, Alliance and Leicester, and more besides. He also talks to us directly through his non-comedy work. His auto-biographies read as if they are a 400 page correspondence just to us. In his blog and through his tweets, and through his excellent documentaries on HIV and depression, he has a message which he sincerely and passionately wants us to hear. This is why I feel very uncomfortable about the idea of him also trying to sell us things. That is, unless he genuinely believes that Direct Line are the best insurance company on the planet.

I know that he is well known for his adverts. But that didn't stop me boiling over with rage when, earlier in the year, I found his face staring back at me on a packet of Walker's crisps, along with Jimmy Carr and Al Murray. I tweeted a picture, with a caption "Oi, Stephen: What the fuck is this shit?". Blind with fury, I'd completely missed the note at the bottom saying that he was doing it to raise money for Comic Relief.

Many people tweeted me to say "to be fair, he's doing it for charity". My initial reaction was to delete the tweet, and apologise for being stupid and insensitive. But on reflection, I'm not convinced that it's a good enough excuse. Walkers were involved in such outrageous tax dodging that at one point they successfully shrank their yearly tax bill from £28 million, to just £8 million. The type of tax dodging that Walkers were involved with was described by HMRC sources as "the biggest threat to the UK tax base". That happened in 2002. If they hadn't been found out, then their entire tax dodge to date would have been more than Comic Relief raised this year.

I have no evidence that they still avoid tax. From what I can tell, the taxman told them to pay up, and that's the end of the matter. The point is that they tried to, and from that, you can only conclude that despite Walkers impressive Red Nose Day advertising campaign, Walkers as a company have no genuine desire to help the poor. Like all corporations, their main motivation is not society or the planet, but profit. If it were otherwise, they would never have tried to avoid paying tax - because if they did pay their tax, we wouldn't need the charity in the first place.

Incidentally, isn't that an interesting thought? Theoretically, there should be no need for almost any charity to exist. Take Childline, for example. Can you think of a more essential service? Why isn't the government doing that? Why isn't that funded through tax? Why do we have charities to help disabled or disadvantaged children? How on earth is out government letting such children suffer? They should be doing absolutely everything possible to help, and if a charity has to fill a gap, that means that the government is ignoring the problem. How is Cancer Research not getting a hundred-quadra-squillion pounds a year from the government? Isn't cancer a massively important thing? Or did I miss a memo? How do we have a society that finds the money to bail out banks, but relies on people doing fun runs to raise money to fund research into curing disease? It struck me, for the first time, that it is often the case the existence of a charity highlights the failing of a government to help its people. Wherever a charity exists, it means we have failed as a society.

Comic Relief raised over £74 million pounds; a remarkable, and heartwarming, fact. The idea that people could raise such money at a time of crippling economic devastation is a truly remarkable thing, and a testament to people's kindness. But, as @jamesecook said on Twitter, Comic Relief raised just over 1% of Vodafone's unpaid tax bill. If rich people and huge companies didn't dodge tax, we could afford to buy so many of the things which we currently need charities for. If corporations paid their way, we wouldn't all have to pay extra to make up for it.

Chasing tax dodgers is outside the remit of Comic Relief - and rightly so. As my friend Ellie said over at Liberal Conspiracy, if Comic Relief got more political, and started questioning the root causes of poverty, it would almost certainly have to leave the BBC. But celebrities face no such restrictions. There is nothing to stop individual celebrities from publicly slamming hypocritical companies, who try to garner positive feeling towards their brand through charity work, while also perpetrating massive tax avoidance. Instead, the comedians involved with Walkers crisps have raised money for charity, but in doing so they have given publicity to a company whose tax avoidance would have contributed directly towards the poverty they are trying to fight.

Does the money raised outweigh the ethical problems of promoting a tax dodger? My gut feeling is to say no. Then again, as Ellie says, "It’s easy for those of us who don’t have to worry about starvation, disease, and isolation to sit in our liberal ivory towers and wax lyrical about moral purity. As we do, others are out in the world, raising money and helping those blighted by real, live poverty." In the long run, it would be better to call out tax dodgers, because the more money we raise through tax, the more we can spend fixing the exact problems that Comic Relief also wants to fix. But the fact of the matter is, kids are starving now. If focus only on the long-term fixes, children will die.

