Last week I turned 27, so I’m now too old to be a member of SSY or to post on this blog. I’m making a small infringement of the rules to get my last word before I leave it to a new generation to carry on the work of keeping this site fresh and interesting.

What I want to use this last piece to do is reflect a little on the significance of SSY as a group, and encourage its members to think about just how important what we’ve built is, and why it should be defended.

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Al Qaeda recruiting sergeant

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS MENACING ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS

Paul Chambers is a man who has suffered one of the worst reactions to a joke of all time. Back in January, sitting cold in South Yorkshire’s Robin Hood airport (no, it’s not a joke, it really is called that), he was frustrated that his flight had been cancelled by snow, and so tweeted:

“Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!”

In a spectacular sense of humour failure, this tweet led to him being prosecuted for sending a “menacing electronic communication.” As a result he was fined £1000, and lost his job. He appealed on the basis of this being the most blatant miscarriage of justice since they jailed Deirdre Rachid. However, the wannabe Judge Dredds refused to uphold his appeal, then fined him another grand, and also ordered him to pay costs of £2600!

This would be completely hilarious were it not for the fact for that it has ruined this unfortunate guy’s life – in addition to all this cash he’s been fined, he’s also lost his income. It’s a farcical escalation of the increasing tendency to employ thought police to monitor people’s internet activity and try and see terrorism from harmless jokes, writing silly poems or just being curious online.

On top of that, it’s also yet another example of PEOPLE WHO DON’T UNDERSTAND THE INTERNET TRYING TO CONTROL IT. Apparently Chambers had to explain Twitter to the police who came to arrest him because they’d never heard of it.

The outrageous conviction has generated a wave of solidarity online, with #twitterjoketrial becoming one of the top trending topics worldwide, then today masses of people putting up #IAmSpartacus. Even better though was the idea of the Left Outside blog, who has promised “I’m going to post something threatening every day until Paul Chambers is acquitted or I get bored.”

In a display of blatant joke stealing solidarity, we’ve decided to do likewise. We can’t quite match their level of commitment, but in this post we will post a series of MENACING ELECTRONIC JOKES in protest at this judicial clampdown on laughter. Several SSY blog authors will get the ball rolling, but we openly invite you to join in on the comments. We are firmly convinced that NOTHING CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG.

Behead this sick filth

I’m going to nerve gas the panto at Glasgow Pavilion because Dean Park’s gender bending offends my religious sensibilities and I want Big Break back on the telly.

Sarah is going to take every Brown Owl in the country in the hostage, unless every Brownie, Cub, Girl Guide and Scout in the UK becomes a Jihadi/IRA child warrior. She’s also going to take George Galloway hostage and force him to be the cat 24/7 and eat tesco value cat food instead of the Whiskas he’s accustomed to.

Liam T is going to steal 1000 police man’s hats, and use them as fuel to burn the transport minister at the stake cos his train was late. He’s also going to drive a mobility scooter loaded with semtex into the Sunday Herald building in protest at them only using a tiny pic of him being a student protester and didn’t use his quotes. He’s also going to take a shit on the servers that keep up Louis Proyect’s blog cos he’s really fucking boring. (Captain Radical has a high standard of terrorism to uphold.)

Andy Bowden is going to lace cheesy wotsits with HIV because they contradict McCoy’s/Allah. McCoy’s are the one true crisp.

What menacing electronic threat will you make? More to the point, how long before the SSY site is down and we’re in Guantanamo Bay? It’s up to you, get involved in the comments!

Sexist arsehole: Judge John Rogers QC

. . .here’s the proof. (Trigger warning.)

A woman from Powys in Wales has been jailed after being raped by her abusive husband. The reason? Because under huge pressure from him and his family, she at one point retracted the allegations.

In November last year she made a 999 call to report that her husband had raped her 6 times. But in January she told Dyfed-Powys police she didn’t want to press charges. They replied that they would continue to investigate anyway, and in February she told them the allegations had been false.

