Pensions, Cuts, Murdoch & Cafe Jiro: Thursday twenty third June 2011 – Commerce unionists march towards public sector pension cuts, a protest towards Murdoch being allowed to take over BSkyB and considered one of my favorite artists turns a St John’s Wooden gallery into his café.
20,000 March for Pensions & Towards Cuts
Public Service unions had organised a march towards pension cuts and itt was joined by many hundreds of union members in addition to many others protesting towards cuts in public companies made by the Tory coalition authorities.
There was a big crowd ready after I arrived in Lincoln’s Inn Fields over an hour earlier than the march was on account of start and extra have been arriving because it left a bit early because the organisers and police frightened about overcrowding in London’s largest sq. – round 28,000 sq. metres.
Earlier than we left there had been speeches by a number of union leaders and the march was led to Parliament by Christine Blower NUT, Mark Serwotka PCS and Mary Bousted ATL together with MP John McDonnell.
The Hutton assessment had clearly proven that the federal government was mendacity when it stated that public service pensions weren’t inexpensive. This report had stated it anticipated “profit funds to fall step by step to round 1.4 per cent of GDP in 2059-60, after peaking at 1.9 per cent of gross home product (GDP) in 2010-11.”
There appeared to be an enormous variety of police on the road for a peaceable march, notably one which was primarily composed of academics and civil servants with solely a token presence from militant college students and anarchists.
Police had earlier been busy in Lincoln’s Inn Fields the place they seemed to be conducting cease and searches on any younger male demonstrators in black clothes.
Issues did get just a bit agitated when for some cause police determined to cease the march on Strand for round 20 minutes and it obtained very noisy on Whitehall because it handed Downing St.
I stood outdoors Westminster Central Corridor for round an hour as an increasing number of marchers arrived from the primary march I had been on and plenty of others from varied elements of London. Police and march stewards there objected to Charlie Veitch and different ‘Love Police’ haranguing the gang in his standard deadpan vogue upholding his proper to freedom of expression they usually moved away.
Westminster Central Corridor is a big venue however far too small for the numbers on the occasion and there was a big overflow rally in Tothill Avenue in conjunction with the church. A bunch of 20 or 30 black-clad protesters there have been informed by police they need to take away their hoods and darkish glasses and there have been some arguments. I heard later within the day there have been a couple of scuffles with them and police in Whitehall they usually have been kettled for a couple of hours in Trafalgar Sq..
Extra on My London Diary at 20,000 March for Pensions & Towards Cuts.
Save UK Democracy From Murdoch – Dept Tradition, Media & Sport
Exterior the Division of Tradition, Media and Sport was a protest organised by on-line international marketing campaign community Avaaz and my union the NUJ towards the choice by Jeremy Hunt to let Rupert Murdoch to take over BSkyB.
This was an emergency protest organised inside minutes of the information breaking early that morning, and the e-mail calling it went out when many have been already on their solution to work or to attend the pensions protest, so numbers have been small.
Clearly some planning had taken place earlier and there was a tall stilt walker with a big however moderately inappropriately avuncular head of Rupert Murdoch, certainly one of many ugliest figures in world media and pursuing a transparent intention of world domination, toying with two massive string puppets representing David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt.
However a lot of the posters have been clearly final minute, with laser-printed sheets being glued onto generic NUJ placards. NUJ members have been “appalled – like a lot of the pondering inhabitants – by the considered the UK’s largest industrial broadcaster falling into Murdoch’s palms, and the risk that this poses for specifically for information protection, but additionally for a various and broadly based mostly media tradition. “
“They need the federal government to behave within the public curiosity moderately than as puppets for Murdoch’s curiosity and don’t need Sky Information to grow to be one other Fox Information.”
Save UK Democracy From Murdoch
Café Jiro 2011 – Queen’s Terrace Café, St John’s Wooden
Within the night I used to be at The Queen’s Terrace Café, which had opened in April 2011. This was no bizarre café, however a cultural café, run by Mireille Galinou, who for some years had run a charity known as the London Arts Café, which by no means fairly managed to open a café however did organise a dozen or so exhibitions and quite a few different artwork occasions in London.
London Arts Café and The Queen’s Terrace Café are not with us, however you possibly can nonetheless learn on-line about lots of the the actions the London Arts Café organised throughout its existence from 1996-2007. For a few of this time I used to be Treasurer of the organisation and in addition wrote the website online.
One of the vital pleasant artwork reveals I went to in 2009 was Café Jiro, an set up within the Flowers Gallery in Cork St, London by a good friend of mine, the Japanese artist Jiro Osuga who develop up in north London. The 2011 was a smaller and extra intimate model of that present, with one of many massive wall-size panels from the Flowers present, together with plenty of different works specifically produced for this area – together with three within the smallest room.
The small gallery was packed for the opening – and for me a terrific alternative to satisfy some previous buddies, and it was good to see Jiro’s work in an actual café setting. You may learn extra concerning the present on a 2011 submit in >Re:PHOTO.
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Tags: 2011, ATL, Avaaz, BSkyB, Cafe Jiro, cuts, David Cameron, Dept Tradition, Flowers Gallery, Hutton assessment, Jeremy Hunt, Jiro Osuga, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, London Arts Cafe, London Photographs, march, Media & Sport, Mireille Galinou, Murdoch, NUJ, PCO, pensions, peter Marshall, police, protest, Public Service unions, Queen’s Terrace Café, Rupert Murdoch, St John’s Wooden, stilt walker, cease and search, UCU
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