The tented villiage outside St Paul's Cathedral - what exactly is it for?

If I was a child I'd be unhappy too. It must be like sitting in the back of the family car with Dad drunk at the wheel.

It makes me laugh the way that those who have done very well out of the present system can’t understand why the protestors do not actually have a common complaint. It’s a bit like jailors moaning about their prisoners being inconsistent about which type of torture they dislike the most… “If only they could settle on water boarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, being sexually assaulted or being forced to watch Fox News then we would have some sympathy with them.” these paragons of virtue claim and of course having never been tortured themselves you can see their point - they just want a better insight into what the victims see as being the most unacceptable practices so they can help make the system a better experience for those poor misbegotten wretches who haven‘t the wit, the wealth or the connections to escape the consequences of being unimportant. If you ask people which aspect of the unacceptable face of Capitalism they are protesting against then the answer will vary depending upon circumstances but of course it is all so unnecessary because as Herman Cain elegantly puts it “If you not rich it's your own fault!” Perhaps you and Jimmy should swap places for a year FTSE and then perhaps enduring the torure of each others lives might be enlightening for both of you... especially if it is a very cold Winter!

I carefully said "which aspect of the ‘unacceptable face of Capitalism’ they are protesting against" FTSE - which, as I remember was a phrase used by former Conservative PM Edward Heath… better ask him if you don't know what that means. I expect he knew what he was talking about. "A British prime minister, Edward Heath, observed 25 years ago that a businessman, a truly horrible savage called “Tiny” Rowland, represented “the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism.” The description was fitting because Rowland was a perambulating piece of filth who had indulged in bribery, tax-dodging, and the general range of ingenious whizz-kid schemes designed to make viciously unscrupulous people rich and keep them that way. He had never been to business school but has been a model for those Masters of Business Administration who scrabble and grab for money without regard for moral principles – or the law of their land, if they think they can break it without being found out. There seem to be a lot of them like that, as we are now discovering." http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/10/03/the-unacceptable-face-of-capitalism/

If we put more of his kind in prison it would certainly help!

Black was a central figure in exposing Congressional corruption during the Savings and Loan Crisis. He took the notes during the Keating Five meeting that were later published in the press, and brought the event to national attention and a congressional investigation. According to Bill Moyers, "The former Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention now teaches Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. During the savings and loan crisis, it was Black who accused then-house speaker Jim Wright and five US Senators, including John Glenn and John McCain, of doing favors for the S&L's in exchange for contributions and other perks. The senators got off with a slap on the wrist, but so enraged was one of those bankers, Charles Keating — after whom the senate's so-called "Keating Five" were named — he sent a memo that read, in part, 'get Black — kill him dead.' Metaphorically, of course. Of course." On April 20, 2010, Black testified before the House Financial Services Committee in a hearing titled "Public Policy Issues Raised by the Report of the Lehman Bankruptcy Examiner." He testified about the role that Alt-A mortgages, what he called "liars loans," on residential real estate played in the downfall of Lehman Brothers. His testimony was that "Lehman’s failure is a story in large part of fraud. And it is fraud that begins at the absolute latest in 2001, and that is with their subprime and liars’ loan operations. "As explained in his prepared statement, his reference was to Aurora Loan Services, Inc., which was a subsidiary of Lehman: "Lehman’s principal source of (fictional) income and real losses was making (and selling) what the trade accurately called 'liar’s lo ans' through its subsidiary, Aurora. (The bland euphemism for liar’s loans was 'Alt-A.') Liar’s loans are 'criminogenic' (they create epidemics of mortgage fraud) because they create strong incentives to provide false information on loan applications." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_K._Black Occupy LA Teach In William K Black link to youtube.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyQhuJjSTJA “Ok I am coming with a message of hope actually. In the savings and loan crisis which was one seventieth the size of this crisis. Our agency made over 10,ooo criminal referrals and that resulted in the conviction on felony grounds of over 1000 elites in what were designated as major cases” William Black “We can prosecute these frauds. The Federal Housing Finance Administration has just filed complaints saying 17 of the largest banks in America committed massive fraud. Endemic fraud.. And that there is a paper trail proving that they did so.” http://occupywallst.org/article/what-democracy-looks-huge-general-assemb...