The truth of the matter was that her abusive husband had put her under intense pressure and she had cracked. Her marriage has since ended, and she maintains that she was in fact telling the truth, and the retraction had been made falsely under coercion.

The man involved has now been charged with rape, and the marriage is over. The woman involved had to be moved to a refuge to protect her from him. Clearly, she deserves sympathy and support for the ordeal she has survived. But that’s the opposite of what she received at the hands of a misogynist “justice” system.

After being prosecuted for perverting the course of justice, she was jailed for 8 months last week. Sexist bastard Judge John Rogers QC said:

“Despite all the support and time taken in the investigation you eventually made a retraction. I now have to deal with you because you made a false retraction. If you had to be dealt with for making a false allegation of rape you would be looking at a sentence of two years. The position has now changed but there are two aggravating features. One you have caused a substantial amount of wastage for the CPS and police [wtf?!], and two you have had to admit that retraction was false, perverting the course of justice, and for that the imposition of a prison sentence is inevitable.”

Dyfed-Powys police have also defended their actions, claiming they treat sexual assault “seriously.” However, both they and Judge Rogers have shown a contemptible lack of understanding of the reality of violence against women, and the pressure put on survivors of such abuse. As Rape Crisis point out, there isn’t a specific offence of making a false retraction, and a decision has been made to pursue this woman.

In the quote above, the Judge highlighted the costs to the Crown Prosecution Service and police. But, at a time when across the UK vital services for abuse survivors are being cut because the government thinks rich capitalists need the money more, surely the cost of this prosecution was an unjustifiable waste of public money that we just can’t afford?

Campaigning and support groups have reacted with fury to the outrageous judgment. Holly Dustin of the End Violence Against Women Coalition said:

“Imprisoning a woman for a ‘false retraction’ of a rape allegation sends out a chilling message that parts of the criminal justice system are still in the dark ages in relation to sexual violence and do not understand the pressure women come under from perpetrators during the legal process. The potential threat of prosecution makes it less likely that women will report.

“Victims of rape already have little confidence that the police and courts will treat them fairly which is why only around one in 10 report the assault to the police.

“Resources should be focused on improving the very low conviction rate of just 6% of reported cases, and ensuring that all victims have access to specialist support from a Rape Crisis Centre whether or not they choose to report.”

Cases like this actively make the situation for women in the UK much much worse. The woman in this case is just the latest rape survivor to be jailed for “perverting the course of justice”, leaving us wondering, what justice? For example, Gail Sherwood is a rape survivor who police refused to believe and who was then jailed for two years.

The fact that we have a profoundly anti-woman legal system throughout the UK can’t be denied in the face of this evidence, and tackling it is vital. Cases like these help fuel the myth that women “cry rape”, distract attention from the appallingly low conviction rate for rape, and encourage men to carry out sexual assaults with the knowledge they are unlikely to be punished. It’s time for all those against inequality to take a stand.

Meanwhile, John Rogers is now retired to enjoy his hobbies of gardening and sailing, according to Debrett’s database of the posh. He’s the one who should be locked up, but we’d settle for his boat sinking.

The solicitors acting for the woman in this case will ensure any letters of support and solidarity sent to them will be received by her. Write to:

Geraint Jones & Co, Bronwydd House, The Bank, Newtown, Powys, SY16 2AU

Kanye West yet again has done something inexplicable, by apologising for pretty much the best thing he’s ever done: slagging George W. Bush on live TV.

You might remember from 5 years ago the moment that broke from the script in a televised charity ‘give-money-cos-the-government-can’t-be-arsed-athon’, to declare “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

But now, he’s felt it necessary to go on US TV to apologise to Bush:

“I would tell George Bush, in my moment of frustration, I didn’t have the grounds to call him a racist. But I believe that in a situation of high emotion like that, we as human beings don’t always choose the right words. And that’s why I’m here.”

