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what do you think of this? saturday protest video

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpk5JtMfEzY

do you think this video makes a good allegation of undercover police or employed by police to stir up trouble on Saturday's protests?
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Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    do you think this video makes a good allegation of undercover police or employed by police to stir up trouble on Saturday's protests?

    No. It's impossible to really tell what happened there, I understand why people are suggesting the man flashes an ID card but there's no way to be sure.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    And even if he is, I can't imagine this one guy making that much of an impact. These "protestors" were going to cause shit all on their own, they didn't need an undercover cop to help.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    wouldnt surprise me. Seems like the government and the media are in cahoots to discredit the protesters big time.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Not that much - if anything - can be surmised from that footage, but wouldn't he most likely just be undercover? Evidence gathering if shit goes bad. I'm not sure why the conclusion "agent provacateur" has been jumped to. Actually I do: people fucking love a conspiracy theory.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    This doesn't surprise me at all, there were allegations at the G20 protests and also at another demo, where it was filmed. A friend of mine said it happened at an anti-Bush demo in Manchester a few years back too... And who can forget the scum who infiltrated peaceful environmental activists more recently?

    I was at the Trafalgar Square occupation, which was peaceful before the police arrived. There was a conga line and a rave down by Nelson's Column... I didn't see any vandalism take place at the gathering, but it had happened earlier in the day (a bit of graffiti).

    Riot police started rushing in to the square, pushing people back, trying to break up the occupation. I went over to see what went on, they were just stood in a line. One police man struck a protester, but that was it so far... There were say... About three or four protesters throwing things, like bottles, or a traffic cone...

    They then came up behind us, making us move out of the square. I don't really get their problem. I went up the steps and saw a policeman hit a woman with his shield so that she smacked in to the ground. The woman was unarmed and I don't know why he did it... They herded us out and then sealed off the square. Friends on the outside who were watching, said that they were moving in to kettle people... Some individuals refused to move, so they would have been the ones kettled for hours.

    A friend of mine with UK Uncut, who are nonviolent (and by the way, he needs a CRB for his job, so refuses to affiliate with violent groups) was assaulted from behind by a copper.

    Edited: I've actually read an article by a group involved with some of the vandalism here and with some scuffles with police... I don't know if all/a lot/some of the actual violence was them, as I think there were people going along, just to cause shit as well (one looked about fourteen). They seem like intelligent people to me.

    I know the last paragraph was a bit of a tangent lol!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I'm not sure why the conclusion "agent provacateur" has been jumped to. Actually I do: people fucking love a conspiracy theory.

    It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the proven use of agents provocateur in protest groups and the proven existence of an entire division of ACPO (a private company) dedicated to espionage, could it?

    No, thought not, must be that anyone who thinks that the police have agents provocateur are batshit mental :rolleyes:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    people fucking love a conspiracy theory.

    They also know their history.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Are people so naive to think that the police don't use this as a tactic? Have you not seen the way police behave at demonstrations, anywhere other than on the BBC?

    :confused:

    There was a case about this recently, which was publicised widely...

    Also, allegations from the G20 protests...

    The FBI used to do it all the time, as have other countries. It's really nothing new...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    They also know their history.

    Next time a leader with a moustache gets elected I hope my wild assertions meet with the same charity. :D
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Namaste wrote: »
    Are people so naive to think that the police don't use this as a tactic? Have you not seen the way police behave at demonstrations, anywhere other than on the BBC?

    ...

    The FBI used to do it all the time, as have other countries. It's really nothing new...

    The question was about this video, which doesn't prove anything.

    I know the police can behave very badly at mass protests, I'm sure they use undercover officers in all sorts of ways and those officers don't always act as observers or peacekeepers, I don't dispute any of that. But this video proves none of it.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    it doesnt actually prove anything, but it raises a damn good case
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Anarchists demonstrating against a smaller state and public sector... Whoda thunk it??

    Michael Gove clearly has his work cut out if our education system is producing people like that.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    yeah seems a bit hypocritical.

    The vast majority of people demonstrating werent anarchists though
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yeah I know and the vast majority protested peacefully. As usual, middle-to-upper class wannabe trots and the rent-a-mob spoiled it for everyone else.