Jimmy Carr, Al Murray, Stephen Fry and Frank Skinner came together with Walkers Crisps, and raised £1.2 million. I am certain that those four people could work together to raise that cash, without having to advertise crisps, giving them the freedom to condemn tax dodging, allowing them to raise the money needed now, and also help towards fixing the long-term causes of poverty, without giving Walkers undeserved brand promotion.

If we are serious about ending poverty, I think we should call out hypocritical companies, and encourage celebrities not to put their name to them, but instead to take action of their own. It will definitely have an effect. I have met people in HMRC who have said that thanks to the actions of UKuncut, there are companies who have started paying tax in the UK because they're afraid of being the target of a protest. Imagine the impact of Stephen Fry actually turning round and saying "I was approached by Walkers to do an advert for their work for Comic Relief, but I refused because their attempted tax dodge could have caused more poverty". Just like the UKuncut demos, companies would be getting their tax affairs in order, because the fear of being called out by such a well-known figure is simply too damaging. I can scarcely think of a more exciting way to fight poverty.

[ This blog post should probably have been posted at the time of Comic Relief. Instead, I wrote it, saved it, and forgot about it. What a genius! But the points it makes are still relevant, so I'm posting it, thus making the internet 0.0000000000001% bigger. ]

Should UKuncut condemn violent protest? That depends on what you mean by UKuncut.

2011-04-01T15:17:44Z

There's a lot of debate at the moment over whether UKuncut should condemn, condone, or stay silent about the violence on March 26th. Sadly I haven't time to write a proper thoughtful blog, but I wanted to quickly bring up something that I've yet to see anyone discuss: consensus decision making.

Before I explain myself, let's all be clear in our minds: UKuncut had nothing to do with the violence. They are not to blame. The people who smashed up The Ritz, the people who rioted at Trafalgar Square, the people who threw paint at Topshop on Oxford Circus, and indeed the paint that was thrown at Fortnum and Mason itself, was not UKuncut, and UKuncut should not be blamed for the fact that it happened. Anyone who thinks that March 26th would have been completely peaceful if UKuncut hadn't protested is utterly wrong. If UKuncut hadn't protested, those people who chose to smash windows would have still smashed windows. In that situation, would people then be blaming the TUC for the violence? No, of course not. The people who committed violence (and by "people" I mean both the rioters and the police), should be blamed, and no-one else.

Should UKuncut condemn violence? In my opinion, all I personally care about is UKuncut making this message very clear: "We promise to always only take non-violent direct action against tax dodgers and the cuts". I don't care what UKuncut as a movement thinks about anything or anyone else. Do they condem the violence? Do they condemn the march itself? Do they condemn the creation of the trojan horse in Oxford Circus? Do they condemn military action in Libya? Do they condemn vuvuzelas? I speak only for myself when I say that I don't care about anything other than the core message.

...actually, I would quite like them to condemn vuvuzelas. Okay, scrap that last one, that was a bad example.

I have my own opinions on violence*, and you will have yours. To be involved in UKuncut, you and I don't need to agree, in the same way that we don't need to agree on whether or not there is a god, or whether abortion is right, or whether climate change is real, to both unite in UKuncut's message. Those are all profoundly important issues, but they have no bearing on the very specific issue of peaceful protest against tax dodgers, so we don't need to agree on other things to unite on this one issue. And for that reason, I personally think that UKuncut should not only stay silent, but be much, much more active in making it clear as to why its silence is the right thing to do.

However, it's also important to understand what it means to say that "UKuncut" condemns violence. Do we mean UKuncut as in the people who organised the London demonstration? Do we mean the people who maintain the website and the Twitter account? Because to ask their opinion, as if they represent the entire movement, is to misunderstand how UKuncut works. Decisions affecting the movement are made by consensus, over the internet, by hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. For example, the choice to target Boots, or the choice to target the banks, or the exact date for a national day of action; these were all made by consensus over Twitter.

