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Half a million people march in London to stop the cuts. 26.03.2011
The Trades Union Congress' (TUC) "March for the Alternative" today saw the streets of Central London choked solid with at least half a million Public Sector employees, Disability Rights and anti-war groups, students and many others who had travelled from the furthest corners of Great Britain to send a clarion call to the Cameron government that people are not going to idly stand by and silently watch Cameron and his chancellor George Osborne destroy the very heart of British Public Services for nothing more than archetypical right-wing ideology.
Huge, swingeing cuts across the entire range of Public Services by the Conservatives are designed to hand over control of the most vital state welfare functions to greedy, profit-driven, completely unaccountable private companies and to break the collective bargaining power and influence of the Trades Unions, whose members are being laid off by the tens of thousands under the premise of saving the economy which was almost destroyed by the same bankers and hedge-fund managers who now sit on Conservative government advisory panels.
The carnival-atmosphere march slowly threaded its way towards Hyde Park where rousing speeches by assorted Trades Union representatives sent out a call for concerted action to fight every single cut every step of the way, and to protect our vital services from Conservative dogma, which only favours the already-wealthy at the expense of the disposable poor and weak.
To date not a single banker has been tried and imprisoned for their outrageous, fraudulent and undoubtedly dishonest (if not illegal) practices leading directly to the crash of 2008 - a situation which could never have occured if the Financial Services Industry was firmly regulated by government. Tragically in the last thirty years the banks and their equally-greedy doppelgangers running the hedge funds have connived with supine Parliamentarians to dismantle huge swathes of vital regulation put in place by previous governments... such regulatory checks and balances being labelled as a massive hinderance which stopped the banks from making obscene, unfettered profit, albeit fraudulent.
Instead we now see the bankers picking up exactly where they left off, absolutely unapologetic, giving themselves billions of pounds in bonuses whilst the poorest in our midst are having essential support and benefits axed as the Conservatives brazenly use the compliant Murdoch press to demonize the poor and the disabled, labelling them all as mere fraudsters and parasites.
Eleswhere, predictably, the usual cohort of violent "Anarchists" - many seemingly associated with University College Union - wrought their usual havoc along Oxford Street, parts of the West End and Piccadilly, targetting businesses run by companies publicly exposed by whistleblowers as using massive, complex, completely opaque tax avoidance schemes in Tax Havens - and doing illegal "sweetheart" deals with the Inland Revenue to avoid paying their fair share of corporation taxes, which, if they were forced to do so would pay this country's deficit off without public services being axed. Cameron and Osborne choose instead to protect this immoral status-quo, which is unsurprising - the Cabinet reportedly contains 14 multi-millionaires, and the revolving door between government and bank directorships is both insidious and notorious.
The anarchists smashed windows, threw paint bombs and fireworks and had running battles with the police across Central London, and, much to the fury of the grown-ups has poisoned the moral high ground which was being gently but brilliantly occupied by UK Uncut with their humorous, pacific occupations of the same premises where they have in the past set up temporary libraries, hospitals and creches in their intelligently organised grass-roots campaigns to shame the government to force companies to pay their dues.
Sadly the anarchists' aggressive direct-action (and the thousands of adrenaline-inducing photographs of their actions which will now completely dominate the national dialogue for weeks) instantly and conveniently paves the way for the Cameron government to impose severe restrictions on public protests and the right to assemble in the future. Costs, budgets and the need to "protect legitimate businesses from mindless criminal attack" will be the reasons given. Many people suspect that the anarchist groups contain deep-cover police and/or MI5 officers who are also maybe agent provocateurs, sometimes leading the violence. This can no longer be instantly dismissed as mere conspiracy theory as recent discoveries of police infiltration and manipulation of peace campaign groups (including the Quakers) over the last decade have now been proven in court, and discussed in Parliament.
Though people are clearly very, very angry with the Tories and their outright election lies which got their grasping fingers on the levers of power, and it is completely understandable that many feel that politely marching up the road in truth achieves absolutely nothing (which fact was openly displayed on this evening's National News by a stone-faced Treasury spokeswoman who stated flatly and repeatedly that today's huge march would not make the slightest bit of difference to their intentions, whether it was half a million or ten million marchers), I have chosen nevertheless to honour the dedication and peaceful political expression of those hundreds of thousands of concerned, threatened citizens from every walk of life who gathered today to express their political will, whose efforts have been smeared by a mindless, immature minority of thugs - and the media which is now having a gleeful feeding frenzy on the violence which gives them carte blanche to totally ignore the powerful message delivered to David Cameron by the peaceful marchers.
Enjoy the carnival...
All photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not use my images without my permission
STUDENTS DayX3 NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION
Protest and march against University tuition fee increases, 09th Dec. 2010
Over 20,000 students from around the country converged on Central London today to march for a third time to protest against the coalition government's plans to
massively increase University tuition fees, which will ultimately mean that far fewer students from poorer backgrounds will be able to even consider a University
education because of the massive debts incurred which will follow them for the rest of their working lives.
I joined the days proceedings in the afternoon as they were assembling in Trafalgar Square. To throw the police off-guard they suddenly took off, en mass, through
Admiralty Arch in a bid to get to Parliament Square, which had been forbidden. That evening the House of Commons was voting on the Education Funding Bill, and the
students were determined to make sure that Parliament heard their protests.
The day started in a good mood, but by the time they reached Parliament pockets of disorder had started breaking out - Flares were lit and thrown, crush barriers and
construction site fencing ripped up to be used as weapons against the massed ranks of riot police and later on the mounted police. I had to leave by around 3pm, and by
the time I got home and turned on the BBC news all hell had broken loose outside Parliament. Protesters were pelting the police with lumps of masonry, metal poles and
scaffolding. They lit large fires, broke down the doors to The Treasury and the new Ministry of Justice buildings, smashing many windows, daubing graffiti everywhere
and generally smashing up the joint. Many people were arrested and many people hurt, some badly.