In a radio interview he even went further:

The comments come after Bush referred West’s comments in 2005 as “the most disgusting moment of my Presidency.”

It’s worth noting that the whole story has become about how Kanye called Bush “a racist” when he actually said no such thing. When this was pointed out to him he said that’s what it had meant to him.

“I didn’t appreciate it then. I don’t appreciate it now. It’s one thing to say, ‘I don’t appreciate the way he’s handled his business’. It’s another to say, “This man’s a racist”. I resent it, it’s not true and it was one of the most disgusting moments in my presidency . . . The suggestion that I was racist because of the response to Hurricane Katrina represented an all-time low.”

You know what would be way worse than this? Getting slagged on telly

At the time, Kanye’s comments were heard round the world, and he became a hero to many as they saw the outrageous response by the US government to Hurricane Katrina. They were sampled and reused again and again.  The fact that he’s climbed down from the remarks 5 years later will be a big disappointment for the many people who respected him for speaking his mind.

The reason for that is that the way the government handled the destruction of New Orleans was racist. New Orleans at the time was one of the poorest cities in the US, with a 67% black population. When it was clear that a disastrous hurricane (likely to have been made worse by the heating of the ocean’s surface by climate change) was going to hit, the poor majority, who didn’t own cars they could use to leave, were left to fend for themselves. At least 1836 people died as a result, and five years later refugees are dispersed across the US, unable to return. The reason why they haven’t been able to go home is that the wealthy and the their friends in government saw it as an opportunity to transform the city, evict the people that live there, and seize the land where their homes were to make a profit at their expense.

Even worse than their inaction was the action that Bush’s government did take. As they left people to starve or die of thirst, people were forced to fend for themselves to survive. They did this by taking what they needed from abandoned stores. But the US military was deployed to protect private property rather than human life, shooting the “looters” who the media dutifully condemned with made up stories of murder and violence. Vigilantes and cops shot and killed those trying to flee the disaster, under the watch of President Bush.

The truth of the matter is that George Bush doesn’t care about anybody except the wealthy elite that put him in power in the first place. What happened in New Orleans was disaster capitalism in action -- using a crisis as an opportunity to transform the face of the city in favour of the rich. Kanye West seemed to get that at one point (see his comments from 3 years ago below), but now he’s backed away. You also can’t deny that part of what happened was racism, that it was a fact that the government, headed by Bush, didn’t care about the black people of New Orleans.

It’s even more disappointing that the thing that seems to have prompted Kanye to take this step is the racist abuse he faced as a result of his madcap behaviour at the VMA awards when he interrupted Taylor Swift getting the best video prize. After that, many ignorant white people in the US labeled him a racist, and accusation that’s patently ridiculous. Yes, it was daft and strange what he did, but the fact that some claimed it was motivated by a hatred of white people says more about them than it does about Kanye West.

One infamous Twitter response to the VMA awards

With the US electing its first ever black President to succeed Bush, there is a huge backlash of racial unease underway in the US. Part of the same politics was what motivated the furious backlash against Kanye for something that didn’t really matter. But the idiots saw a classic racist script of innocent white womanhood being violated by a black man, and went berserk, accusing him of racism. Rude, yes. In the words of Obama, a “jackass”, yes. But racist, no.

This continued pressure on him though has pushed Kanye into capitulating, which is sad and disappointing from someone who sometimes shows some flashes of social conscience and is from a family of Black Panthers.

Of course, what all the fuss ignores is the fact that Bush felt getting slagged on telly was the worst moment of his Presidency. Not the hundreds of thousands of people that died as a result of his actions in Iraq. Not the economic crisis which he helped create by allowing finance capital run riot. Not the the thousands that died in New Orleans. All these pale into insignificance compared to a famous rapper giving you some lip on TV.

Bush doesn’t deserve apologies, he deserves to be put on trial for the crimes committed by his regime.