    Incidentally, given the wave of articles in the Graun, you'd think they'd toppled capitalism...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Anarchists demonstrating against a smaller state and public sector... Whoda thunk it??

    Is the state getting smaller? You could have fooled me.

    All that's happening is the state is staying the same size, but instead of the state owning the infrastructure some cunt from Lockheed Martin or Crapita is instead.

    As for the public sector shrinking, not really. It's just that instead of having secure jobs with the Government, they're getting to do the same work for less pay and less protection so some cunt from Jarvis can cream up a fuck-off huge profit-driven bonus.

    As for the "terrible violence", smashing up bank property is not violence, it's making a valid political point. Smashing up bank directors would be violence. And, hand on heart, if someone wanted to smash up Bob Diamond in a fairly serious manner I'd fully endorse their actions.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Is the state getting smaller? You could have fooled me.

    All that's happening is the state is staying the same size, but instead of the state owning the infrastructure some cunt from Lockheed Martin or Crapita is instead.

    As for the public sector shrinking, not really. It's just that instead of having secure jobs with the Government, they're getting to do the same work for less pay and less protection so some cunt from Jarvis can cream up a fuck-off huge profit-driven bonus.

    As for the "terrible violence", smashing up bank property is not violence, it's making a valid political point. Smashing up bank directors would be violence. And, hand on heart, if someone wanted to smash up Bob Diamond in a fairly serious manner I'd fully endorse their actions.

    :heart:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    piccolo wrote: »
    The question was about this video, which doesn't prove anything.

    I know the police can behave very badly at mass protests, I'm sure they use undercover officers in all sorts of ways and those officers don't always act as observers or peacekeepers, I don't dispute any of that. But this video proves none of it.
    Only I didn't say that the video proves it... I said that police have historically used it as a tactic.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Anarchists demonstrating against a smaller state and public sector... Whoda thunk it??

    Yeah I know and the vast majority protested peacefully. As usual, middle-to-upper class wannabe trots and the rent-a-mob spoiled it for everyone else.
    Anarchists or trots? ???

    I know maybe I should start another thread on this... But what are people's views on UKUncut being tricked in to arrest?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Is the state getting smaller? You could have fooled me.

    All that's happening is the state is staying the same size, but instead of the state owning the infrastructure some cunt from Lockheed Martin or Crapita is instead.

    Sounds like the state getting smaller to me... Well, actually what you wrote sounds like privatisation which, as we all know, kinda sits between both. And, with retrospect, was probably a bad idea.
    As for the public sector shrinking, not really. It's just that instead of having secure jobs with the Government, they're getting to do the same work for less pay and less protection so some cunt from Jarvis can cream up a fuck-off huge profit-driven bonus.

    Secure doesn't cover the half of it. Thank God the Hutton report called the death knell for final-salary pensions in the public sector, which, as the Beeb's graph here nicely illustrates, will only cost us more every year it runs.
    As for the "terrible violence", smashing up bank property is not violence, it's making a valid political point. Smashing up bank directors would be violence. And, hand on heart, if someone wanted to smash up Bob Diamond in a fairly serious manner I'd fully endorse their actions.

    Can't find where I mentioned "terrible violence" but hey ho.

    I know how vitriolic you can get on these things, so I'll let it slide, with just a small reference to the power of peaceful protests in the past and what it has achieved; Ghandi and MLK for starters.
    Namaste wrote:
    Anarchists or trots? ???

    I know maybe I should start another thread on this... But what are people's views on UKUncut being tricked in to arrest?

    Wannabe trots are generally the middle-class ones who come down to London town for a jolly radical time and play a being Ches for the day. Such as this clown.

    Anarchists were the ones hurling petrol bombs, paint bombs, light bulbs filled with ammonia, that sort of thing.

    As for UKUncut, I'm sure their hearts are in the right place but their heads are clearly up their arses. For starters, F&M is owned, ultimately, by the Garfield Weston Foundation who, according to the Charity Commission, donated just shy of £35m in 2010 to various good causes, out of an income of £60m, making it one of the largest charitable foundations operating in the UK. Booo, evil Tories! Nasty party, hiss!