As the police gradually started releasing the by-now contained protesters in small numbers, several small groups headed up to Oxford Street, where they smashed the
windows of the flagship TopShop store (owned by Sir Phillip Green who is being attacked for shovelling billions of pounds of what should be UK taxable income into tax
haven accounts owned by his wife as part of a legal tax dodge), and in Regent Street they engulfed the Bentley containing Prince Charles and his horse-faced wife
Camilla who were in the process of swanning orf the the Royal Variety Performance! The protesters started kicking the vehicle. They broke the windows and threw a tin of
white paint over the car. One was not amused!
Needless to say the Bill was passed in Parliament tonight, and the students have vowed to continue their campaign of demonstration and civil disobedience...
All photos ⓒ Pete Riches
Please do not use my photos without my prior agreement.
Please do not re-blog my photos without my agreement.
Email: peteriches@gmail.com
Continued : Half a million people march in London to stop the cuts. 26.03.2011
Last weekend the TUC's "March for the Alternative" demonstration saw Central London streets packed with half a million Public Sector employees, Disability Rights and anti-war groups, students and many others angry at government cuts. As we all know the day's events were completely stolen by the selfish, cretinous actions of a couple of hundred juvenile "Anarchists" who used the day's events as cover to cause havoc all over Central London, attacking shops, businesses and the police for no reason other than jealousy, sociopathy and a desire to cause criminal damage. These are football thugs by any other name, no more, no less.
The so-called Anarchists claim they are fighting back against Capitalism, the Establishment and all Agents of the State - the Police, especially - and are doing what they do to show that they are not Slaves to the State or the Corporations, yet they are the first to complain if they think that someone has behaved illegally towards them like the immature children they are. I don't know if they can see the irony in organising their raids by Blackberry, Android phones and Twitter, but I can't help feeling that if someone attacked them in the street and stole their precious smartphones off them before kicking the living crap out of them they'd be crying and wailing all the way to the nearest police station to report the crime and wait there until Daddy comes to pick them up in the Range Rover...
The truth is that they are nothing more than Useful Idiots, serving the propaganda purposes of the very Corporations which they claim to detest, and if they had any vision beyond their aggressive juvenile male urge to smash the place up and piss on all the lamp posts to mark their fictitious territory, they'd maybe understand that they will always fail. You change large systems from within, and it takes time and intelligence, and the ability to win hearts and minds. At the moment in this country there are several million working and lower middle-class people fighting for their very survival at the hands of this ideology-driven right-wing government, and what they don't need are these utter morons robbing them of their huge public display of moral and social unity.
Predictably the Media the next week was awash with pornographic photos of Useful Idiots smashing bank windows and other Useful idiots throwing paintbombs at the police, and to all intents and puposes the half a million people who marched that day should have saved all the precious money they wasted hiring coaches, getting trains, driving down to London, because these Useful Idiots made a mockery of their aspirations as working class people.
As far as I'm concerned the tedious, unintelligent Black Bloc and Red Sky "anarchists" are as much our enemy as the Banks and Hedge Funds.
All photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not use my photos without my permission
Half a million people march in London to stop the cuts. 26.03.2011
The Trades Union Congress' (TUC) "March for the Alternative" today saw the streets of Central London choked solid with at least half a million Public Sector employees, Disability Rights and anti-war groups, students and many others who had travelled from the furthest corners of Great Britain to send a clarion call to the Cameron government that people are not going to idly stand by and silently watch Cameron and his chancellor George Osborne destroy the very heart of British Public Services for nothing more than archetypical right-wing ideology.
Huge, swingeing cuts across the entire range of Public Services by the Conservatives are designed to hand over control of the most vital state welfare functions to greedy, profit-driven, completely unaccountable private companies and to break the collective bargaining power and influence of the Trades Unions, whose members are being laid off by the tens of thousands under the premise of saving the economy which was almost destroyed by the same bankers and hedge-fund managers who now sit on Conservative government advisory panels.
The carnival-atmosphere march slowly threaded its way towards Hyde Park where rousing speeches by assorted Trades Union representatives sent out a call for concerted action to fight every single cut every step of the way, and to protect our vital services from Conservative dogma, which only favours the already-wealthy at the expense of the disposable poor and weak.
To date not a single banker has been tried and imprisoned for their outrageous, fraudulent and undoubtedly dishonest (if not illegal) practices leading directly to the crash of 2008 - a situation which could never have occured if the Financial Services Industry was firmly regulated by government. Tragically in the last thirty years the banks and their equally-greedy doppelgangers running the hedge funds have connived with supine Parliamentarians to dismantle huge swathes of vital regulation put in place by previous governments... such regulatory checks and balances being labelled as a massive hinderance which stopped the banks from making obscene, unfettered profit, albeit fraudulent.
Instead we now see the bankers picking up exactly where they left off, absolutely unapologetic, giving themselves billions of pounds in bonuses whilst the poorest in our midst are having essential support and benefits axed as the Conservatives brazenly use the compliant Murdoch press to demonize the poor and the disabled, labelling them all as mere fraudsters and parasites.
Eleswhere, predictably, the usual cohort of violent "Anarchists" - many seemingly associated with University College Union - wrought their usual havoc along Oxford Street, parts of the West End and Piccadilly, targetting businesses run by companies publicly exposed by whistleblowers as using massive, complex, completely opaque tax avoidance schemes in Tax Havens - and doing illegal "sweetheart" deals with the Inland Revenue to avoid paying their fair share of corporation taxes, which, if they were forced to do so would pay this country's deficit off without public services being axed. Cameron and Osborne choose instead to protect this immoral status-quo, which is unsurprising - the Cabinet reportedly contains 14 multi-millionaires, and the revolving door between government and bank directorships is both insidious and notorious.
The anarchists smashed windows, threw paint bombs and fireworks and had running battles with the police across Central London, and, much to the fury of the grown-ups has poisoned the moral high ground which was being gently but brilliantly occupied by UK Uncut with their humorous, pacific occupations of the same premises where they have in the past set up temporary libraries, hospitals and creches in their intelligently organised grass-roots campaigns to shame the government to force companies to pay their dues.