Bonus: There’s obviously a lot more we could go into about why Bush is racist, such as his policies on affirmative action, his party’s approach to racist white southern voters, or the fact that he was only able to seize power in the first place by systematically disenfranchising black voters. But we’ll leave you with these two slightly more banal examples, firstly by him and then by his mum.

George gets defensive about how many people want him to stand

After lots of threatening to do it over the past 5 years, George Galloway looks set to finally stage a comeback attempt to Glasgow.

This weekend, his party, RESPECT, are discussing the possibility of setting up in Scotland. But before they’ve even had a chance to vote on it, George has as good as said he’s going to do it anyway, if not as RESPECT then as ‘George 4 Glasgow.’

When asked why he’s thinking of doing this, his justification has had two major points: “I am awesome” and that he’s against “separatism.” So we can expect him to run an inspired campaign about how much we need him waffling away in the Scottish Parliament, and against independence. Just check out his recent performance on Newsnight Scotland, where he managed to not mention a single socialist policy, talked about how he was a celebrity and the only piece of politics he did advocate was British unionism:

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Basque brigadists speak at a public meeting in Glasgow

This a long awaited report from one of the Basque comrades who visited SSY and back in August. A comrade from Askapena (the Basque internationalist and solidarity group), tells us a bit about how they found Scotland:

“Last august, 4 of Askapena’s brigadists were in Scotland.

After many years of organising similar trips to Ireland, Chiapas or Venezuela, it was the first time that Askapena organised a brigade to Scotland. Maybe because of the history that unites us with Eire, maybe cause of the peace process and the similarity we have with it, we have forgotten this is another stateless nation that is a few miles away.

After hearing the claim that there would be a referendum next St. Andrew’s day, it was decided to send a brigade over there; to see the fight they are having for an independent and socialist Scotland and learn from it, and to start or strengthen the links between Scotland and Euskal Herria.

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This weekend people are coming out again to protest against the tax dodging greedy megacorp Vodafone. At 10am at St Enoch’s subway, Glasgow (if there’s going to be anything happening elsewhere in Scotland this weekend, get in touch and let us know!)  the people’s debt collectors will be meeting again to try and recover some of the estimated £6 billion in unpaid tax that Vodafone owes us all.

You might remember last weekend we were part of a group of activists that had a 9 hour picket of Vodafone on Buchanan Street, shutting them down all day. The reason for this is that it’s emerged Vodafone were hiding profits in a subsidiary in Luxembourg, and therefore managing to dodge paying tax on the huge amounts they’ve had rolling in.

When this multi-billion effort to defraud the people was found out by the government was discovered, the government took the generous decision that, despite their claims that the country is “broke”, that they didn’t need to bother recovering the full amount, and let them off with a derisory settlement.

A common question that people asked on the streets last week was simply, “Why?” This week, in preparation for more direct action, we took a look at why it is Vodafone was allowed by the government to get away with such blatant bastardry.

Vodafone are the 4th largest company in the FTSE 100 index, and is one of the most powerful British companies. But their tax dodging is just the tip of the iceberg, with all the UK’s biggest businesses in on the act of cheating us out of what we deserve. The problem didn’t come about overnight, and it’s not just the Tories fault. In fact, the Labour government was just as bad as the Tories at letting their pals in big business away with incredibly bad behaviour.

As Chancellor, Gordon Brown loved letting big time tax dodgers get away with murder, boasting to the CBI that they were using “not just a light touch, but a limited touch”. In 2001, he commissioned Dave Hartnett (who’s now the Revenue and Customs Permanent Secretary for tax, and ultimately responsible for the Vodafone decision) to review the procedures of the government staff responsible for catching corporate tax dodgers.

Dave Hartnett, the tax dodgers' best friend

The result was a “new, faster approach, focusing only on the most important issues”, a “collaborative approach”, based on “mutual trust.” Translation: we’re going to stop bothering our arses about pretending to enforce the law when it comes to big business.