The choice to hit Fortnum and Mason wasn't made by internet consensus, because it didn't need to be. A group of people in London found out that Fortnum and Mason were tax dodgers, so they chose to protest against them. Any UKuncut group around the country could do the same, if they had proof of tax avoidance from a particular company. If the protesters in Edinburgh found out that company X dodged tax, they wouldn't need to ask the internet for permission; all they'd need is proof.

The only time that consensus decision making is required is when people all around the country are expected to take action in lots of towns at the same time, and are also expected to organise it autonomously. In that situation, it is clearly right that they should have a voice and a vote. And similarly, I think that those people should have a voice and a vote over the issue of violent protest. The violence happened in London (though again, let's be completely clear: NOT by UKuncut), but it is affecting the whole movement, and for that reason, I would suggest putting it to the vote. Should UKuncut condemn it? Condone it? Stay silent? If you want a true, honest answer, the only way you'll get it is by asking the members themselves.

* For those interested, my personal beliefs are: I believe violence against people is always bad. I think I believe violence against property is bad. I also know that the suffragettes smashed windows and set fire to mailboxes, and they got women the vote. So, it isn't an opinion I hold closely, and I could definitely be convinced otherwise, eg. in very specific circumstances, when the situation is truly desperate, when a deep injustice is being committed and negotiations have failed. So in short, I don't know, though I lean towards thinking it's bad. The key thing to understand is that if you agree or disagree with me, it isn't important. All that matters is that we unite together to protest peacefully.

The day we turned Barclays into a comedy club.

2011-02-21T15:09:06Z

On Saturday, my friends and I occupied a branch of Barclays bank, and turned it into a comedy club. It isn't often you get to start a blog with a sentence like that. Having said that, last week I also went inside Guy Ritchie's squatted house, and was asked to spend two days teaching the elderly how to tweet and use Facebook, so my idea of "normality" has really taken a pounding recently.

The gig was part of UKuncut's recent push to highlight how the banks have run the global economy into the ground. Barclays themselves have avoided billions - that's BILLIONS - of pounds in tax over the years, as The Guardian has reported with admirable attention to detail. The day before the protest, The Guardian broke the news that, in 2009, Barclays earned £11.6 billion pounds, but paid only £113 million tax in this country. Their astronomical tax dodge - along with their financial support to Robert Mugabe, the multi-million pound bankers bonuses for the same casino capitalism that created the crash in the first place, and their £7.3 billion in shares in the weapons industry - made them a blatant target for a protest. Barclays are, ethically, one of the very worst banks in the UK, and I've been itching for a way to show how much I despise them for a very long time.

All over the country, people turned their branch of Barclays into a public space. Unlike previous UKuncut demonstrations, the aim was NOT to shut the store; the aim was was to liberate it. Some people turned their branch into libraries, some became forests, some were transformed into schools. We chose to turn the Barclays on Tottenham Court Road into a stand-up comedy club.

I must be honest: when the idea was first suggested to me, I was sceptical. There were about a dozen variables which could have brought the gig to its knees. For example, consider the possibly that we weren't able to get into the bank. If they'd closed it in advance, and we'd had to do the gig outside in the rain, it would have failed immediately. Can you imagine how miserable it would have been to tell jokes to a bunch of people standing in the rain, freezing their faces off while keeping a keen and suspicious eye on the police? Another example: if we'd got inside but the police started bundling us out, or tried confiscating our (genius, home-made) briefcase sound system, then the jolly audience atmosphere would have turned to one of fear. And traditional scholars of the art of comedy argue that an audience who are "sat in fear" tend not to be the most jovial.

But as sheer luck would have it, all the conditions were right. We met in Soho Square, and about sixty of us marched peacefully into the branch and up the escalator. (The fact that there was an escalator worked spectacularly in our favour - it meant that we couldn't easily be dragged out!) Some security guards started to get a bit heavy-handed, but ultimately there were far more of us than them, and we very swiftly arranged ourselves into a semi-circle, and - I still can't quite believe I'm saying this - put on a comedy show!