    If, as UKUncut stated in their press releases, they want to protest against tax avoidance, they could have done a lot worse than protest at the offices of the mouthpiece they so often use to trumpet their half-baked ideas, the Guardian (or, more correctly, the parent Group; Guardian Media Group). GMG is one of Britain's shrewdest tax avoiders, as has been covered by Private Eye and Guido Fawkes for years. Example? Well, 2008 was a bumper year - GMG made £306.4m before tax. How much did they cough up to the taxman? £800k. Source

    Or would that be biting the hand that feeds? The way I see it, either UKUncut didn't do their research, or they just thought F&M is where all Tories do their weekly shop and put a frankly very tenuous coating on what I see as nothing but class hatred / envy.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Secure doesn't cover the half of it. Thank God the Hutton report called the death knell for final-salary pensions in the public sector, which, as the Beeb's graph here nicely illustrates, will only cost us more every year it runs.

    Public sector workers generally earn less throughout their careers, so I don't see why they shouldn't get better perks and protection in lieu of the extra pay.

    I'm not referring to the senior managers who name their own salaries, I'm referring to the people on the shopfloor, the people who do the actual work, the people who are suffering from the redundancies and the cuts to pensions. There are major issues with senior management in local and national government getting their friends, under the guise of a "pay commission", to give them telephone number salaries. But they're not the people who are being squeezed, their gravy train is carrying straight on. But that's no different to the private sector.
    I know how vitriolic you can get on these things, so I'll let it slide, with just a small reference to the power of peaceful protests in the past and what it has achieved; Ghandi and MLK for starters.

    I don't know about vitriol. Given how many lives the likes of Fred Goodwin have ruined, and how they a) don't care and b) aren't being punished, I honestly wouldn't have any problem at all with a bit of mob justice. If someone wanted to illustrate the problems of banking to Bob Diamond by stringing him from a lamp-post, I'm not sure that I'd shed a single tear. Maybe I should, maybe it makes me a bad person, I don't know. People are executed in many countries for ruining fewer lives than what they have done, I don't see why someone like Goodwin shouldn't be executed for what he did. I'm not against the death penalty for people who are clearly guilty, and he's clearly guilty of destroying millions of lives and being culpable for thousands of suicides due to the financial meltdown he caused.

    However peaceful protest is better than unpeaceful protest, I completely agree.

    But as Nelson Mandela proved, sometimes a bit of unpeaceful protest is what you need to get things done.

    As for the rest of your post, the fact that you've quoted the Daily Mail and Paul fucking Staines illustrates your agenda really quite nicely. There's no discussion of the police indulging in a little bit of political policing against the people in Fortnum and Mason, who were protesting peacefully. Instead there's a Daily Heil diatribe and some drivel about the Guardian Media Group.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Wannabe trots are generally the middle-class ones who come down to London town for a jolly radical time and play a being Ches for the day. Such as this clown.

    Anarchists were the ones hurling petrol bombs, paint bombs, light bulbs filled with ammonia, that sort of thing..
    I don't see how that guy is a trot... The article even says most people weren't of his privilidge... Are you saying middle class people aren't allowed to get involved with demonstrations? :confused:

    On one hand, you're accusing activists of class envy, on the other hand, you're using "middle class" as an insult.

    I was actually asking about the police arrest, rather than the group itself. The Garfield Weston Foundation may give to charity, but they also donate to right wing think tanks (and the Tories). There are several targets UKUncut could go for and they have and will in the future. I don't disagree that other... In fact, all tax dodgers should be held accountable.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Public sector workers generally earn less throughout their careers, so I don't see why they shouldn't get better perks and protection in lieu of the extra pay.
    The average pension in my sector, for somebody on my level who had worked all their life (DWP) was £5K a year on top of state pension.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Public sector workers generally earn less throughout their careers, so I don't see why they shouldn't get better perks and protection in lieu of the extra pay.
    The average pension in my sector, for somebody on my level who had worked all their life (DWP) was £5K a year on top of state pension.

    So a single person, who has just retired will be on around £10K.