Sadly the anarchists' aggressive direct-action (and the thousands of adrenaline-inducing photographs of their actions which will now completely dominate the national dialogue for weeks) instantly and conveniently paves the way for the Cameron government to impose severe restrictions on public protests and the right to assemble in the future. Costs, budgets and the need to "protect legitimate businesses from mindless criminal attack" will be the reasons given. Many people suspect that the anarchist groups contain deep-cover police and/or MI5 officers who are also maybe agent provocateurs, sometimes leading the violence. This can no longer be instantly dismissed as mere conspiracy theory as recent discoveries of police infiltration and manipulation of peace campaign groups (including the Quakers) over the last decade have now been proven in court, and discussed in Parliament.
Though people are clearly very, very angry with the Tories and their outright election lies which got their grasping fingers on the levers of power, and it is completely understandable that many feel that politely marching up the road in truth achieves absolutely nothing (which fact was openly displayed on this evening's National News by a stone-faced Treasury spokeswoman who stated flatly and repeatedly that today's huge march would not make the slightest bit of difference to their intentions, whether it was half a million or ten million marchers), I have chosen nevertheless to honour the dedication and peaceful political expression of those hundreds of thousands of concerned, threatened citizens from every walk of life who gathered today to express their political will, whose efforts have been smeared by a mindless, immature minority of thugs - and the media which is now having a gleeful feeding frenzy on the violence which gives them carte blanche to totally ignore the powerful message delivered to David Cameron by the peaceful marchers.
Enjoy the carnival...
All photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not use my images without my permission
STUDENTS Day X3 NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION
Protest and march against University tuition fee increases, 09th Dec. 2010
Over 20,000 students from around the country converged on Central London today to march for a third time to protest against the coalition government's plans to
massively increase University tuition fees, which will ultimately mean that far fewer students from poorer backgrounds will be able to even consider a University
education because of the massive debts incurred which will follow them for the rest of their working lives.
I joined the days proceedings in the afternoon as they were assembling in Trafalgar Square. To throw the police off-guard they suddenly took off, en mass, through
Admiralty Arch in a bid to get to Parliament Square, which had been forbidden. That evening the House of Commons was voting on the Education Funding Bill, and the
students were determined to make sure that Parliament heard their protests.
The day started in a good mood, but by the time they reached Parliament pockets of disorder had started breaking out - Flares were lit and thrown, crush barriers and
construction site fencing ripped up to be used as weapons against the massed ranks of riot police and later on the mounted police. I had to leave by around 3pm, and by
the time I got home and turned on the BBC news all hell had broken loose outside Parliament. Protesters were pelting the police with lumps of masonry, metal poles and
scaffolding. They lit large fires, broke down the doors to The Treasury and the new Ministry of Justice buildings, smashing many windows, daubing graffiti everywhere
and generally smashing up the joint. Many people were arrested and many people hurt, some badly.
As the police gradually started releasing the by-now contained protesters in small numbers, several small groups headed up to Oxford Street, where they smashed the
windows of the flagship TopShop store (owned by Sir Phillip Green who is being attacked for shovelling billions of pounds of what should be UK taxable income into tax
haven accounts owned by his wife as part of a legal tax dodge), and in Regent Street they engulfed the Bentley containing Prince Charles and his horse-faced wife
Camilla who were in the process of swanning orf the the Royal Variety Performance! The protesters started kicking the vehicle. They broke the windows and threw a tin of
white paint over the car. One was not amused!
Needless to say the Bill was passed in Parliament tonight, and the students have vowed to continue their campaign of demonstration and civil disobedience...
All photos ⓒ Pete Riches
Please do not use my photos without my prior agreement.
Please do not re-blog my photos without my agreement.
Email: peteriches@gmail.com
Half a million people march in London to stop the cuts. 26.03.2011
The Trades Union Congress' (TUC) "March for the Alternative" today saw the streets of Central London choked solid with at least half a million Public Sector employees, Disability Rights and anti-war groups, students and many others who had travelled from the furthest corners of Great Britain to send a clarion call to the Cameron government that people are not going to idly stand by and silently watch Cameron and his chancellor George Osborne destroy the very heart of British Public Services for nothing more than archetypical right-wing ideology.
Huge, swingeing cuts across the entire range of Public Services by the Conservatives are designed to hand over control of the most vital state welfare functions to greedy, profit-driven, completely unaccountable private companies and to break the collective bargaining power and influence of the Trades Unions, whose members are being laid off by the tens of thousands under the premise of saving the economy which was almost destroyed by the same bankers and hedge-fund managers who now sit on Conservative government advisory panels.
The carnival-atmosphere march slowly threaded its way towards Hyde Park where rousing speeches by assorted Trades Union representatives sent out a call for concerted action to fight every single cut every step of the way, and to protect our vital services from Conservative dogma, which only favours the already-wealthy at the expense of the disposable poor and weak.
To date not a single banker has been tried and imprisoned for their outrageous, fraudulent and undoubtedly dishonest (if not illegal) practices leading directly to the crash of 2008 - a situation which could never have occured if the Financial Services Industry was firmly regulated by government. Tragically in the last thirty years the banks and their equally-greedy doppelgangers running the hedge funds have connived with supine Parliamentarians to dismantle huge swathes of vital regulation put in place by previous governments... such regulatory checks and balances being labelled as a massive hinderance which stopped the banks from making obscene, unfettered profit, albeit fraudulent.
Instead we now see the bankers picking up exactly where they left off, absolutely unapologetic, giving themselves billions of pounds in bonuses whilst the poorest in our midst are having essential support and benefits axed as the Conservatives brazenly use the compliant Murdoch press to demonize the poor and the disabled, labelling them all as mere fraudsters and parasites.
Eleswhere, predictably, the usual cohort of violent "Anarchists" - many seemingly associated with University College Union - wrought their usual havoc along Oxford Street, parts of the West End and Piccadilly, targetting businesses run by companies publicly exposed by whistleblowers as using massive, complex, completely opaque tax avoidance schemes in Tax Havens - and doing illegal "sweetheart" deals with the Inland Revenue to avoid paying their fair share of corporation taxes, which, if they were forced to do so would pay this country's deficit off without public services being axed. Cameron and Osborne choose instead to protect this immoral status-quo, which is unsurprising - the Cabinet reportedly contains 14 multi-millionaires, and the revolving door between government and bank directorships is both insidious and notorious.