I was the compere, so I opened with a quick two minutes to get everyone in the mood, to explain why we were here, and with a few ad-libbed jokes about the room, then passed over to Josie who did an amazing ten minutes about Barclays, the cuts, and how the Tories of the 1700s were, amazingly, almost socialist compared to the selfishness of the Tories of today. Skip to the bottom of this blog to see the full video.

We fully expected the gig to last about three minutes, before being arrested or bundled out of the store. But amazingly, we got away with it! Josie did a full set, and the crowd went wild. She was followed by a socialist magician called Ian, who compared the way he cut and re-attached rope to the workers uniting together and owning the means of production. We then turned the comedy club into an art school. I'd brought along a load of felt-tip pens and paper, and told people that I wanted them to draw what they'd buy if they ever had a banker's bonus. Sincere or funny, it was up to them. The 50-strong audience spent twenty minutes sat in an occupied Barclays drawing silly pictures, eating lollipops and having fun, after which I gathered the pics, showed them to everyone, and shoe-horned in some topical jokes. Many people wanted to buy millions of pounds worth of ice cream (they're my kind of people!), some wanted to buy presents for the nice police (and cakes full of spiders for the ones who use pepper spray), as well as free universities, robotic ducks, and time machines. At 1pm, we decided to march out together - and we went on to turn NatWest into a library, as well as giving out hundreds of flyers outside Barclays Piccadilly Circus. The entire day was an overwhelming success.

We were astonishingly lucky - but the gamble paid off spectacularly. There was just one rough period, when some people stood at the window with a banner were faced with a shockingly aggressive security guard who tried dragging them away, and ripped their banner in half. You'll see it in the longer video below, at 11:08. As always, the only violence came from the people being hired to keep the peace. But with the exception of that brief kerfuffle, this protest was genuinely one of the most lovely, inspiring and exciting ones that I've been involved with. I'm honoured to have been asked to compere it, and proud of everyone who took part - Josie, socialist magician Ian, and every single person (especially the two children!) who was brave enough to march into Barclays, sit down, and refuse to leave.

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Something struck me on the way home. In recent times, two of the gigs which have been the most fun to do, which have had the most lovely audiences and the biggest laughs, have been in unusual spaces which were turned into a comedy club for a one-off event. The first was at the UCL occupation, where we turned the Jeremy Bentham room into a 150 person gig. The second was Barclays.

Why were they the most fun? My own extreme enthusiasm and excitement might have made me better as a performer. The sheer determination of both performers and audience to have a bloody amazing time, precisely because we were doing something unusual and dangerous in a liberated space, surely helped. And the fact that the events were clearly one-offs must have made them much more personal and unique, which will undoubtedly make it a more special and fun event.

The only sensible conclusion to draw is that the traditional comedy club is dead, and that the future of comedy lies in clubs spontaneously created spaces in occupied supermarkets, train carriages, libraries and hospitals.

Or, a more serious analysis: it's a magnificent reminder of how exciting, fun and dangerous comedy can be when the conditions are right, and when both the performer and the audiences are both acting as one, to create a spectacular event. It would be almost impossible to recreate the sense of danger in a normal comedy club, unless I brought along a box of matches and a few gallons of lighter fluid. But the sense of excitement, of fun, of mischief, of doing something unique and inspiring and life-changing, is something that we should, and can, always aspire to.

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Here's me opening the gig:

And here's a 18 minute video, including Josie's full set, the rough 'n' tumble security guy, and extra fun:

Image taken from Treezbee's Flickr stream.

My Netroots UK presentation: How UKUncut used the internet to inspire offline protest.

2011-01-09T12:16:06Z

I did two presentations at Netroots UK, a 500-strong conference in London on Saturday, dedicated to discussing the future of activism and the internet. It attracted a bright, passionate and inspiring bunch of activists, writers, politicians, government and charity workers, and other excellent political types. I was delighted to be invited, because it meant I got in for free, which gave me five extra pounds to spent on Tesco Value gin.