The result was a string of bad news for those of us unfortunate enough to be forced to pay our taxes. Cable and Wireless got away with paying just £380 million for a bill which they’d set aside £1.8 billion for. Then, rubbing salt in the wound, the HMRC sold their own offices to Mapeley, a tax avoiding company which was registered in Bermuda!

The HMRC were forced by this bad publicity to tighten up a bit, but pretty soon bosses club the CBI was screaming that it was all so unfair. So in 2006, Gordon Brown asked the then head of tax, David Varney (who himself had been responsible for a major tax avoidance as head of 02) to set up another review to see how else they could give them everything they wanted on a plate. Part of the team coming up with new tax plans were Ken Hanna of Cadbury Schweppes (up in court at the time for hiding profits in Ireland), Jon Symonds of AstraZeneca (who had been caught out using transfer pricing to hide profits) and Richard Lapthorne of Cable and Wireless who we already mentioned. Unsurprisingly, the results were not tough on tax dodging!

They agreed there was need for more “mutual trust and respect” (a bit like how cops need to get on with gangsters?), and so they halved the time they would work on investigations on tax dodging overseas, many tax inspectors saw their jobs rebranded as “customer relationship managers” charged with giving “low risk status” to the “well behaved”, and Dave Hartnett promised to intervene personally, (which many staff felt would make them lose credibility in doing there job if Hartnett could go over their head, as he was to do with Vodafone).

The truth is that the HMRC is fighting a war against a nuclear power with swords and muskets. Big business snap up the best and brightest financial minds to execute the most complex and incomprehensible dodging schemes to hide their profits from us, and those out to catch them have just 600 staff to cope with over 700 dodgy organisations. When you take it into account these staff are fighting with one hand tied behind their back by successive Labour and ConDem governments, it’s not hard to see why some are tempted by the up to £40 grand a year more they can make if they defect from the gamekeepers to the poachers, and start working for tax dodgers instead.

That’s exactly what the director of the large businesses unit at HMRC, John Connors, did in 2007, jumping ship to become head of tax at Vodafone, with those he left behind to try and claw back some of the profit they’d been hiding abroad feeling “betrayed”. Not Dave Hartnett, who by this time was in charge, though. Dave kept working closely with John, culminating in the settlement that was reached that has so outraged anti-cuts protesters over the last couple of weeks. Connors brought intimate knowledge of the way HMRC was dealing with big tax dodgers to his new job, along with personal contacts there, that will have proved invaluable for those fighting the good fight for Vodafone to hang on to money they owe us.

Gideon hawking Vodafone in India

But was there more to the story of how Vodafone got away with it than just a culture of acting as yes men for big business? Just days after the announcement of the settlement, Chancellor Gideon ‘George’ Osborne was in India hawking Vodafone. Over there, Vodafone has another set of tax problems, where it’s been ordered to pay back $2.5 billion  it dodged from another offshore deal. It surely wouldn’t look good to have people at the top of the UK government essentially acting as Vodafone salesman when they had two outstanding massive tax deals, and so many are suggesting that the government encouraged their end of the process along by letting Vodafone get away with it.

In the meantime, the government has cut the rate of tax for big businesses to 21%, which in real terms works out more like 17%, meaning that big businesses are paying less of a tax rate than you are in VAT or income tax, and less than small businesses as well. Decisions like the one made for Vodafone only encourage them to try and get away with even this ridiculously low rate – only 33 of the companies in the FTSE 100 publish where all their subsidiaries are, even though the law says they have to.

Indeed, for the heads of big companies, there is a personal incentive to dodge corporate tax. Company directors often pocket bonuses based on earnings per share, meaning that every pound they save in tax is more money for them. This shows why a “relationship of trust and respect” is never going to work with these daylight robbers – there is no amount of nice chat that is going to be more persuasive than the prospect of massive bonuses and billion in extra revenue.