The anarchists smashed windows, threw paint bombs and fireworks and had running battles with the police across Central London, and, much to the fury of the grown-ups has poisoned the moral high ground which was being gently but brilliantly occupied by UK Uncut with their humorous, pacific occupations of the same premises where they have in the past set up temporary libraries, hospitals and creches in their intelligently organised grass-roots campaigns to shame the government to force companies to pay their dues.
Sadly the anarchists' aggressive direct-action (and the thousands of adrenaline-inducing photographs of their actions which will now completely dominate the national dialogue for weeks) instantly and conveniently paves the way for the Cameron government to impose severe restrictions on public protests and the right to assemble in the future. Costs, budgets and the need to "protect legitimate businesses from mindless criminal attack" will be the reasons given. Many people suspect that the anarchist groups contain deep-cover police and/or MI5 officers who are also maybe agent provocateurs, sometimes leading the violence. This can no longer be instantly dismissed as mere conspiracy theory as recent discoveries of police infiltration and manipulation of peace campaign groups (including the Quakers) over the last decade have now been proven in court, and discussed in Parliament.
Though people are clearly very, very angry with the Tories and their outright election lies which got their grasping fingers on the levers of power, and it is completely understandable that many feel that politely marching up the road in truth achieves absolutely nothing (which fact was openly displayed on this evening's National News by a stone-faced Treasury spokeswoman who stated flatly and repeatedly that today's huge march would not make the slightest bit of difference to their intentions, whether it was half a million or ten million marchers), I have chosen nevertheless to honour the dedication and peaceful political expression of those hundreds of thousands of concerned, threatened citizens from every walk of life who gathered today to express their political will, whose efforts have been smeared by a mindless, immature minority of thugs - and the media which is now having a gleeful feeding frenzy on the violence which gives them carte blanche to totally ignore the powerful message delivered to David Cameron by the peaceful marchers.
Enjoy the carnival...
All photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not use my images without my permission
STUDENTS DayX3 NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION (Part 2)
Protest and march against University tuition fee increases, 09th Dec. 2010
Over 20,000 students from around the country converged on Central London today to march for a third time to protest against the coalition government's plans to massively increase University tuition fees, which will ultimately mean that far fewer students from poorer backgrounds will be able to even consider a University education because of the massive debts incurred which will follow them for the rest of their working lives.
I joined the days proceedings in the afternoon as they were assembling in Trafalgar Square. To throw the police off-guard they suddenly took off, en mass, through Admiralty Arch in a bid to get to Parliament Square, which had been forbidden. That evening the House of Commons was voting on the Education Funding Bill, and the students were determined to make sure that Parliament heard their protests.
The day started in a good mood, but by the time they reached Parliament pockets of disorder had started breaking out - Flares were lit and thrown, crush barriers and construction site fencing ripped up to be used as weapons against the massed ranks of riot police and later on the mounted police. I had to leave by around 3pm, and by the time I got home and turned on the BBC news all hell had broken loose outside Parliament. Protesters were pelting the police with lumps of masonry, metal poles and scaffolding. They lit large fires, broke down the doors to The Treasury and the new Ministry of Justice buildings, smashing many windows, daubing graffiti everywhere and generally smashing up the joint. Many people were arrested and many people hurt, some badly.
As the police gradually started releasing the by-now contained protesters in small numbers, several small groups headed up to Oxford Street, where they smashed the windows of the flagship TopShop store (owned by Sir Phillip Green who is being attacked for shovelling billions of pounds of what should be UK taxable income into tax haven accounts owned by his wife as part of a legal tax dodge), and in Regent Street they engulfed the Bentley containing Prince Charles and his horse-faced wife Camilla who were in the process of swanning orf the the Royal Variety Performance! The protesters started kicking the vehicle. They broke the windows and threw a tin of white paint over the car. One was not amused!
Needless to say the Bill was passed in Parliament tonight, and the students have vowed to continue their campaign of demonstration and civil disobedience...
All photos ⓒ Pete Riches
Please do not use my photos without my prior agreement.
Please do not re-blog my photos without my agreement.
Email: peteriches@gmail.com
Continued : Half a million people march in London to stop the cuts. 26.03.2011
This large photo set celebrates the hundreds of thousands of decent, peaceful people who put so much effort into the best march you never saw...
Last weekend the TUC's "March for the Alternative" demonstration saw Central London streets packed with half a million Public Sector employees, Disability Rights and anti-war groups, students and many others angry at government cuts. As we all know the day's events were completely stolen by the selfish, cretinous actions of a couple of hundred juvenile "Anarchists" who used the day's events as cover to cause havoc all over Central London, attacking shops, businesses and the police for no reason other than jealousy, sociopathy and a desire to cause criminal damage. These are football thugs by any other name, no more, no less.
The so-called Anarchists claim they are fighting back against Capitalism, the Establishment and all Agents of the State - the Police, especially - and are doing what they do to show that they are not Slaves to the State or the Corporations, yet they are the first to complain if they think that someone has behaved illegally towards them like the immature children they are. I don't know if they can see the irony in organising their raids by Blackberry, Android phones and Twitter, but I can't help feeling that if someone attacked them in the street and stole their precious smartphones off them before kicking the living crap out of them they'd be crying and wailing all the way to the nearest police station to report the crime and wait there until Daddy comes to pick them up in the Range Rover...
The truth is that they are nothing more than Useful Idiots, serving the propaganda purposes of the very Corporations which they claim to detest, and if they had any vision beyond their aggressive juvenile male urge to smash the place up and piss on all the lamp posts to mark their fictitious territory, they'd maybe understand that they will always fail. You change large systems from within, and it takes time and intelligence, and the ability to win hearts and minds. At the moment in this country there are several million working and lower middle-class people fighting for their very survival at the hands of this ideology-driven right-wing government, and what they don't need are these utter morons robbing them of their huge public display of moral and social unity.
