Rich List = Hit List!

Firstly we’d like to say what a good idea Digital Detox week is. We had perfect walking weather and spent our time ambling around Barnsdale; from Brodsworth to Brocadale, Pickburn to Pit-Top, we walked along the remnants of Wattling Street through what was once the great and magical Barnsdale Forest – the Yorkshire landscape is generous and diverse, it offers riches beyond measure to all those who tread soflty – unlike the following set of bastards…

Yesterday The Independent reported that more than £150 billion has been wiped off the fortunes of the UK’s richest people. They went on to site some of the ‘victims’ of the credit crunch…

The biggest single loser is London-based steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal who has seen his personal fortune drop by almost £17 billion to £10.8 billion.

Despite that, he retains his place as the country’s richest man for the fifth year running.

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich keeps his position at second on the list despite his fortune falling to £7 billion from £11.7 billion.

The richest British-born billionaire is the Duke of Westminster. His fortune, mainly based on property, has shrunk to £6.5 billion from £7 billion.

Collectively, the 1,000 multi-millionaires in the list are worth £258 billion, down from last year’s record total of £413 billion.

The recession has also bitten into the fortune of Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson who has lost £1.5 billion and is now worth £1.2 billion.

Formula 1 tycoon Bernie Ecclestone suffered too – he lost £934 million this year, leaving him with £1.46 billion, the list reported.

Oh, how our hearts fucking bleed!

Compare the previous quotes with these  from a report in the National Geographic…

Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation, and transportation. [sic] With food prices rising, Haiti’s poorest can’t afford even a daily plate of rice, and some must take desperate measures to fill their bellies.

[A] traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country’s central plateau. [The] cookies [are] made of dirt, salt, and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

“When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day,” Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds, 3 ounces (2.7 kilograms, 85 grams) he weighed at birth.

Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Charlene said the cookies also give her stomach pains. “When I nurse, the baby sometimes seems colicky too,” she said.

Fuck the rich! The annual ‘Rich List’ could come in handy though – if it came with a free M40 snipers rifle and 1000 rounds of ammunition!

Digital Detox Week

We’re not usually that keen on fad campaigns like No Shopping Day, etc., but we quite like the idea of ‘Digital Detox Week‘.

As anarchists we should be celebrating life in all of it’s fleshy uncertainty; but lately we’ve been transformed from a tribe of moles to mere cyber-moles who seem to prefer silicon to vitamin D. So we’ve decided to catch some rays this week.

Anyone who knows us knows how to get in touch, see you on the 27th – maybe

Hillsborough – Time For The Truth!

It now seems very likely that official documents relating to the deaths of 96 people at Sheffield’s Hillsborough football ground on 15th April, 1989 will be released ten years early - but still 20 years too late!

Will the incompetent lying scumbag, former chief superintendent David Duckenfield, be dragged from his half million pound retirement home  just outside Bournemouth to finally face up to his crimes? Let’s hope so!

Duckenfield, of course, is no stranger to the courts and the families of the victims have already had to sit through a string of judicial travesties. But the early release of official documents promises to give new weight to their cause and deliver the verdict that should have been passed two decades ago.

There’s still an uphill struggle of course. The courts have previously evaded manslaughter charges against Duckenfield and his deputy, superintendent Bernard Murray, by restricting what is allowed as ‘admissible evidence’. In previous trials they have not allowed pictures of dead bodies to be shown – in a manslaughter case!  The Leeds trial in 2000 insisted on the ludicrous idea that people didn’t die after 3.06pm when the referee blew his whistle which was even worse than the 3:15pm limit imposed by the Coroner’s inquests; these time impositions make a mockery of medical fact and show that the legal system is being used to evade justice rather than deliver it.

One thing’s for certain, if the events of Hillsborough had happened at Glyndebourne we would have seen the full wrath of the law and Duckenfield would be sitting out his retirement at Her Majesty’s Pleasure!

Liar

A Salute to Eddie George…

THIS ONE’S FOR YOU EDDIE!

Arch bastard, Eddie George, has shed his mortal coil. Normally we’d at least try and show a little respect for the dead, but this wanker had absolutely no respect for the living. His policies and decisions whilst at the Bank of England led directly to the impoverishment and suffering of millions. Not that he felt bad about it, he famously said that lost jobs in the North are an “acceptable price to pay to curb inflation in the South.”

His remarks revealed all too clearly the mindset not just of the Governor of the Bank of England but of his colleagues as well; the bankers hate the working class and now the working class are supposed to pay for their mistakes. The death of a banker is no loss to the poor.

Edward Alan John George was a greedy little man who lived to serve other greedy little men. Now he’s worm food. Amen to that.

Dr Freddy Patel must be tried for Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice* (*in the case of Ian Tomlinson and all other cases)

As expected the preliminary findings of the second pathology report into the death of Ian Tomlinson found has found that abdominal haemorrhage, not a ‘heart attack’, is the probable cause of death.

