TUC anti-cuts London march: Is peaceful protest now dead?
On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of ordinary voters travelled to central London to express their anger at the Governments spending cuts. Mums whose kids will be denied Sure Start places, teachers, charity workers looking after the homeless, clerks from job centres, council workers and nurses. This was the largest rally since the Iraq war mass protest in 2003. Sadly, another small group hijacked this historic day, ensuring media coverage focused on fights, paint-bombs, balaclavas and smashed shop windows. Another version of the tuition fees mayhem and the May Day protests.
Hijack: A small group ensured interest was focused on fights, not the real causeIronically, most of the young people causing the damage on Saturday probably do not work so they havent got jobs for George Osborne to cut in the first place.I grew up believing that peaceful protest makes the most impact. Ban the Bomb demonstrators just sat down. Greenham Women chained themselves to railings and held hands. Why break windows when the sheer numbers who support a cause are so great? Occupying Fortnum & Mason and attacking The Ritz hotel smacks of class war, pure and simple. To quote one blogger: Fortnum is a symbol of wealth and greed. Its where the super-rich do their weekly shop.
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Fortnum and Mason: You're hardly going to find someone doing their weekly shop there - it would take too longHardly. At Christmas the store is packed with shoppers buying tins! of bisc uits and chocs for their grannies tins that will be treasured for years. Its one of our biggest tourist attractions. Ive yet to meet anyone doing a weekly shop there. It would take far too long.People book The Ritz for tea to celebrate special occasions, and you dont have to be a resident to enjoy a drink in the bar. In the future, presumably protest group UK Uncut would like prime sites such as Piccadilly and Bond Street to be full of pound-shops instead of temples to luxury and opulent living. Do they only approve of a London without swanky boutiques, hand-made shoe shops, lovely cheese sellers and posh stationery stores? Perhaps theyd like to scare off tourists so that Green Park can be turned into a student campsite.I am sure that the tax arrangements for Fortnum & Mason are complex. Its owned by the Weston family.
The Garfield Weston Foundation own 80per cent of Wittington Investments that, in turn, owns more than half of Associated British Foods (ABF). ABF stands accused by UK Uncut of avoiding 40 million in tax. The company controls many popular brands, including Kingsmill bakeries, Twinings, Jordans cereals, Ryvita, Ovaltine and Silver Spoon. So if these misguided boneheads want to show their disapproval over the tax arrangements at ABF which also owns Primark wouldnt it be simpler to give up sugar, choose bread more carefully, stop buying cheap fashion and select a different breakfast tea?
The ugly aftermath of Saturday's demonstrationIncidentally, Garfield Weston is one of the largest charitable foundations in the world, and gave away 26 million in 2010.
The Ritz is booked for tea to celeb! rate spe cial celebrations - would the rioters prefer it to be a pound shop instead?Thats a compelling argument. It targeted shops (Topshop and Dorothy Perkins) owned by Philip Green, whose tax arrangements seem to hinge around his principal shareholder, his wife, living in Monaco. The group also complained about RBS, 84per cent state-owned, where, in spite of losses of 1.1billion in 2010, more than 1billion was paid in bonuses.
It has consistently singled out Vodafone, where HM Revenue & Customs came to an extraordinary arrangement with the company that saw it avoid or stage-manage its way out of paying 6 billion in tax.On Saturday, UK Uncut hijacked a march which reflected ordinary voters legitimate concerns. Of course, there are injustices in our tax system and UK Uncut has every right to highlight them.
Insteadof rampaging through the cheese and chocs at Fortnum & Mason, its supporters should be more annoyed that the head of HMRC wines and dines with the bosses of Vodafone.Who needs to share a bottle of wine with a client outside business hours? Those days are over.
Taxinspectors should be banned from any fraternising with big business in case it taints their judgement. Never mind class war between rich and poor, theres a sleazy cosiness here thats not acceptable.
BBC's Royal Wedding daze
Cottoning on: Fearne and Prince WilliamCutbacks and efficiency savings are the new buzzwords, but the producers organising the Royal Wedding coverage at the BBC seem to have their earplugs in. The other day, the head of world news complained hed spent all his budget months ago and that his tea! m were r unning on empty.
Theres no doubt the war in Libya and the ongoing tragedy in Japan are costing huge amounts to cover, and the BBC is investigating pooling resources with other broadcasters to economise. In this context, wasnt it a bit of a PR disaster to announce such a huge line-up of presenters for the Royal Wedding?
Formula 1 host Jake Humphrey, Fearne Cotton from Radio One, Fiona Bruce, Sophie Raworth, Edith Bowman, Huw Edwards, Chris Evans, Ken Bruce and even that deadbeat team from TVs The One Show.
Surely there are some employees who are not putting on a posh hat and a new frock (and claiming for it on expenses) on the big day? Fearne Cotton does a good job on Radio One, but will she encourage young people to tune in? I think not they dont watch much telly anyway.
More important, the BBC has a duty to provide viewing and listening for everyone what about those whod like a wedding-free day? What can we look forward to? Repeats of The Archers or The Early Music Show on Radio Three?
Tell me there are a few people left at mission control to run an alternative schedule.
In mourning for the killing
Top cop: Sofie GrabolSaturday nights will be dreary now The Killing has ended on BBC Four.I predicted the shifty Vagn was the murderer weeks ago, but the plot was full of twists right up to the last 20 minutes.
Thankfully, the second series is due later this year. We havent had such a fully rounded female detective as Sofie Grabol playing Sarah Lund since Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect. My other Saturday night staple, Agony And Ecstasy: A Year With English National Ballet, has just ended, too.
The best moment of the final episode occurred when artistic director Wayne Eagling tried to work out how to stage the closing scene in his new production of The Nutcracker just a couple of hours before curtain up. Beats Black Swan any day.The most stressful telephone calls I! ever ma ke are to health insurer AXA PPP.
To get any treatment authorised you first have to give your date of birth and personal details. Then you are interrogated about the nature of your illness at length.
Answer wrongly, and you will be refused any payout.
The other day I was so enraged with the nit-picking attitude of the AXA female on the line, I ended up saying: Thank God this call is being recorded so your superiors can see how members of the public are treated.
Therefore, I was very interested to read last week that a worker at the same call centre has just won 142,000 in compensation after horrible bullying by her colleagues.
The judge said she had suffered serious discrimination working for a company which had lacked empathy. Need I say more?
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