Predictably the Media the next week was awash with pornographic photos of Useful Idiots smashing bank windows and other Useful idiots throwing paintbombs at the police, and to all intents and puposes the half a million people who marched that day should have saved all the precious money they wasted hiring coaches, getting trains, driving down to London, because these Useful Idiots made a mockery of their aspirations as working class people.
As far as I'm concerned the tedious, unintelligent Black Bloc and Red Sky "anarchists" are as much our enemy as the Banks and Hedge Funds.
All photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not use my photos without my permission
Continued : Half a million people march in London to stop the cuts. 26.03.2011
This large photo set celebrates the hundreds of thousands of decent, peaceful people who put so much effort into the best march you never saw...
Last weekend the TUC's "March for the Alternative" demonstration saw Central London streets packed with half a million Public Sector employees, Disability Rights and anti-war groups, students and many others angry at government cuts. As we all know the day's events were completely stolen by the selfish, cretinous actions of a couple of hundred juvenile "Anarchists" who used the day's events as cover to cause havoc all over Central London, attacking shops, businesses and the police for no reason other than jealousy, sociopathy and a desire to cause criminal damage. These are football thugs by any other name, no more, no less.
The so-called Anarchists claim they are fighting back against Capitalism, the Establishment and all Agents of the State - the Police, especially - and are doing what they do to show that they are not Slaves to the State or the Corporations, yet they are the first to complain if they think that someone has behaved illegally towards them like the immature children they are. I don't know if they can see the irony in organising their raids by Blackberry, Android phones and Twitter, but I can't help feeling that if someone attacked them in the street and stole their precious smartphones off them before kicking the living crap out of them they'd be crying and wailing all the way to the nearest police station to report the crime and wait there until Daddy comes to pick them up in the Range Rover...
The truth is that they are nothing more than Useful Idiots, serving the propaganda purposes of the very Corporations which they claim to detest, and if they had any vision beyond their aggressive juvenile male urge to smash the place up and piss on all the lamp posts to mark their fictitious territory, they'd maybe understand that they will always fail. You change large systems from within, and it takes time and intelligence, and the ability to win hearts and minds. At the moment in this country there are several million working and lower middle-class people fighting for their very survival at the hands of this ideology-driven right-wing government, and what they don't need are these utter morons robbing them of their huge public display of moral and social unity.
Predictably the Media the next week was awash with pornographic photos of Useful Idiots smashing bank windows and other Useful idiots throwing paintbombs at the police, and to all intents and puposes the half a million people who marched that day should have saved all the precious money they wasted hiring coaches, getting trains, driving down to London, because these Useful Idiots made a mockery of their aspirations as working class people.
As far as I'm concerned the tedious, unintelligent Black Bloc and Red Sky "anarchists" are as much our enemy as the Banks and Hedge Funds.
All photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not use my photos without my permission
STUDENTS DayX3 NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION
Protest and march against University tuition fee increases, 09th Dec. 2010
Over 20,000 students from around the country converged on Central London today to march for a third time to protest against the coalition government's plans to
massively increase University tuition fees, which will ultimately mean that far fewer students from poorer backgrounds will be able to even consider a University
education because of the massive debts incurred which will follow them for the rest of their working lives.
I joined the days proceedings in the afternoon as they were assembling in Trafalgar Square. To throw the police off-guard they suddenly took off, en mass, through
Admiralty Arch in a bid to get to Parliament Square, which had been forbidden. That evening the House of Commons was voting on the Education Funding Bill, and the
students were determined to make sure that Parliament heard their protests.
The day started in a good mood, but by the time they reached Parliament pockets of disorder had started breaking out - Flares were lit and thrown, crush barriers and
construction site fencing ripped up to be used as weapons against the massed ranks of riot police and later on the mounted police. I had to leave by around 3pm, and by
the time I got home and turned on the BBC news all hell had broken loose outside Parliament. Protesters were pelting the police with lumps of masonry, metal poles and
scaffolding. They lit large fires, broke down the doors to The Treasury and the new Ministry of Justice buildings, smashing many windows, daubing graffiti everywhere
and generally smashing up the joint. Many people were arrested and many people hurt, some badly.
As the police gradually started releasing the by-now contained protesters in small numbers, several small groups headed up to Oxford Street, where they smashed the
windows of the flagship TopShop store (owned by Sir Phillip Green who is being attacked for shovelling billions of pounds of what should be UK taxable income into tax
haven accounts owned by his wife as part of a legal tax dodge), and in Regent Street they engulfed the Bentley containing Prince Charles and his horse-faced wife
Camilla who were in the process of swanning orf the the Royal Variety Performance! The protesters started kicking the vehicle. They broke the windows and threw a tin of
white paint over the car. One was not amused!
Needless to say the Bill was passed in Parliament tonight, and the students have vowed to continue their campaign of demonstration and civil disobedience...
All photos ⓒ Pete Riches
Please do not use my photos without my prior agreement.
Please do not re-blog my photos without my agreement.
Email: peteriches@gmail.com
A view of the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Bridge from the south bank showing a mixture of Horse drawn vehicles, Buses, motor vehicles and trams including a steam lorry, circa 1928. There is also a tug with and articulated funnel pulling lighters heading downstream underneath Westminster Bridge.
Half a million people march in London to stop the cuts. 26.03.2011
The Trades Union Congress' (TUC) "March for the Alternative" today saw the streets of Central London choked solid with at least half a million Public Sector employees, Disability Rights and anti-war groups, students and many others who had travelled from the furthest corners of Great Britain to send a clarion call to the Cameron government that people are not going to idly stand by and silently watch Cameron and his chancellor George Osborne destroy the very heart of British Public Services for nothing more than archetypical right-wing ideology.
Huge, swingeing cuts across the entire range of Public Services by the Conservatives are designed to hand over control of the most vital state welfare functions to greedy, profit-driven, completely unaccountable private companies and to break the collective bargaining power and influence of the Trades Unions, whose members are being laid off by the tens of thousands under the premise of saving the economy which was almost destroyed by the same bankers and hedge-fund managers who now sit on Conservative government advisory panels.
The carnival-atmosphere march slowly threaded its way towards Hyde Park where rousing speeches by assorted Trades Union representatives sent out a call for concerted action to fight every single cut every step of the way, and to protect our vital services from Conservative dogma, which only favours the already-wealthy at the expense of the disposable poor and weak.