As we’ve mentioned before the original pathologist, Dr Freddy Patel, has a long history of providing misinformation on behalf of the Metropilitan Police. Any investigation into the death of Ian Tomlinson should include a full investigation into Dr Patel’s relationship with the Met if we are to have any hope of stopping further police cover ups. As such Dr Freddy Patel must be tried for Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice.

This case has shown just how corrupt the Met has become.

On behalf of the Tomlinson family, Paul King has said: “First we were told that there had been no contact with the police, then we were told that he died of a heart attack; now we know that he was violently assaulted by a police officer and died from internal bleeding. As time goes on we hope that the full truth about how Ian died will be made known.”

The blatant lies of the Met show us that they believe themselves to be beyond the reach of justice – unfortunately we have yet to prove them wrong!

We’re with Snookcocker on this one.

Justice for Ian! And justice for all of the other cases that the Met and Dr Patel have conspired to hide from view!

HMP Ashwell leads the way!

The Prison Officers Association (POA) have said of the Ashwell prison uprising…

“We have been warning of this type of disturbance for many months, but no one wants to listen. The current prison population and lack of appropriate prison places has resulted in prisoners being transferred away from their homes and put in lower category prisons resulting in more drugs, violence and gang cultures in our prisons. The drive for savings has led to fewer staff, a reduction in regime and offending behaviour programmes being cancelled. End result unhappy and bored prisoners. This long weekend appears to have sparked the trouble but the root cause is lack of investment in our prisons. If this is not addressed we believe this will be the first of many disturbances of 2009.“

Of course they forgot to mention that most prisoners do not deserve to be locked up in the first place. The modern prison system – conceived at the same time as schools and factories – is as much about controlling people in everyday society as it is protecting them from ‘crime’ – 90% of these so called crimes are the result of the social decay that is symptomatic of a class divided society. This was once widely understood and working class communities used to actively protect ‘criminals’ from the law. Unfortunately drugs and endemic Thatcherist morality led to a criminal element that became a burden to their own communities; if things are going  to improve we don’t need more prisons – we need more Robin Hoods!

The face of better organised crime

Who’s Press? Their Press!

We just came across a brilliant article by Infantile & Disorderly. It’s shows the mainstream press’ blatant and unapologetic bias towards the middle class and their  value system – a system that claims to be liberal and caring while it keeps so many of us in poverty. Porter shows that unless you fit their model of ‘normality’ then you don’t deserve their full respect…

Ian Tomlinson should not be the one on trial.

Hands up who hates Janet Steet Porter? Me, me, ME!

In today’s Independent, dearest Janet has an article called ‘Tomlinson was no saint, but he deserved better’, which looking at the content, could just have easily been titled ‘Tomlinson was a worthless working class alcoholic, but at least he wasn’t an anarchist’. I’ve reproduced it here, with a bit of commentary…

“The circumstances surrounding the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests on 1 April are only gradually becoming clearer. What has emerged, however, is that Mr Tomlinson was a troubled man with quite a few problems [so?] I am not trying to diminish his death, [yeah you are] and the sad loss felt by his family and friends, but before we put the police in the dock, it might be worth considering what Mr Tomlinson was doing that night, and what state of mind he might have been in. [If he wasn't in the "right" state of mind as judged by Janet, his death apparently becomes that little bit more understandable...]

At first, the police put out a statement which subsequently turned out to be misleading. [Misleading? Damn lies, more like!] It said that officers sent two medics to help a man who had stopped breathing, and on arrival at hospital he was pronounced dead. We now know, as more people come forward with pictures of that evening, that events were a great deal more complicated, and that Mr Tomlinson had been involved with the police on several occasions before he collapsed. [Involved? Collapsed? Is involved the new word for 'attacked' and collapsed the new cuddly euphamism for 'was murdered'?]

Mr Tomlinson was an alcoholic [so?] who lived in a bail hostel [so?] around the corner from me in the City of London. He’d tried and failed to stay away from booze [so?] but I make no judgement about that [then why the hell are you bring it up?] How many of us are just an inch from going down that path, where alcohol takes over your life to the point where your family don’t want you around? It’s all too common. There are dozens of people like Ian Tomlinson in the City every day, hanging around in churchyards, sitting on park benches, selling The Big Issue. [Dozens more waiting to be murdered by police, perhaps?] They turn up at the AA meetings held in the City every night of the week, where rich and poor talk freely about their struggle to stay sober. By the way, there are plenty of salaried alcoholics holding down good jobs in the City, disguising their addiction.

Mr Tomlinson did not have that opportunity, having started out as a scaffolder and shifting from job to job, to the point where he ended up in a hostel for the homeless in Smithfield. Mr Tomlinson probably sold me a newspaper when he had a pitch outside Blackfriars station for a while and I worked in Fleet Street. [Well that must have been one pleasant experience in his tragic life... Well done, Ms Porter.]

One columnist has said that the “steady drip” of information about his background is designed to denigrate an ordinary man. [Spot on] I disagree. [You bloody would] Knowing that he was an alcoholic is critical to understanding his sense of disorientation and his attitude towards the police, which might on first viewing of the video footage, seem a bit stroppy. [Hands in pockets walking away from police... Stroppy indeed.]

