Category Archives: Chess

The best club in Hastings

Posted on 2 March 2013 | Leave a comment

To many people, Hastings is the place where an historic clash of arms occurred in 1066.

For chess players the world over, it is the place where many other famous battles have been fought
- over the chessboard.

Hastings Chess Club

The clubhouse

The best club in the town is the legendary Hastings Chess & St Leonards Chess Club. Inhabiting its own building, it is itself populated by the friendliest players in the country. Its one hundred strong membership maintains the vibrancy of the world’s longest standing chess competition, which attracts players from all around the globe. They’re rightly proud of their fine heritage, which they shared with me when I turned up on their doorstep a couple of days ago, announced. Paul Kelly opened the door and together with the other players assembled for their afternoon’s indulgences, gave me the welcome which is the envy of the chess world.

A room in Hastings Chess Club

Room To Think

Let’s do a little reality check here (no pun intended). Chess clubs are full of weirdos. There’s no argument about this. Although these days we’re all much more forgiving of the socially clumsy, the chronically inept and those requiring almost constant crisis management, nonetheless us normals do not generally want to join clubs dominated by them to obtain our social connections. No-one can cope with having too many friends who are too weird. Even the weirdos in the chess clubs cannot cope with it, which leads to all sorts of problems, such as the correct angle to open a door to a match room, the precise place a boiling kettle should be placed in a darkened corner through which people will pass and so on. Hastings is having none of that carry on. Their much loved club is well organised and very well appointed. That’s why their senior membership is regarded throughout England as chess royalty.

I’ve got a room in my house which I self-indulgently call a library. That’s because when I was a lad with my head in books, I decided, probably whilst reading Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, that if I was ever able to, I would create my own library, into which none could enter bar me. Obviously I knew that I’d never have the spare resources to set that kind of thing up and as I matured, I realised it was counterproductive to seal books away. Then the internet came along and I found almost all knowledge leapt off the printed page onto the screen. I still fantasised about having a library but by then my mental image of it contained only the few books which had trailed me thus far. Now that my wife and I have set up to live The Good Life, yes, I have a room to write it, which I call my library. I’m sitting in it now, writing this and occasionally turning to a chess board for distraction. My library doesn’t look anything like Bradbury’s vision. Whatever was in his mind, he passed the imagination to me and then I threw it away. However, I often found myself thinking how wonderful such a room would be. Books warm a room and round off its hard edges. Old school libraries, with their quietitude and space for calm contemplation provided a sanctuary from the frenzy outside. The form of my private heaven is very different from its first conception. It’s got a giant Swiss Ball in it, instead of a large and ancient globe. There’s a wardrobe rather than an chaise longue. I could go on but you get the point. Luckily a moderner such as me can easily step back into his original dreams, thanks to people like the chess players of Hastings.

Books in Hastings Chess Club Library

Now That’s What I Call A Library!

Founded on 28th June 1882, the club soon started a festival of chess which was quickly regarded as the world championship of the great game, attracting players such as Emanuel Lasker, Gunsberg, Bird, Janowski and Teichmann. These days the festival has morphed into a huge International Congress. In 2007 the club celebrated its 125th birthday. It continues to attract the very best players in the world and those of us who, erm, are really little more than beginners, like me! We play on the bottom boards but can wander up through the ranks in the playing hall and stand right next to the strongest competitors whilst they agonise over their own boards. The walls of the club are festooned with photographs of the great players who have competed in Hastings over the years.

Hastings Chess Festival 1895 - some players #1

Some of the players in the famous tournament of 1895

Some of the players in the 1895 Hastings Chess Tournament

More of the best of 1895

Sitting under the gaze of these chaps was very conducive to the four games I played. I lost them all, of course, though I think I made a reasonably good fist of two of them. Of course we all want to win but the trick to understanding chess is not to see it as a battle but as a competition of puzzles. Each player throws the other a puzzle to deal with. Or several puzzles at a time!

Anatoli Karpov, Hastings

A young Anatoli Karpov, playing at Hastings

Victor Korchnoi

Korchnoi

Victor Korchnoi is now the oldest active grandmaster on the circuit, just weeks away from his 83rd birthday.

The club is open every day from 1:00pm at Pelton House, 2 Cornwallis Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex, TN34 1EB. Anyone seeking their salvation over the glorious board of ancient battle may find a willing opponent. Although I just turned up, the club asks prospective visitors to contact it first to ensure that they will definitely get a game (club members may have already agreed pairings for their tournament games on your preferred day to visit). Membership, which entitles a player to enter the club’s internal tournaments, costs £31 for your first year and £55 thereafter, with various concessionary rates also available. What better way is there to improve your mind, to retreat from the ever more hectic world and to enjoy intellectual companionship?

Chess being played in Hastings, 2013

The best way to spend the afternoon

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Posted in 1882, 1895, 2013, Chess, Hastings, Hastings and St Leonards Chess Club

A proposal for a variation in the rules of chess

Posted on 13 February 2013 | Leave a comment

Last night, on my way home from Lewes, I dropped in on a pal to repay a debt and play a game of chess. We got chatting about the evolution of the rules of the game and somehow, although it caused me to lose the game, I agreed to a variation in the rules. On the rest of my long walk home, I mused on the merits of this variation and began to wonder if it wasn’t actually a really good idea.

The idea is that either side can win the game by getting its King to its opponent’s back rank, like this. After all if a King can wander all the way over to the farthest boundary of his enemy’s original territory, he would have achieved some form of sovereignty over there, or something like that… okay, the historical accuracy probably isn’t that precise. However, if a pawn can be promoted to a Queen (sound familiar?), why not also allow this rule?