In the morning I was part of a fascinating panel on the ways we can use social media to inspire offline activity. I did a five minute talk to the 60 in attendance on the story of UKUncut, and the way they/we/I/you used the internet to create a national movement. I've put my talk below, for your pleasure.

On the lunchtime fringe I did a presentation called Internet Security For Beginners: A Guide To Non-Technical Activists. I imagined I'd talk to about a dozen people for 20 minutes, then have ten minutes of questions, then run off to dick about with friends. But to my amazement, and sheer delight, about fifty people came along, and we spent almost an hour discussing the various aspects of net security that confused people. People asked great questions for me to add in next time, and people were so lovely afterwards. For what was essentially a first draft of that presentation, I'm very happy with it.

Lots of people said nice things on Twitter. Unfortunately, they all, without exception, tweeted my name without an underscore. It's entirely my fault: I'm terrible at self-promotion. I didn't mention my blog or my Twitter account in either of my presentations. The American rapper @chriscoltrane is going to be terribly confused when he reads his mentions stream. Some people at Netroots even started following him! It's an easy mistake to make: after all, other than the fact that he's an American black rapper and I'm a white UK political comedian, we're exactly alike. Also, I'm the one who has my face, but that's easy to miss. (One guy has actually followed both me AND him, just to hedge his bets. He wasn't sure for definite which was the right account, he saw my tweets about politics and comedy, and then he saw @chriscoltrane's tweets about DJing and making music, and he thought to himself "Well, there's a 50/50 chance here. I'd best add both, just in case.")

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Here's my talk on UKUncut, and using the internet to inspire and organise Real World protests.

Hello, my name's Chris Coltrane. I'm a stand-up comedian, writer and blogger, tech geek and activist. I also tweet about ten thousand times a day, so I've been asked to talk on this panel about social media. Actually, I might have to stop a few times during this talk to update the internet. (pull out phone) "Talking at a conference, lol. No-one has worked out that I'm an idiot yet. I'm totally getting away with it. Hashtag: oh my days."

I shouldn't muck about, I've only got a few minutes. It's just that as a comedian, it's very hard not to treat this like a gig. I'll get right to it: for my slot, I want to tell you how UKUncut has used social media astonishingly effectively, to turn a 50 person protest into a nation-wide movement.

To bring you quickly up to speed: the protests started a few months ago, when Private Eye reported that Vodafone had dodged £6 billion in tax. Which is outrageous. If the rich paid their tax, we wouldn't need to cut anything. In other words, Vodafone are the reason we can't have nice things.

So a protest was organised through Twitter at very short notice, and 50 of us met up at 9.30 on a rainy Wednesday to march into Vodafone Oxford Street, sit down in the middle of the store, block the entrance, and refuse to leave. Non-violent direct action. So we march in, the staff panic, the shutters start to come down, police start dragging people out, it's just chaos. I start tweeting photos, and to my amazement, the internet goes crazy for them, I get about 400 new followers in two hours, and thousands of re-tweets, and because of that, my pics and tweets end up in about a dozen different newspapers!

And that got me thinking back to protests of my youth. Because back then, a fifty person protest would barely have been worth the bus fare there. I'd always think to myself, what difference have I actually made? But thanks to Twitter, it doesn't matter if your numbers are small. What matters is that your protest has an interesting angle, that you grab the attention of your fellow tweeters, and that the media are on your side. Fifty people might not change things. Fifty people, plus the internet, plus blanket coverage by every single national newspaper? Now you're talking.

So it was a wild success. A week later it was decided we'd built enough momentum for us to close three Vodafone stores in one day. And we were right. Over a hundred people turned up, and we shut down all three Vodafone stores on Oxford Street at the same time. Since then we've gone nation-wide, with entire Days of Action in over fifty towns and cities around the country, all at the same time. A date is chosen, and then people all around the UK protest outside Vodafone and Top Shop, handing out leaflets, and taking direct action to try to close the store.

But the interesting thing about the nation-wide action is that the guys behind the London protests didn't create a committee who own UKUncut, who issue out commands and orders around the country. Instead, they chose to be non-heirarchical. They've created an infrastructure, they "run" a Twitter account, they declare a date, but that's it. All of the protests around the country are organised autonomously by people who we've never even met, who simply share our belief that we wouldn't need to cut if the rich paid their tax.