    Greedy bastard.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Wannabe trots are generally the middle-class ones who come down to London town for a jolly radical time and play a being Ches for the day. Such as this clown.
    Gotta get in the good books of the protesters. Otherwise when the revolution comes, his type will be first against the wall. ;)
    Or would that be biting the hand that feeds? The way I see it, either UKUncut didn't do their research, or they just thought F&M is where all Tories do their weekly shop and put a frankly very tenuous coating on what I see as nothing but class hatred / envy.
    I know it's your firmly held belief that anyone favouring a more progressive tax system is automatically doing it out of envy, but I can assure you it's not true. I don't think it requires envy or class hatred to demand the closure of loopholes that are used in a way that is clearly against the spirit of the tax system (any more than it is class hatred to want to close loopholes that allow people to abuse the benefit system). If you want a system in which the extremely wealthy pay tiny amounts as do big companies, then get out there and campaign for it, but do it honestly. What people object to is a system where we're told that X is the rate for high earners and Y is the rate for corporations, and then find out that neither are paying anything like that amount, because of the various loopholes put in place and quietly condoned by politicians.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I know it's your firmly held belief that anyone favouring a more progressive tax system is automatically doing it out of envy, but I can assure you it's not true.

    That's me convinced then.
    I don't think it requires envy or class hatred to demand the closure of loopholes that are used in a way that is clearly against the spirit of the tax system (any more than it is class hatred to want to close loopholes that allow people to abuse the benefit system).

    Spirit ?

    I would have thought someone who usually lauds the secular would see the tax system as a set of rules which,of course, it is.

    If, however,that "spirit" was investigated you would find that the framers/rewriters of the system (circa 2003) encouraged taxpayers to arrange their affairs in such a way as to minimise the amount of tax according to the rules just as the revenue collectors will do likewise to maximise the grab. (Their words not mine).
    If you want a system in which the extremely wealthy pay tiny amounts as do big companies, then get out there and campaign for it, but do it honestly.

    Conversely, honesty would see the supporters of a so-called progressive taxation calling for 100% tax (the ultimate in progression).
    What people object to is a system where we're told that X is the rate for high earners and Y is the rate for corporations, and then find out that neither are paying anything like that amount, because of the various loopholes put in place and quietly condoned by politicians.

    To give you the benefit of the doubt, your derogatory term (loophole) could apply to both additions to or omissions from the rules.

    If it is an addition then it is there in black and white for all to see. Whether you make use of that addition is a choice for you to make. ISAs, National Savings, Personal Allowances, Welfare Benefits etc, etc

    If however you are going to include omissions from the rules then you are open to a call of being disingenuous. The list is almost endless.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    To give you the benefit of the doubt, your derogatory term (loophole)


    Seriously? You're going there?

    Historically a loophole was an arrowslit for archers to fire through making it impossible to fire back at them. I can see where an impossibly PC mind might suddenly jump to the conclusion that it must mean the hangman's noose, but it doesn't.

    ;)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Spirit ?

    I would have thought someone who usually lauds the secular would see the tax system as a set of rules which,of course, it is.

    LOL. You're such a Jesus-face. I bet people referring to music as "having soul" sends you positively spasmodic.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Namaste wrote: »
    Only I didn't say that the video proves it... I said that police have historically used it as a tactic.

    Wasn't arguing with you, just explaining myself :)

    Incidentally, the Guardian footage showing what seems to be barefaced lying and illegitimate arrest of UK Uncut members is really fucking worrying.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    piccolo wrote: »
    Wasn't arguing with you, just explaining myself :)

    Incidentally, the Guardian footage showing what seems to be barefaced lying and illegitimate arrest of UK Uncut members is really fucking worrying.

    All arrests shown on Youtube e.t.c look illegitimate to those who aren't in the job. I caught a shoplifter a little while back and ended up taking him to the floor very roughly. To a casual observer it would have looked illegitimate and over the top. But then, he was trying to stab me with a syringe and doing what i did was the only way to stop him doing it.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Whowhere wrote: »
    All arrests shown on Youtube e.t.c look illegitimate to those who aren't in the job. I caught a shoplifter a little while back and ended up taking him to the floor very roughly. To a casual observer it would have looked illegitimate and over the top. But then, he was trying to stab me with a syringe and doing what i did was the only way to stop him doing it.
    I don't see how the UKUncut video, of the police telling protesters they won't be arrested if they go outside, can have been twisted, unless they hired actors to play the cops. It was a video from a legal association.

    Sorry mate... There are some good cops, but plenty of scum as well.
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