Cameron, clarified from …bert on Vimeo.
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“Trespassing scum”
HMRC boss Dave Hartnett is the man responsible for cutting dodgy deals with Vodafone, Goldman Sachs and other large corporations that have cost the taxpayer billions in lost revenue.
When we discovered that he was making his retirement speech at an elite tax avoidance conference, we couldn’t resist popping in. We donned our best Goldman Sachs and Vodafone costumes, bought some flowers and knocked up a fake award. This is what happened.
They do not like it up them, do they? Kudos for making these scroungers feel uncomfortable, even if it won’t stop them from stealing more. Not that you can call it stealing of course; everything Hartnett did for his corporate friends was strictly legal, while what those beastly protestors did was not. In this way ruling class violence is legitamised while most things the working classes can do to protect themselves against it are ruled illegal.
Consider. That twentyfive billion pounds Hartnett has given away isn’t just an abstract amount, it’s twentyfive billion less that the UK government has had to spent on social benefits or the NHS. Which means that there may have been benefit cuts that didn’t need to have happened if Hartnell had done his job, or hospital investments that didn’t happen because he couldn’t be bothered, which means that sooner or later people have died who’d still be alive without this theft. Of course those deaths can never be directly linked to his actions and perhaps it only means several thousand people’s lives on benefits will be just that little bit worse off, or people will be just that little bit longer ill than they had needed to be. But in no way can Hartnell be ever held responsible for this, as no justice system on earth ever recognises this sort of violence, just the violence of the protestor who “tresspasses” to confront him with his actions.
Which is why we should always be very careful before we decide as activists to be bound by the justice system and laws that have been designed to make their kind of violence possible, but our kind of confrontation illegal.
George Osborne gets a small taste of what he deserves
The Paralympics must be the worst place to show your face if you’re the person who decided to start hounding disabled people off welfare and who cared if they died because of it.
Zeitgeist
it’s kind of funny that in this day and age we’re supposed to respond negatively to seeing thousands of policemen imprisoned, prisoners jailed over unfairly harsh sentencing laws released, and the rich being publicly executed. I can’t be the only one who applauded when Bane stormed Gotham’s Bastille, or when the rich were being lined up for sentencing. I am sure the scene at the Gotham stock exchange was conceived as something that was supposed to make the audience uncomfortable by sympathizing with Bane’s actions – but I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all.
How not to report on the Aurora Colorado cinema killings
In the aftermath of the cinema shooting in Aurora, Colorado, this piece from a three year old episode of Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe is again relevant for how to help prevent copycat killing sprees.