So for example, in Oxford they wore cardboard cars and had a grand prix race around all the shops in Oxford who dodged tax. They were in and out so quickly that the police couldn't keep up, but always there were people giving out leaflets, getting the message out there, while the protesters disrupted those shops ability to trade. And they filmed it, for the internet to watch. Down in Brighton, people actually superglued themselves to the inside of a Topshop store. And again in Brighton, the saddest thing of all: Santa got arrested. It was such a brilliant video, a guy in a Santa costume was taking action against Top Shop, and the police escorted Santa away. There's this video on the net of Santa telling the camera "Sorry kids, no presents this year, Santa's been arrested."

None of this is decided on high by some leader class. It's all autonomous. The only thing the "leaders" of UKUncut do is set a date and a focus. Other than that, do what you like.

And the reason that it works is because the infrastructure they've built is amazing. For example, their website is the most perfect resource you'll ever see. It has a list of all the actions around the country, listed by date, with a Google Map showing you exactly what is happening and when. If there's something near you, you can attend. If there isn't, *you* can start it. You can mail in to let the web team know when and where it is, and it'll get added.

The website is a directory, and an incredibly powerful one. It's brought hundreds of activists together, and it's amazingly empowering. And it's that empowerment that keeps people going, that makes people want to take part in something exciting and interesting.

And it couldn't have been done without the internet, and without that Wiki approach to organising. The key is that they have a very simple site, it's easy to navigate, there's no clutter, and every single piece of information on there is relevant. The fact that such a big and important site can be organised by a loose collection of activists, and embraced by protesters all around the country, teaches us an incredible amount about the right way to use the internet to organise off-line protests.

So what have I learned from all this? I've learned that using Twitter effectively can potentially turn a 50 person protest into a 50,000 person protest, as photos get passed around, as opinions are shared, and as the buzz this creates eventually starts to make people ask "Why aren't the media covering this?". And when that happens, there's a very good chance that they will cover it. Thanks to Twitter, a 50 person protest can get your message out to hundreds of thousands of people.

And secondly, I've learned that you can use blogs, wikis and various other internet tools to empower other people. Don't lead, don't command, just give them an infrastructure. Take some responsibility, of course - set the date, set the focus, but give people autonomy. Give them the ability to organise and unite, and then afterwards, give them the ability to share their stories and success. If you hit on the right target, and you do it with genuine passion and clarity, you'll have a lot of success.

I'm Chris Coltrane, thank you for listening.

The danger of single-issue anti-cuts campaigns - and why we need more of them.

2010-12-30T23:20:35Z

There have been two very prominent single-issue anti-cuts campaigns in the news recently. One fought against cuts to school sports, the other against cuts to free books for kids. They were totally separate campaigns - but today, I realised they were connected in an incredibly important way.

This year's Queen's Speech highlighted the importance of sport in building communities and strength of character. Which is a controversial thing for the Queen to claim, when you consider that, for the previous two months, her government cut many millions of pounds of spending on school sports. For example, on October 20th, Michael Gove announced £162 million of cuts for 450 School Sports Partnerships. Gove changed his mind on December 20th only five days before the Queen's speech, after finding himself on the receiving end of a remarkably high-profile protest, and a 600,000 signature petition.

The big story to hit the Boxing Day headlines concerned Bookstart, a universally-praised scheme for getting free books to kids. And, as with anything which is widely loved and which enriches people's lives, the Tories seem to want to destroy it. The Guardian's article opens: "Leading writers today rounded on the government for its "repugnant, foolish and pointlessly destructive" decision to axe all funding for a free book scheme that benefits 3.3 million youngsters a year."

Utterly shocking. But the really interesting part comes slightly further down the article:

"...the decision to end Booktrust's funding is thought to have been taken to finance the education secretary's eventual U-turn on sport, which saw much of the threatened £162m cash for school sport partnerships restored."