It’s time to get tough with the tax dodgers, and if the only way we can make that happen is with direct action then so be it. The government claim they have no choice but to implement cuts, but they’ve made a cut with their approach to corporate tax, and that choice is to leave billions of pounds in private hands instead of what it should be used for – the benefit of society. It’s time to get out on the streets to show we’re not accepting that.

Meet 10am, St Enoch’s Subway, Glasgow, Sat Nov 6th.

In an absolutely astonishing move, the government of Aotearoa/New Zealand has decided to rush through emergency anti-trade union laws in order to appease the Warner Brothers movie studio, and keep the filming of ‘The Hobbit’ in New Zealand. In the words of opposition politicians, the country has been reduced to the “client state” of an entertainment corporation.

As we already reported, production of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ prequels was coming under attack from unions who were trying to negotiate collective contracts to guarantee the rights of actors working on the films. Given that the epic scale of Middle Earth films involves lots of extras, this really affects the livelihoods of many people.

However, the union has come under a vicious attack from the NZ right wing, unfortunately assisted by a bunch of dafties who thought parading round the streets of Wellington doing cosplay would help matters. Emboldened by this onslaught, Warner Brothers then took the opportunity to put the screws on the government.

Right wing broadcaster Paul Holmes (previously well known for calling Kofi Annan “a cheeky darkie”) wrote in a coloumn:

“Man, I’m angry. Angry that a group of gullible actors have allowed themselves to be used by some bolshie, left-wing filth from Australia…..what the whole disastrous affair shows is the unbelievable ego and rank selfishness of actors. What in God’s name were they thinking?”

His ranting also shows that a key element of the right’s campaign was whipping up nationalist, anti-Australian feeling, when many in the film industry work in both countries and it makes sense to co-operate -- quite apart from which, all the unions involved were primarily NZ ones, with international solidarity from Australia. Never mind the fact that the national government has rolled over to a foreign (US) company’s demands, when it’s a big company that’s commercial reality, when it’s a union they’re greedy foreign bastards. Showing these double standards, Holmes wrote:

“And if it all has simply been a brilliant game by Warner Bros to garner greater tax breaks, they have played it brilliantly.”

So why is it ok for them, but not workers?

During the dispute, it was raised again and again what a disaster it would be for the country to lose filming of The Hobbit. It’s almost as if Aotearoa/NZ has become a banana republic, it’s entire economy dependent on one export. Except that export is films set in Middle Earth. Knowing how desperate the government was not to lose the project, Warner Brothers therefore took the opportunity to demand a big cash handout, as well as the union laws for the film industry being rewritten to their liking.

Local official responsible for running Warner Bros. colony: PM John Key

The Prime Minister, John Key of the NZ Tories (they’re called the National Party down there), led the surrender delegation negotiations personally. The deal he helped broker last week promised to just hand over $25 million (£11.8 million) of tax payers cash to the company, mostly in tax rebates.

But even more worryingly, they are now rushing legislation through parliament that will make it legal to force workers in the film industry to be employed as independent contractors rather than employees. That means they can be sacked with impunity and can’t sue for unfair dismissal, they can’t negotiate collective contracts and they can be forced to work without pay, as they will be paid a certain sum no matter how long a job takes.

This overturns a hard won legal right in the country that film workers could claim to be employees and sue for unfair dismissal because of the conditions they work under.

‘The Hobbit’ row has been one of the most prominent labour disputes in Aotearoa/New Zealand for years. The fact that it’s come to such a terrible conclusion shows how necessary it is to hold your nerve when fighting with bosses. Warner Bros. knew what they wanted out of this situation -- money and power, and they were prepared to act as stone cold extortionists to get it. To hold them back, they needed to take a stand, Helm’s Deep style.