To date not a single banker has been tried and imprisoned for their outrageous, fraudulent and undoubtedly dishonest (if not illegal) practices leading directly to the crash of 2008 - a situation which could never have occured if the Financial Services Industry was firmly regulated by government. Tragically in the last thirty years the banks and their equally-greedy doppelgangers running the hedge funds have connived with supine Parliamentarians to dismantle huge swathes of vital regulation put in place by previous governments... such regulatory checks and balances being labelled as a massive hinderance which stopped the banks from making obscene, unfettered profit, albeit fraudulent.
Instead we now see the bankers picking up exactly where they left off, absolutely unapologetic, giving themselves billions of pounds in bonuses whilst the poorest in our midst are having essential support and benefits axed as the Conservatives brazenly use the compliant Murdoch press to demonize the poor and the disabled, labelling them all as mere fraudsters and parasites.
Eleswhere, predictably, the usual cohort of violent "Anarchists" - many seemingly associated with University College Union - wrought their usual havoc along Oxford Street, parts of the West End and Piccadilly, targetting businesses run by companies publicly exposed by whistleblowers as using massive, complex, completely opaque tax avoidance schemes in Tax Havens - and doing illegal "sweetheart" deals with the Inland Revenue to avoid paying their fair share of corporation taxes, which, if they were forced to do so would pay this country's deficit off without public services being axed. Cameron and Osborne choose instead to protect this immoral status-quo, which is unsurprising - the Cabinet reportedly contains 14 multi-millionaires, and the revolving door between government and bank directorships is both insidious and notorious.
The anarchists smashed windows, threw paint bombs and fireworks and had running battles with the police across Central London, and, much to the fury of the grown-ups has poisoned the moral high ground which was being gently but brilliantly occupied by UK Uncut with their humorous, pacific occupations of the same premises where they have in the past set up temporary libraries, hospitals and creches in their intelligently organised grass-roots campaigns to shame the government to force companies to pay their dues.
Sadly the anarchists' aggressive direct-action (and the thousands of adrenaline-inducing photographs of their actions which will now completely dominate the national dialogue for weeks) instantly and conveniently paves the way for the Cameron government to impose severe restrictions on public protests and the right to assemble in the future. Costs, budgets and the need to "protect legitimate businesses from mindless criminal attack" will be the reasons given. Many people suspect that the anarchist groups contain deep-cover police and/or MI5 officers who are also maybe agent provocateurs, sometimes leading the violence. This can no longer be instantly dismissed as mere conspiracy theory as recent discoveries of police infiltration and manipulation of peace campaign groups (including the Quakers) over the last decade have now been proven in court, and discussed in Parliament.
Though people are clearly very, very angry with the Tories and their outright election lies which got their grasping fingers on the levers of power, and it is completely understandable that many feel that politely marching up the road in truth achieves absolutely nothing (which fact was openly displayed on this evening's National News by a stone-faced Treasury spokeswoman who stated flatly and repeatedly that today's huge march would not make the slightest bit of difference to their intentions, whether it was half a million or ten million marchers), I have chosen nevertheless to honour the dedication and peaceful political expression of those hundreds of thousands of concerned, threatened citizens from every walk of life who gathered today to express their political will, whose efforts have been smeared by a mindless, immature minority of thugs - and the media which is now having a gleeful feeding frenzy on the violence which gives them carte blanche to totally ignore the powerful message delivered to David Cameron by the peaceful marchers.
Enjoy the carnival...
All photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not use my images without my permission
Colour boost,at the Thames Festival`Mayor's Thames Festival can be described as the street party in London which includes various activities. The idea of the event is to celebrate the wonderful city of London and the Thames River along with people and culture of the city. The event manages to attract thousands of people from around the world`here outside Temple Station.......yes i`v noticed the metal pole above her head...bah!
Autocars Schidler of Bouzonville, France CM-136-DA (F).
A French owned Van Hool T916 Alicron is seen here on tour on Victoria Embankment, London.
Date: 15.05.2013 13:56
A fine view of the Embankment in London with an interesting traffic jam! Cars, coaches and a London bus - the Embankment, that had been the main tram artery of central London, never saw much in the way of trunk bus routes and there's a fair few waiting at the LT bus stop.
16:56, Sunday 7th February 2010 ·
London (London Eye - looking north) ·
{ Pentax MX · Fuji Pro 160S film (35mm) ·
20mm (Pentax M) lens · f4 · 1/8 (hand-held) }
click the image (or press L) to see it on black
click here for the original upload size
This is a "Real Photograph" published by Boots Cash Chemists in their "Pelham" series but was originally a Valentine & Co photograph. It dates from about 1904 and shows the view from Hungerford Bridge looking downstream which includes the Hotel Cecil, Savoy Hotel, the Medical Examination Hall, Somerset House and Cleoptra's Needle. There are two paddle steamers moored alongside Charing Cross Pier, the "Kaiser" at the rear and I believe one of her sisters, either "The Shah" or "H.M. Stanley" but by this time "The Shah" had been renamed "Penelope" and "H.M. Stanley" had been renamed "Portia". Both boats are wearing the livery of the Thames Steamboat Company although they were originally built for the River Thames Steamboat Company in 1889 by the Samuda Bros at Poplar. The "Kaiser" continued in service on the Thames until 1909 without a name change.
The view taken from Embankment Place looking southwest shows Northumberland Avenue in the foreground with the Cab shelter in the middle of the road with Whitehall Place on the right and Whitehall Court including the National Liberal Club in the background. Temporary huts used by the Department of Movements and Railways occupy Victoria Embankment Gardens behind Whitehall Court most of which at this time at the end of the first world war had also been commandeered for Government offices. Almost all of Whitehall Court is now occupied by the Royal Horse Guards Hotel.
© IWM (Q28702)
The building was designed by Michael Hopkins and Partners and incorporates Westminster Tube Station below it. The load is borne by the walls, without interior posts. The corners of the building are hung from the roof using massive steel beams. The design life of 120 years meant that aluminium bronze was chosen for exposed metal on the roof and walls.