So, wait - the reason that kids can't have free books is because the government decided to give them sport? You can be literate, or you can be healthy, but you can't be both. David Cameron seems to be essentially saying "Look, one way or the other, we're definitely going to fuck up your kids. We've already decided that. They're either going to be fat, or stupid. They won't be fat AND stupid, we've got enough money for you to choose one or the other - but you WILL have to choose."

I previously imagined that if a single-issue cuts campaign was victorious, it might be the end of the story. This news has made me realise that in fact, the government may find the money to pay for a u-turn by cutting even more savagely in other areas. And when the decision to cut elsewhere comes after a victory for protesters, you could be forgiven for wondering if they're just cutting out of spite. "You want sports? Fine, we'll cut books. What's that? You want books as well?! Jesus. Okay, we'll cut playgrounds. Oh, wait, our bad - we've cut those by £20m already. Fine, we'll cut teachers. ...hang on, you're saying you want teachers AS WELL as books and sport? Seriously? You people have NO IDEA how the real world works, do you?"

But let's be clear: even if the success of a single-issue cuts campaign forces harsher cuts elsewhere, the campaigns must never stop. Why should we stay quiet, and live in fear that ministers will be get revenge on us for a successful protest? If anything, I think the campaigns should intensify. I'd love to see dozens of small but energetic, highly media-savvy campaign groups, working to make people aware of the damage that will be done by specific cuts. I want each one to be successful, so that each minister is forced to play hot-potato, passing the cuts from one department to another, until the only thing the government has left to cut is the replacement for Trident.

I think that the campaigns to fight cuts to the arts, to science, and to school sports and books, have done a wonderful job at raising awareness of something that should really be obvious: when you make a cut, you make a service worse. If you cut science, then we don't progress, and our economy suffers. If you cut the arts, then our society becomes less vibrant - and again, our economy suffers. If you cut school sports, then kids will have poor school sports facilities. Pointing out something so fundamentally obvious feels quite surreal, but it clearly needs to be done. In a time when the Tories are trying to decimate the state, by shredding it to the bone, people need to be constantly reminded where their tax money goes, and why state spending is a good thing. Single issue campaigns are expert at this.

We now know that, in the face of intense opposition, Gove has at least partially changed his mind on the Bookstart cuts. (As my friend Ellie said, the fact that he can change his mind in a matter of days surely proves how unnecessary the cut was.) I have no doubt that he'll find something equally outrageous to scrap in the new year. Maybe he'll scrap dinner ladies, and in the spirit of Big Society, replace them with people serving their community service. Or perhaps he'll scrap schools altogether, and outsource it to big business. Goodbye school, hello McDonald's Academy.

"Now children, if I start with six Chicken McNuggets, and I SuperSize my meal, what does that give me?"
"Oh, sir, sir, is it bowel cancer?"
"See me after class, Jenkins."

But whatever the government chooses to scrap next, we will fight it. We'll shame them into u-turning again, and again, and again, every time making our message loud and clear: we oppose your cuts, we oppose you putting ideology over humanity and compassion, and we oppose your beliefs to their core. We will not let you destroy our country. We will not let you ruin our essential services. We will not let you punish the poor, to please the rich. Every time you try to cut our services, our schools and our rights - we will fight you, and we will win, every single time.

Saturday's UK Uncut Topshop protest: The Mass Day of Direct Action.

2010-12-05T11:07:58Z

I've spent most of the past month in the company of anti-cuts activists. I've been to Vodafone protests, student occupations, marches, and political comedy nights where people are all saying the same thing: this government's policies place ideology over practicality; the Lib Dems have betrayed us; the government are lying when they say that we're all in this together; there *is* an alternative.

When you're always surround by people who passionately hold the same beliefs as you, it can be hard to judge the true mood of the nation. Are people really on our side? Or are we activists just experiencing positive feedback from each other's opposition to the cuts? After this week, I have no doubt at all how people feel. For example, working part time at my old employer gives me access to plenty of non-political people, and almost all of them are on the side of the students. They didn't like the protest violence, but they hate police violence even more. If smashing up Tory HQ lost the students any sympathy, it was won back in abundance when people saw the policeman punching that kid in the face.