They had made a completely reasonable demand that film makers meet with them, which, when refused, led them to call a worker’s boycott of the film. But, under the intense pressure exerted by the right, they caved, and gave an assurance there would be no industrial action on a film that hadn’t even begun filming yet (how could they know what issues might come up?) At this point the bosses smelled manflesh blood, and went for the jugular, taking brutal concessions from the compliant Tory government. The unions should have stood firm, but in a climate of massive unemployment in NZ it’s easy to understand how they collapsed. What should have been an opportunity to advance the rights of all film workers in the country on the back of a very prominent movie became the opposite.

Robyn Malcolm in LOTR

A special mention should be reserved for one figure in the saga, popular NZ actor Robyn Malcolm. She’s been in loads of stuff down there, and was also Morwen in ‘The Two Towers’. She came under personal attack for her determined support of the struggle, but her response speaks on behalf of all the less famous actors struggling to try and get a living out corporate movie studios in the country:

“I really believe in this stuff. I believe in workers’ rights. I could choose not to care. I could just very quietly not rock the boat. I am a working solo mother of two boys and I don’t have a job. Outrageous Fortune has finished. I am looking for work. Would I really, in the words of Cheryl West, want to root my own industry?”

Bonus: Check out veteran NZ actor and former Hobbit Ian Mune defending the workers:

As we already reported, yesterday SSY was instrumental in setting up a totally successful day long piece of direct action against the cuts.

Across the entire UK yesterday groups of people came together to shut down Vodafone stores. For an idea of what was going on elsewhere, check the site that set the whole ball rolling. This was in protest at the fact that Dave Hartnett, the government’s permanent secretary for tax, decided that in this country there is one law for massive mobile companies and another for the rest of us.

Glasgow was the first city in the UK to mobilise on Saturday, with over 30 of us assembling on Buchanan Street at 8.30 (a good 2 1/2 hours before most other cities!) We had every intention of actually occupying the shop itself, but when at 9 we walked over to the door we discovered staff and security guards had gone through the back (having an occasional peep through a strange wee porthole), and locked up the doors. Our protest had won before it even began – we had shut the shop down, and they didn’t open all day.

Those that were there first thing included ourselves, independent activists, other socialist groups and anarchists. It was a really exciting display of left unity in action against the cuts. However, it’s not blowing our own trumpet or trying to hijack what happened too much to say SSY was central to it, and we should be proud that we made Glasgow be part of the day of action. Back on Wednesday this site blogged straight away about the first occupation down in London. In that we asked if it would be possible to make something similar happen in Glasgow.

The next day, TheWorstWitch and I called an assembly point, with the news going out to radical networks of all kinds in our city. On Friday, Liam T designed leaflets and A3 posters for us to hold, and then he, WaveJumper and I stayed up until 3am making a banner. A couple of hours later we then got up and marched on Vodafone. We were careful however to try and keep all the material non-specific, focusing on the issue rather than promoting SSY, meaning everyone at the protest felt comfortable about using it.

Vodafone may have been trying to make a clever calculation that if we met at 8.30 our stamina wouldn’t last that long, eventually we would go away and they would be able to open for at least some of Saturday. They were wrong. We had a continuous presence on Buchanan for around 9 hours, leaving about 5ish, with most of us ready to drop from the effort of standing on a cold street so long, and with voices hoarse from a day long session of chanting and singing.

Off the top of the head creativity was at a high as well, with some absolutely classic chants come up with on the day:

“There’ll be no selling phones here today (tune of ‘She’ll be coming round the mountains’)

Why’s that? Cos they owe 6 billion in back taxes!”

“How do you steal 6 billion? Get Tory mates!”

“Nurses and teachers face the axe/cos Vodafone won’t pay their tax.”

“We closed it we, we shut it down/chase tax dodgers out of town.”

Special mention for the anti-cuts Undead

“We’re all in this together/We’re all in this together/Unless you’re rich/Unless you’re rich.”

