Anti-Cuts Demo, London, Saturday 26th March

[Patrick Bateman]

Anybody going tomorrow? I'm planning to fist Gideon before bringing down the government. I expect the proles will be watching the footy.

[Danny C]

Make sure you bring your better idea for eliminating a £1tn debt.

[Patrick Bateman]

Make sure you bring your better idea for eliminating a £1tn debt.

Make the rich pay all of their taxes? Cutting the exhorbitant salaries of heads of councils so that front-line workers don't lose their jobs? Strengthen the trade unions so that workers aren't screwed over by Tory fat cats? Re-nationalise everything? You know, genuinely left wing ideas that Thatcher and her successors fought against. There's only one reason that we're in the state we're in - successive governments following the Milton Friedman line. Don't for a minute believe that New Labour were anything but Tories who happened to live in Islington rather than Notting Hill.

How nice of the Lib Dems to betray their election pledges once they got into government. Oh that's right, they were only ever meant to be fulfilled if they won outright.

[Danny C]

Make sure you bring your better idea for eliminating a £1tn debt.

Make the rich pay all of their taxes? Cutting the exhorbitant salaries of heads of councils so that front-line workers don't lose their jobs? Strengthen the trade unions so that workers aren't screwed over by Tory fat cats? Re-nationalise everything?

Those aren't going to bring £1tn in, and renationalising everything will probably add another trillion to it.

You know, genuinely left wing ideas that Thatcher and her successors fought against. There's only one reason that we're in the state we're in - successive governments following the Milton Friedman line.

Of course, just look at all those successful countries that eschewed the free market, hey.

How nice of the Lib Dems to betray their election pledges once they got into government. Oh that's right, they were only ever meant to be fulfilled if they won outright.

You do understand the nature of a coalition, right? Coalition means you only get to implement part of your manifesto.

[Patrick Bateman]

Yeah, just like that Spitting Image sketch about the SDP-Liberal alliance.

David Owen: "Let's take the words Social and Democrat from my party's name."

David Steel: "Ooh yes David, yes yes yes. But what about my party?"

David Owen: "Hmm, well from your party's name we'll take the word Party."

[gregf]

Q. What is the definition of "prole" ?
A. Someone who does not know what a prole is.

[transforce]

All the whining about cuts is pointless. They happen to undo the damage done by the Labour government. They are not happening because of a government vendetta against the people. Yes they are painful, yes they are controversial, but they are necessary.
I voted Lib Dem, but I am more than happy with what the coalition has done so far.
It just concerns me greatly that idiots will vote Labour at the next election because of the cuts, which of course were implemented because of them!

[StevePSB]

That's right, the global downturn is all the fault of the previous government isn't it?

[Patrick Bateman]

Q. What is the definition of "prole" ?
A. Someone who does not know what a prole is.

You keep repeating this piece of Confucian wisdom even though it's completely meaningless.

[Patrick Bateman]

All the whining about cuts is pointless. They happen to undo the damage done by the Labour government. They are not happening because of a government vendetta against the people. Yes they are painful, yes they are controversial, but they are necessary.
I voted Lib Dem, but I am more than happy with what the coalition has done so far.
It just concerns me greatly that idiots will vote Labour at the next election because of the cuts, which of course were implemented because of them!

I have no truck with New Labour and its highly-paid trade unionists; to me they're every bit as despicable as the Tories. My affinities lie with the anarchists pure and simple. Crooks have raped and pillaged this country for three decades - it's time that they met with the same degree of force and violence.

[Deschanel]

I think I recognized Patrick's handsome hands, and ski mask, in footage of anarchists attacking Fortnum's delicate yet Ayn Randian jams. I could be wrong.

The tidal wave of fvckery, knavery, and extreme malice in the worldwide financial collapse ought to be directed to Wall Street not The City but yeah probably both, where they have been crying like bitches as they have seized ever more of the pie, all of it actually, and telling everyone how their feelings were hurt by accurately saying they are the scum of the earth that wiped out the American middle class and continue to do so. Please, please, send over a f***ing boatload of London anarchists, Wall St. hasn't had a good anarchist bombing since 1920. Americans are too f***ing fat and lazy and hypnotized by TV to do it themselves. I'd take the unrest in London today as a sign of rude good health for Britain, rather than the brain-dead passive apathy we have here as people continually vote for folks who pretty much tell them they will destroy their livelihoods and way of life. And they get voted in, as long as those queers can't marry. It's some astonishing shit going on in the States these days, some truly audacious power-grabs by Tea Party hicks. Good sense will prevail, eventually, but it's been amazing to watch.

[Deschanel]

Ps. I hear Fortnum's Ayn Rand Marmalade has the tangy and distinctive taste of being disgusted at you for being such a failure you haven't joined the rich capitalist class yet. And that you're eating this disgusting marmalade from a jar, rather than having your wage-slaves make it fresh for you each morning. "Punitive" is the distinctive high-note flavor, according to food critics. And your toast better not be inferior sorts of toast, the kind that would have been better left to die on the moors for uneven browning.

[raggatwin]

I was on the march yesterday. Bateman is right, marching is not enough. Civil unrest all over the country is what is needed. The idea that cuts are necessary is an opinion not a fact.

I am a prole and know what a prole is. Those sorts of comments are classist, the working class are too thick to understand their own oppression or so the argument goes.

[skyhigh]

police made 9 arrests, a statement said there'd have been many more but they were undermanned......

[Patrick Bateman]

I am a prole and know what a prole is. Those sorts of comments are classist, the working class are too thick to understand their own oppression or so the argument goes.

Not necessarily thick; just disinterested, and therefore easily manipulated by the government. 'Twas always the case but especially in more modern times (say from the 1950s onwards when the increased availability of mass media meant that the proles could no longer be simply swept under the carpet). Ergo successive governments concentrated on telling the proles how they'd never had it so good and how grateful they should be. When that failed they bribed them with council houses and milk and honey - as long as they could guarantee their vote.

Tell somebody that they should aspire to be something else and that only the ones who 'succeed' matter (because we live in a meritocracy) and the proletariat is inextricably divided between (as you always say) the deserving and the undeserving. The proles now live in a fantasy world in which they are sold dream lifestyles which only the deserving (as in those with a reality TV show and/or getting spit-roasted by a Premiership footballer) will attain. A dumbed down education system, limited opportunites for those who will educate themselves anyway, and now £27,000 for a degree alone. That's how you get to The Only Way is Essex.

The time has come for the plutocrats, war criminals, and nefarious mountebanks right at the heart of government to be assassinated. A bunch of smug Guardianistas strolling around London on a spring afternoon accomplishes nothing.