More recently, yesterday was the mass day of action against tax avoidance, organised by UK Uncut. At the first demo, where we shut down Vodafone, we had over 50 people. Four days later, when we did it again, we got about a hundred protesters involved. This time, we had well over two hundred in London alone, with actions taking place all over the country. We all met inside Top Shop at 11am, pretending to be shoppers. It was so funny to see young guys on their own feigning interest in jewellery and dresses. I recognised friends and familiar faces, and failed to resist the temptation to greet them. It pains me greatly to admit to myself: I could never be a spy.

At 11.02am, someone blew a whistle, the action began, and the abundance of security they'd drafted in for the day launched on us. I was swiftly handed a bunch of A4 signs to hand out, and soon after I was pushed out by security. I went limp, so three of them had to drag me out. I waited five seconds, then went back in for another go. Thorpe Park should consider making a ride based around non-violent direct action, it'd be a hit. Eventually, I was thrown outside the store permanently. Guards lined up to block the entrance, still with hundreds of protesters inside. The chaos was phenomenal. Over the course of half an hour, they got all the protesters out onto the street, where, surrounded by press at all angles, we chanted, made noise, and handed out leaflets telling people about Sir Philip Green's extraordinary tax avoidance.

The most interesting thing was that shoppers were, predominantly, on our side. Some people were annoyed that they couldn't go shopping. Many more were annoyed that rich people were actively preventing their kids from having nice schools and libraries. Passers-by actually joined the sit-in. Random people bought us huge deliveries of pizza, of coffee and hot chocolate, and plenty of snacks. The kindness of strangers was touching, and inspirational.

Incidentally, I'd like to offer my sincere thanks to the police for lining up outside both entrances of Topshop, thus shutting down the store for us. It felt like we'd successfully outsourced the protest to the police. I almost felt like calling to the crowd "Right, the police will take over from here, let's go to the pub over the road, and come back if the police leave!"

It wouldn't be a mass day of action without a mass shut-down of the worst tax avoiders, including Sir Philip Green's other clothes stores. So after half an hour, we moved on to BHS, then to Boots, two Vodafone store, Miss Selfridge, and two Dorothy Perkins. Each one of them temporarily closed its doors for business. This could well be the first Dorothy Perkins demonstration in the history of activism.

We soon found out that we were the most read article on the BBC News. Channel 4 covered us. The Guardian covered us. Astonishingly, even the Daily Mail wrote a good piece on us. Multi-millionaire Duncan Bannatyne tweeted in favour of our protests. We were two of the top trending topics on Twitter. There were even rumours that Gordon Brown was thinking of coming down to join the protest. Admittedly, I started the rumours, but nevertheless, I think it goes a long way to showing just how deeply this has grabbed the attention of the country.

The problem with cutting everything is that everyone is affected by it. If they were just cutting benefits and the arts, then the government could easily lie, by claiming that benefits are only used by the lazy unemployed, and arts funding only helps weird experimental dance that no-one goes to. It would be a monumental deception, of course, but you can see how they could successfully spin it. But when you also cut libraries, schools and universities, playgrounds, police, street cleaners, and pretty much everything that it's the government's job to do, it's much harder to spin. Everyone knows a student, or a child going to school. Everyone knows someone elderly who needs help paying their heating bill. Everyone knows someone who has been horribly ill, and so knows how important benefits are to keep them going.

And that's why everyone feels outraged when the same government ministers and lords who cut all our services decided to funnel their own money through Monaco and the British Virgin Islands. It is, objectively, outrageous. This past month, while going to protests, I haven't just been experiencing the mood of a few extremists: I've been experiencing the mood of the nation. Every day, it becomes more clear that the government are cutting the poor for the benefit of the rich. Every day, it becomes more clear that the police are willing to be violent to protect the government. And every day, it becomes more clear that people refuse to stand for it without a fight.

Picture by UCLOccupation at Flickr. Check their feed for more protest pics.
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Hey hey, check me out on the news! I'm at 0.07 on the video at the BBC, and I'm at 0.36 on this Channel 4 video. Hello mum!