Although our numbers varied throughout the day as some had to go, and others dropped by to do a wee shift, we kept a pretty constant number picketing outside the store, leafletting and talking to those going by. In some ways it was better we were on the outside because the shop had mad giant advertising blinds that would have obscured us from public view, whereas on the street we could see just how many hundreds of people stopped during the day to watch what we were doing, hear our songs, take our pictures, and shake our hands and congratulate us. Our protest was met with near universal support, and Vodafone’s behaviour with total disgust by everyone we told about it. We even attracted a bit of media interest, such as the BBC and the Herald (even if most of both the short pieces were given over to Vodafone and HMRC’s bullshit responses to the protest!)

Vodafone and Revenue and Customs have of course seen this as a PR disaster, which they are desperately trying to counter. Against the power of social networking and websites like ukuncut and SSY, which have been spreading the message about their behaviour, they have dedicated their efforts to trying to get the mainstream media to repeat the message that the £6 billion figure was an “urban myth”.

Of course, the people who have been caught out cheating all the people of the UK would say that – don’t fall for their self serving lies. What they’re saying is that they don’t know where the £6 billion figure came from and it was never part of discussions between them. But the reason for that is that Revenue and Customs were never interested in seriously pursuing Vodafone for what they owed. Once Vodafone were caught out breaking the law, Dave Hartnett, the permanent secretary for tax, decided to bypass his own experts and procedures to produce an absolutely arbitrary amount that Vodafone would have to pay. Our figures however, are based at looking at the facts.

The facts are that Vodafone dodged UK tax law by setting up a Luxembourg subsidiary which it used to dump money in a country where it would only be taxed at 1%. The accounts of this company show it as having revenue of up to £15.5 billion up to March 2009 – so it’s based on these figures the unpaid bill has been calculated, something the “experts” at HMRC should have done long ago.

This woman was so impressed by our protest she came and join us specifically to get her picture took

The real myth is the one that Vodafone have obeyed the law and that the government have enforced it. As what people time and again repeated to on the streets yesterday, this shows that there’s one law for the rich and another for the rest of us. The idea that the government has “no choice” but to make cuts is a total lie. The government is doing what the Tories have dreamed of doing for decades, and now see the chance. They have made a choice, and that is to penalise the poor while letting Vodafone keep £6 billion of what should be all of our money.

What we achieved yesterday, with just two days notice was amazing. Obviously we don’t want to be doing stuff against Vodafone forever, but it was agreed participants yesterday that we’d like to build up to doing something bigger next weekend. With a week’s lead in time, we could conceivably shut down Vodafone across Glasgow City Centre. We don’t know exactly what we’ll do or how it will work yet, but we agreed to meet at 10am at St Enoch’s underground next Sat (Nov 6th) to take some action. Be there!

Bonus: Check out the original Private Eye investigation that uncovered all this.

Double bonus: Check out the Venture Capitalist website that Lovebug posted in the comments previously, a sign like action like this can get the corporate bosses spooked.

Dear Vodafone,

Re- Unpaid overdue taxes totalling £6 billion.

THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING. ACTION WILL COMMENCE WITHOUT FURTHER CORRESPONDENCE.

Despite being given ample opportunity to pay what you owe to the people of the UK, you have still made no attempt to repay the outstanding balance of tax which you hid in a Luxembourg based subsidiary.

Unless full payment is received by close of business today, Friday 29/10/10, then further action will have to be taken.

This may include direct action against your outlets, negative publicity and a total loss of standing in the eyes of the public.

Our Glasgow Department is prepared for action, and will be meeting at Saturday 30th October, 8.30 am, OUTSIDE BORDERS (NOW ALL SAINTS) ON BUCHANAN STREET in order to pursue this matter further.

Yours sincerely,

The peoples debt collectors,

pp. welfare claimants, children at school, public transport passengers, the homeless, older people, students and everyone else getting fucked over by the same government that lets you away with not paying your taxes.