The building's curious profile, with its rows of tall chimneys, is intended to recall the Victorian Gothic design of the Palace of Westminster and to fit in with the chimneys of the Norman Shaw Building next door. The chimneys are not used to expel fumes but are part of an unpowered air-conditioning system, which is designed to draw air through the building by exploiting natural convection flows. It is based on the system used in 1996 in the Eastgate Centre, Harare, Zimbabwe.
There is an underground passage into the Palace of Westminster and a connection to the 1 Parliament Street building and to the Norman Shaw Buildings. When commissioned in 1992 the cost of Portcullis House was to be £165 million. After building cost inflation and delays, the price increased to £235 million. Costs included £150,000 for decorative fig trees, £2 million for electric blinds and, for each MP, a reclining chair at £440.
Half a million people march in London to stop the cuts. 26.03.2011
The Trades Union Congress' (TUC) "March for the Alternative" today saw the streets of Central London choked solid with at least half a million Public Sector employees, Disability Rights and anti-war groups, students and many others who had travelled from the furthest corners of Great Britain to send a clarion call to the Cameron government that people are not going to idly stand by and silently watch Cameron and his chancellor George Osborne destroy the very heart of British Public Services for nothing more than archetypical right-wing ideology.
Huge, swingeing cuts across the entire range of Public Services by the Conservatives are designed to hand over control of the most vital state welfare functions to greedy, profit-driven, completely unaccountable private companies and to break the collective bargaining power and influence of the Trades Unions, whose members are being laid off by the tens of thousands under the premise of saving the economy which was almost destroyed by the same bankers and hedge-fund managers who now sit on Conservative government advisory panels.
The carnival-atmosphere march slowly threaded its way towards Hyde Park where rousing speeches by assorted Trades Union representatives sent out a call for concerted action to fight every single cut every step of the way, and to protect our vital services from Conservative dogma, which only favours the already-wealthy at the expense of the disposable poor and weak.
To date not a single banker has been tried and imprisoned for their outrageous, fraudulent and undoubtedly dishonest (if not illegal) practices leading directly to the crash of 2008 - a situation which could never have occured if the Financial Services Industry was firmly regulated by government. Tragically in the last thirty years the banks and their equally-greedy doppelgangers running the hedge funds have connived with supine Parliamentarians to dismantle huge swathes of vital regulation put in place by previous governments... such regulatory checks and balances being labelled as a massive hinderance which stopped the banks from making obscene, unfettered profit, albeit fraudulent.
Instead we now see the bankers picking up exactly where they left off, absolutely unapologetic, giving themselves billions of pounds in bonuses whilst the poorest in our midst are having essential support and benefits axed as the Conservatives brazenly use the compliant Murdoch press to demonize the poor and the disabled, labelling them all as mere fraudsters and parasites.
Eleswhere, predictably, the usual cohort of violent "Anarchists" - many seemingly associated with University College Union - wrought their usual havoc along Oxford Street, parts of the West End and Piccadilly, targetting businesses run by companies publicly exposed by whistleblowers as using massive, complex, completely opaque tax avoidance schemes in Tax Havens - and doing illegal "sweetheart" deals with the Inland Revenue to avoid paying their fair share of corporation taxes, which, if they were forced to do so would pay this country's deficit off without public services being axed. Cameron and Osborne choose instead to protect this immoral status-quo, which is unsurprising - the Cabinet reportedly contains 14 multi-millionaires, and the revolving door between government and bank directorships is both insidious and notorious.
The anarchists smashed windows, threw paint bombs and fireworks and had running battles with the police across Central London, and, much to the fury of the grown-ups has poisoned the moral high ground which was being gently but brilliantly occupied by UK Uncut with their humorous, pacific occupations of the same premises where they have in the past set up temporary libraries, hospitals and creches in their intelligently organised grass-roots campaigns to shame the government to force companies to pay their dues.
Sadly the anarchists' aggressive direct-action (and the thousands of adrenaline-inducing photographs of their actions which will now completely dominate the national dialogue for weeks) instantly and conveniently paves the way for the Cameron government to impose severe restrictions on public protests and the right to assemble in the future. Costs, budgets and the need to "protect legitimate businesses from mindless criminal attack" will be the reasons given. Many people suspect that the anarchist groups contain deep-cover police and/or MI5 officers who are also maybe agent provocateurs, sometimes leading the violence. This can no longer be instantly dismissed as mere conspiracy theory as recent discoveries of police infiltration and manipulation of peace campaign groups (including the Quakers) over the last decade have now been proven in court, and discussed in Parliament.
Though people are clearly very, very angry with the Tories and their outright election lies which got their grasping fingers on the levers of power, and it is completely understandable that many feel that politely marching up the road in truth achieves absolutely nothing (which fact was openly displayed on this evening's National News by a stone-faced Treasury spokeswoman who stated flatly and repeatedly that today's huge march would not make the slightest bit of difference to their intentions, whether it was half a million or ten million marchers), I have chosen nevertheless to honour the dedication and peaceful political expression of those hundreds of thousands of concerned, threatened citizens from every walk of life who gathered today to express their political will, whose efforts have been smeared by a mindless, immature minority of thugs - and the media which is now having a gleeful feeding frenzy on the violence which gives them carte blanche to totally ignore the powerful message delivered to David Cameron by the peaceful marchers.
Enjoy the carnival...
All photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not use my images without my permission
Police post on Victoria Embankment, opposite Inner Temple Gardens.
"There were initially two types of London police box. The smaller version was known as a police post, and contained just a telephone and a first aid kit, topped by a light. Around 70 of these were installed in the Metropolitan Police District. The larger version was the conventional police box...A few of the original police posts still remain on the streets in London, most noticeably at Piccadilly Circus."
Source: www.policeboxes.com/pboxhist.htm
Click here to view my Doctor Who collection
Reminds me of the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West in WIZARD OF OZ or the poppy scenes in Ken Russell's TOMMY.
Even the bench seems strangely ominous...... A fragment of Waterloo Bridge in the distance.
But I believe this is a monolithic memorial to WWII. From a Kodachrome color slide.
