“Londoners set to launch occupation in the heart of the city’s financial centre on Saturday 15th October, as part of a global movement for real democracy”

Set to fail from the outset when the protesters fail to note the difference between the locations of parliament and the city eh?

aside from the the bizarre (to my mind) claims about “real democracy”* what I find strange here, is this: “It aims to open a dialogue on reforming finance and government so that each better serve and protect the interests and well being of the 99%.”

Since the financial crisis hit, gallons of ink have been spilled on the topic of how to reform finance and how the government could do things differently. We’ve had commissions, seminars, workshops etc. And they want to start a dialogue about it? What is this dialogue going to look like, and once we’ve got it, how will it differ from everything that has already taken place?

* if you think real democracy means doing whatever which campaigning group that shouts loudest wants, careful what you wish for.

I like the idea of occupying the stock exchange on the day the stock exchange is closed. Shows a real appetite for danger that.

Especially as we don’t actually have a “stock exchange”, in the sense of a trading floor or anything. The place you’re meeting is where the admin offices are.

They will call for real democracy by demanding a financial transaction tax to be implemented by an undemocratic institution called the European Union, in the process handing over another chunk of sovereignty….its ironic.

The real issues of unsustainable government borrowing and market involvement, you know all those government actions that created the sub-prime mortgage disaster,these issues wont see the light of day.

Remind me what was the cause of the financial crisis again?

Oh yes, that would be a debt fuelled mortgage bubble and too much government debt.

It’s all well and good bashing bankers (an industry which pays billions in tax) but when are the people who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford or the governments continually overspending going to take some of the blame??

@3

I like the idea of occupying the stock exchange on the day the stock exchange is closed. Shows a real appetite for danger that.

Generally occupations, by definition, are intended to last longer than an afternoon. The Occupy Wall Street protests started on a Saturday, and remain there over three weeks later.

Especially as we don’t actually have a “stock exchange”, in the sense of a trading floor or anything. The place you’re meeting is where the admin offices are.

Fascinating.

Paul Krugman skewers the critics of Occupy Wall Street very nicely here
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/opinion/panic-of-the-plutocrats.html

“Generally occupations, by definition, are intended to last longer than an afternoon. ”

Rilly?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article515384.ece

“WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail.

What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.

“We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.”

Another said: “I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.” Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: “Sod off, Swampy.”

Greenpeace had hoped to paralyse oil trading at the exchange in the City near Tower Bridge on the day that the Kyoto Protocol came into force. “The Kyoto Protocol has modest aims to improve the climate and we need huge aims,” a spokesman said.

Protesters conceded that mounting the operation after lunch may not have been the best plan. “The violence was instant,” Jon Beresford, 39, an electrical engineer from Nottingham, said.

“They grabbed us and started kicking and punching. Then when we were on the floor they tried to push huge filing cabinets on top of us to crush us.””

Perhaps best to do it where there are no traders on a day that no traders trade then, eh?

fwiw, I’m quite happy with blaming “bankers”, as a first approximation, for the crash, and I applaud anything that keeps up the pressure on the government to reform the financial sector, lessen the impact of the recession on the worst-off etc. etc.

I just found “our aim is to open a dialogue” a curiously insipid claim with no content.

Erm, how exactly do you plan to occupy a full electronic stock exchange? You going to try waving placards at the techies who are maintaining a data centre? America is weird in that they still have a trade floor. No such thing exists in the UK any more.

To my mind, any kind of disruptive protest should be smart and focused. As such, it’s hard to see the point in occupying the stock exchange as the equity markets had very little to do with the credit crisis. Near total ignorance has never stopped protests before, I admit.

The article by Paul Krugman linked to above is full of insults and political invective but his substantive point – that the finance sector doesn’t like the truth told to it – is largely Krugman’s assertion rather than fact. (That he has spent time finding evidence to sneer at his political opponents rather than finding evidence to prove his argument suggests much.)

And as we see on these pages time after time, when it comes to finance the Left has fallen into the trap not of telling truth to power, but telling garbage to power.