First Cameron’s grandstanding: “We need to try give people a sense that we have a vision at the end of this of a fairer, better economy”.
Then the idea: stop top people handing out hugely inflated salaries + bonuses + incentives + shares + share options to each other.
Then the awareness that what has prompted this sudden gush of concern is small businesses “furious with these rewards at the top for people who aren’t taking the sort of risks they’re having to take”, not the anger of the population at large who throughout the last two decades have been furious at a grossly unjust system. Continue reading
Ever since the inception of New Labour, the left in Britain has been characterised by timidity when faced with an electorate ready to embrace change. The reluctance to break with a right-wing status quo has not been confined solely to the British labour movement either, but has become a commonplace right across the contemporary European left. This is at least partly why on the back of the biggest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s the left is in the doldrums almost everywhere, despite the fact that it was the failure of right-wing orthodoxy that got us into the mess we find ourselves in today. 
This has been a peaceful protest, and it should be approached on that basis. City Hall has a duty to accommodate those who wish to protest in London and ensure their safety whilst ensuring the London does not grind to a halt. No one wants or expects there to be permanent camps – all protests have a beginning and an end – but the scale of the problems ordinary people are facing mean these international protests are inevitably not yet over. 
The occupy movements across the world have already succeeded in focussing the debate on the huge disparities between the very wealthy and the “bottom 99%”.