Best viewed in large When most people heat the words "Big Ben" they immediately conjure up an image of the striking Victorian Gothic structure of the clock tower of the Palace of Westminster (the Houses of Parliament). Let's clear up a common misconception first; technically speaking, the name "Big Ben" does not refer to the famous tower, nor to the four huge clock faces of this London landmark; instead, it refers to the largest of the five bells inside the clock tower, whose chimes are such a familiar sound to listeners to BBC radio over the years.
The tower was begun following the disastrous fire which destroyed the old Palace of Westminster in 1834. Charles Barry was given the contract to rebuild the Palace, and his designs included a clock tower.
The Tower
The clock tower of the Palace of Westminster took 13 years to build, and was completed in 1856. The tower is 316 feet high. The spire that rises above the belfry is built with an iron frame, and it is this frame which supports the weight of the bells. A staircase rises up inside the tower, and a climb is rewarded by excellent views from the belfry level. Several small rooms are built into the lower part of the tower, including a small prison cell.
HQS Wellington (1934) on the River Thames in London, United Kingdom.
The Wellington is a Grimsby-class sloop launched in 1934 and commissioned into the Royal Navy. Before WW2, the vessel was stationed in the Pacific and during the war, it mainly served on escort duties in the North Atlantic. In 1947, the warship was decomissioned and handed over to the Honourable Company of Master Mariners which as operated her as their headquarters ship
HMS/HQS Wellington (1934)
Builder: HM Dockyard Devonport
Propulsion: 2x steam turbines
Lenght: 81.15 m
Beam: 11 m
Displacement: 1006 t
Vmax: 10 kn
On Saturday October 18, 2014, around 90,000 people took part in "Britain Needs A Pay Rise," a march and rally in London organised by the TUC (Trades Union Congress) to highlight the growing inequality in the UK, and to call for an increase in pay for those who are not in the top 10% of earners, who, it was recently revealed, now control 54.1% of the country's wealth. The London march began on Victoria Embankment and proceeded to Hyde Park, where there was a rally. Other protests took place in Glasgow and Belfast.
I took this photo from one of the Golden Jubilee Bridges, the footbridges that flank the Hungerford Bridge from Charing Cross Station, showing banners for, amongst other unions, the Communication Workers Union (CWU), Equity and the Musicians Union.
As I explained in an article before the protest, I was "extremely glad to see the TUC putting together a major protest, as it is exactly two years since the last major TUC-organised protest, 'A Future That Works'. Prior to that, there was the 'March for the Alternative' in March 2011."
As I also explained, "I must admit to being extremely disappointed that the unions have not organised massive anti-austerity protests every six months against the butchers of the Tory-led coalition government, who continue with their efforts to destroy almost every aspect of the British state, privatising almost everything that was not privatised by Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and to hand it all over to unaccountable profiteers -- with the exception of their own jobs, and their lavish expenses, and, presumably, parts of the judiciary, the military and the intelligence services."
For the TUC, see: www.tuc.org.uk/
For the Britain Needs A Pay Rise website, see: britainneedsapayrise.org/
For my article publicising the march, see: www.andyworthington.co.uk/2014/10/16/please-support-brita...
For my photos of "A Future That Works" in October 2012, see: www.flickr.com/photos/andyworthington/sets/72157631818307...
and: www.flickr.com/photos/andyworthington/sets/72157631831036...
For my article about the "March for the Alternative" in March 2011, see: www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/03/26/on-the-anti-cuts-pro...
For my most interesting photos, see: www.flickriver.com/photos/andyworthington/popular-interes...
A photograph of New Scotland Yard dating from the mid 1890s. The Yard stood alone like this for ten years before the need for an extension arose and Scotland House was built between 1902-1906. A bridge over what was then Derby Street was built to connect the Yard and Scotland House. In addition Cannon Row Police Station was built adjacent to the Scotland House site between 1900-1902. The Yard and Scotland House were converted into Parliamentary offices from 1973 until 1979, Cannon Row followed suit in the 1990s.
STUDENTS DayX3 NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION (Part 2)
Protest and march against University tuition fee increases, 09th Dec. 2010
Over 20,000 students from around the country converged on Central London today to march for a third time to protest against the coalition government's plans to massively increase University tuition fees, which will ultimately mean that far fewer students from poorer backgrounds will be able to even consider a University education because of the massive debts incurred which will follow them for the rest of their working lives.
I joined the days proceedings in the afternoon as they were assembling in Trafalgar Square. To throw the police off-guard they suddenly took off, en mass, through Admiralty Arch in a bid to get to Parliament Square, which had been forbidden. That evening the House of Commons was voting on the Education Funding Bill, and the students were determined to make sure that Parliament heard their protests.
The day started in a good mood, but by the time they reached Parliament pockets of disorder had started breaking out - Flares were lit and thrown, crush barriers and construction site fencing ripped up to be used as weapons against the massed ranks of riot police and later on the mounted police. I had to leave by around 3pm, and by the time I got home and turned on the BBC news all hell had broken loose outside Parliament. Protesters were pelting the police with lumps of masonry, metal poles and scaffolding. They lit large fires, broke down the doors to The Treasury and the new Ministry of Justice buildings, smashing many windows, daubing graffiti everywhere and generally smashing up the joint. Many people were arrested and many people hurt, some badly.
As the police gradually started releasing the by-now contained protesters in small numbers, several small groups headed up to Oxford Street, where they smashed the windows of the flagship TopShop store (owned by Sir Phillip Green who is being attacked for shovelling billions of pounds of what should be UK taxable income into tax haven accounts owned by his wife as part of a legal tax dodge), and in Regent Street they engulfed the Bentley containing Prince Charles and his horse-faced wife Camilla who were in the process of swanning orf the the Royal Variety Performance! The protesters started kicking the vehicle. They broke the windows and threw a tin of white paint over the car. One was not amused!
Needless to say the Bill was passed in Parliament tonight, and the students have vowed to continue their campaign of demonstration and civil disobedience...
All photos ⓒ Pete Riches
Please do not use my photos without my prior agreement.
Please do not re-blog my photos without my agreement.
Email: peteriches@gmail.com