Mr Tomlinson was wearing a Millwall shirt smoking a cigarette, and he’d had a few drinks. [So?] He didn’t look anything like the people the police had corralled into a confined space around the Bank of England that night. They were mostly younger, middle class, and worlds apart from a working-class bloke whose face seemed older than his years after a life on the street. One perfunctory glance ought to have shown officers that he was completely harmless. Witnesses say Mr Tomlinson appeared to be drunk, he wasn’t coherent and couldn’t move very well. Over an hour later, footage shows a police officer wearing a balaclava aiming at his legs with a baton, and he falls to the ground. [Pushed to the ground, Janet. *Pushed*.]

It had been a long and trying day for the police. [Poor them. Hard work, this detaining innocent protesters without trial.] Mr Tomlinson wound them up when he didn’t get out of the way. But he wasn’t a 20-something anarchist with a placard. [20-something anarchists with placards deserve to be killed, don't they, Janet?] The fact he didn’t swiftly jump to attention when ordered to do so should have been just a mild irritant, not something requiring physical manhandling. The police have been trained to deal with drunks, just as they are trained to deal with demonstrators. This man was not a threat to public order. His life story demonstrates that the only person he ever harmed was himself. I can understand how annoying he might have been, but I can’t understand why anyone would want to hit him, especially not an officer who is paid to protect ordinary citizens.

Ian Tomlinson deserved some respect and understanding, and he clearly didn’t get any that night.” [Maybe he also deserves to not have his private battle with alcoholism spashed across the media too, Janet. After all, he's not the one who should be on trial here. He's the unarmed man who was murdered by an armed cop. And those are the only details that matter.]

Hypocrisy On High – one of the richest groups in the UK wants the poor to desire less!

The archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams has said in his Easter rant to the sheep at Canterbury Cathedral…

“The present financial crisis has dealt a heavy blow to the idea that human fulfilment can be thought about just in terms of material growth and possession, [...] Accepting voluntary limitation to your acquisitiveness, your sexual appetite, your freedom of choice doesn’t look so absurd after all as a path to some sort of stability and mutual care. We should be challenging ourselves and our church to a new willingness to help this witness to flourish and develop.”

This is an insult when it comes from a spokesman for an ultra-wealthy and (still) incredibly powerful group of charlatans. The Church of England (CofE) – despite their constant appeals for money to fix roofs – are one of the biggest landowners in the UK; they generate wealth by constantly selling and re-buying land – they mostly play their dodgy game of real-estate-shuffle with another major ‘landowner’ – and partner in crime – the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Even if we forget the fact that Williams actually makes a good deal of money by lying to your children, the CofE have no grounds to judge the present situation because the protestant faith was actually invented to make life much easier for greedy, robbing merchant bastards.

The biblical Jesus doesn’t actually say very much – we don’t know his opinions on homosexuality, abortion, age of consent, drugs (though he probably liked a bit of blow), etc., but we do know he despised the rich, the romans, the merchants and the money lenders (nowadays we might say the rich, the politicians, the corporations and the bankers). Pre-puritanism usury was a crime and was seen as the lowest of the low; it happened, but it was an underground affair. This wasn’t good for business, which also meant it wasn’t good for taxes. So along came the bourgeois, protestant revolution which not only made greed and usury acceptable – they made them almost compulsory. The new, frankly unchristian (according to thier own bloody book) puritan form of Christianity embodied by the CofE set the scene for the unbridled greed of modern consumer capitalism.

And apart from all that what exactly is wrong with a health ‘sexual appetite‘; it’s certainly cheap entertainment during the recession!

Smug bastard!

Pathologist in Police’s Pocket! Are the Met guilty of Perverting the Course of Justice as well as Manslaughter?

The pathologist who gave the initial ‘heart attack’ findings in relation to the death of Ian Tomlinson has a history of professional misconduct. Dr Freddy Patel was once condemned by the General Medical Council for releasing information about a man who had died in police custody. Roger Sylvester, a 30-year-old black man died under suspicious circumstances whilst in police custody and Dr Patel released medical evidence that suggested Mr Sylvester was a crack addict – a suggestion that was later refuted in court.

Dr Patel was also involved in an incident where the police asked him to record a ‘death by natural causes’ verdict for a woman found dead in a flat even when the evidence was, at best, inconclusive. The man who lived at the flat where the woman’s body was found went on to kill two other people.

Dr Patel’s competence as a pathologist has also come into question in less sinister, but equally as tragic, cases. Which may be why the Met and the Home Office favour him – shit sticks and all that.

Ian Tomlinson’s case should have been referred to  the Forensic Pathology Services, not Dr Patel. The Met knows this and we now know why the Met were covering their tracks.

The original post mortem was released suspiciously early because it was completely bogus. The Met have used a pathologist that is in their pocket to cover up another death. This time their victim was not hidden away in a cell, he was walking down a public street surrounded by cameras.

Their guilt – in both the death of Ian Tomlinson and their attempts to cover up a murder – is plain for all to see.

Perverting the Course of Justice carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

A message from the parents occupying Wyndford & St Gregory’s Primary schools – “Your school or workplace could be next.”