Watch the video and get back to me lavadis... William K Black link to youtube.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyQhuJjSTJA

Once you realise that the ‘system’ protects the ‘white collar’ criminals while pouncing on ‘street criminals’ you understand the quandary of the protestors who are quickly being labelled ’street criminals’ by the Right. Who can they trust? It is not so much Capitalism that is the real culprit as a re-emergence of the class war which has essentially resolved itself into the one percent against the different factions of the remaining ninety-nine percent. As always they old trick of divide and conquer is being used to try and set various fractions of the ninety-nine percent against each other while the one percent try to pin all the blame on everyone but themselves!

What worries me is how there seems to be a drift back to Victorian values? That there should be charity rather than right to wellfare. I'm worried that instead of belonging to working class or middle/upper class there will be working class and nothing class. How long, in the economic downturn before people start asking why they should pay for those without work? It was "Christian values" that inspired the Victorians to charity. And even then it often was who could build the biggest church/museum/library - something that could be seen and admired, life hereafter even if it couldn't fit through the eye of a needle. What's so glorious about giving money to people who can't get it for themselves? If there is to be a reorganisation of society it HAS to involve a change in the way work is divided. I'm unemployed, and I don't want to work full time just to get my benefits. But I bet loads of people would be happy to work the 10 hours or whatever it would be for them to get minimum wage for the worth of their benefits. There's stuff councils can't afford to do anymore, like weeding pavements, that's not skilled work. I hate feeling like a parasite. With the public sector job cuts it will get worse. I don't know what the answer is, but what about Ludditism :0) Couldn't 3 people rake leaves manually instead of being unemployed and one person being paid to use a fuel guzzling leaf blower? Couldn't lots of people have their wages subsidised by gov to make a washing machine comparable to ones from places with cheap labour, instead of being on dole and most of work done by robots? I know Mrs Thatch saved the country by destroying subsidy. But she saved it for the bankers

Re-reading the above post by 'phase2' made me realise that a post I made to a recent thread asks essentially the same question... Why isn't the work, particularly with unskilled jobs, shared out? An earlier post also asks a very important question which reduces to; Now the rich have taken almost all they can from the 'working class' - is it the turn of the 'middle class'? It seems to me that many of the 'Occupy' people are from a 'middle class' background but are being forced to compete in an ever more ruthless jobs market for a dwindling number of jobs: The danger here for the 1 percent is that it is such people who have traditionally inspired revolutions and without the safety valve of any real meritocracy the pressure is building! I vaguely remember in the dim, distant past, I was doing a HND in computing just before the PC revolution and it was constantly discussed what everyone would do with their spare time once computers had taken over the vast majority of jobs and the average worker was on a 12 hour week. I remember I predicted the Internet long before Adobe figured out how to grow letters and give us scaleable fonts but I could never have predicted that in fact many people would actually end up working longer hours and that high unemployment would be blamed on Wall Street and toxic debt. Perhaps Capitalism requires high employment with at least a 40 hour working week just to keep the masses out of trouble... With such a high rate of unemployment it is not surprising that a movement like "Occupy" has gained a lot of support from the disperate elements of the 'working class' that come together to express their anger with a 'system' that either doesn't seem to want to include them or refuses to acknowledge that it is a bigger part of the problem than it is of any possible solution that doesn't just make the rich richer and the poor increasingly desperate... Yet, increasingly it is the 'middle class' who are feeling the 'pinch' too - leaving them disillusioned and angry at the betrayal by a system that they used to run but now no longer seems to value them. Maybe the mistake was to believe that the ‘Leisure Industry’ could keep growing to absorb the increasing amount of people no longer needed in the old, traditional, industries... while the City would thrive and balance the books. Can the system survive or has Capitalism run its course? Is Capitalism, as Karl Marx predicted, finally being forced to face the flowering of its own seeds of destruction? http://online.wsj.com/video/nouriel-roubini-karl-marx-was-right/68EE8F89... versus http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/chris-whalen-roubini-wrong-k...