The consequences of this variation occurs mainly in the end game. Last night, I came out of the opening very badly and had to dig very deep to rescue the game. In the middle game I did okay and towards the end, I pulled back my material disadvantage but somehow or other I had forgotten about agreeing to this new rule, with the result that I failed to recognise my positional weakness in time and lost. Very often the Kings become very mobile in the end game. One obvious consequence of this variation is that a player left with only a King can win the game, instead of being restricted to a draw or a loss.

I’m not interested in changing the FIDE rules. This is just a proposal for a variant of the game. There’s lots of variants. Many years ago I played Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) which was really difficult because it involved learning all the Chinese characters, as well as a very different game. My motivation was to find a way of playing with a girlfriend, who had never learnt ‘FIDE chess’, and having us start with equal ability. Proof of its chess nature was revealed when, after we’d both learnt the moves, I turned out to be much better than her anyway.

Let’s call this variation Scrapper Chess because it allows a player whose King wildly strikes out on its own, to win. Here’s a pictorial example of what I mean. Clearly, in the image below, the game is should be all but won for White. However, Black has progressed its King to White’s back rank! Under Scrapper Chess, this is a win for Black.

Scrapper Chess

Scrapper Chess

This is an additional way to win the game. Either player can still win with checkmate. All the other rules apply in the normal manner.

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Posted in Chess, Scrapper Chess, Variants

Art abuses chess

Posted on 31 January 2013 | Leave a comment

Proselytisers of one sort or another often play with chess metaphors, as if to flatter their audience’s intelligence and, by doing so, win them over to their persuasion. Us chess players get heartily sick of this sort of thing. The clip above is a neat counterpoint to the slops thrown to us by the ignorant, professing their wisdom. Never again do I wish to hear that someone was only a pawn in a game of chess, as if the humble foot soldier of the great game was somehow insignificant. That’s false talk. Here’s some righteous stuff instead.

This neatly plays the board and vintage clocks properly, with a dramatic backdrop, but its wrong to say that a single move will lose in a blitz game. That’s inaccurate. Accuracy is required in all games. Always.

 

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Posted in Art, Chess

The eternal question: did black or white play better?

Posted on 6 August 2012 | Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I treated you to any chess analysis and I know you all love the heavy intellectual stuff on a Monday morning. Yesterday morning, I played the following game of chess online. Yes, that’s right, on a Sunday morning. At six o’clock if you’re wondering. I’m at my very best in the morning. If they held chess tournaments before breakfast, I’d play in a grading section above my normal rating. Anyway, here’s the game… … please note that this embedded game takes its code from my video channels site which also has an interactive chess viewer capable of generating these game graphics. This means that if your browser has a plugin which blocks cross-site scripting attempts, you won’t be able to see the moves. You can disable the cross-site scripting block for this post only, if you like… if you don’t trust me, you can use your own preferred chess animator or just visualise the game in your head!

The academic question is, who played best? In the old days, we could only answer this question by poring over the board and its various permutations for hours or by asking a more experienced player. These methods are a lot of fun still and, really, do teach us much about the game because they force us to think about our own decisions. When I joined a chess club, one of the older fellows there complained that, “in the old days there were only ever two people sat at a chess board, now there are three: the player with the white pieces, the player with the black pieces and the computer“. He had a computer himself but he couldn’t figure out how to use the analytical software, so he was no longer improving his game. I still couldn’t beat him though!

For my analysis of this game, I’m going to use Shredder Chess 1.2.2, because it is conveniently nearby, on my Android phone. To flip it into analysis mode, first press the ‘Play’ button on the screen, then your phone’s ‘Menu’ button, then the ‘New Game’ on the menu, select ‘White’ (because the 2D board should always be looked at with the white pieces at the bottom for consistency with all other chess analysis on the planet), then your phone’s ‘Menu’ button again and, finally, ‘Start Analysis’.

Before I start the analysis, I should mention that the existence of these tools has practically wiped out what used to be called correspondence chess because they make cheating too easy. Although I play some correspondence style chess online, I don’t treat it too seriously. That said, cheaters should be aware that any properly organised chess server will know fairly swiftly that they cheat because their standard of play is so much better than any human and fits a more complex algorithm. That’s right – computers are now just better than humans! That’s also why I prefer the snappy 5 minute blitz game – it is very difficult to cheat without losing valuable time with only 5 minutes for the whole of each player’s game. Here’s the analysis, with a combination of my thoughts and Shredder’s tips.

Scrapper_Duncan (1443) v think1879 (1562), 5th August 2007, Time Controls: 5 minutes each – White lost on time (Black had less than three seconds left)

Played at chess.com

1.Nf3 Nf6 2.d4 d5 3.c4 e6 4.Bg5 Bb4+ 5.Nc3 h6 6.Bh4 g5 7.Bg3 Ne4 8.Rc1 Shredder prefers 8.Qc3, recording Black getting a small advantage here (-0.45 says the evaluation score ~ a whole point is roughly equivalent to a pawn’s advantage, though there may not be a material difference on the board)

8. … c5 Shredder says Black had lost their slight advantage with this move. These subtleties are, as my old teacher Luke Rutherford used to say, “above my pay grade”.

9.e3 Qa5 10.Qb3 Bd7 I missed the point of this move altogether. Although Shredder thinks it ever so slightly tilts the advantage to White (+0.3), no-one can really capitalise on these tiny differences in positional strength. The received opinion is that only advantages of close to +/-1 are worth worrying about. Nevertheless, White’s best move here is probably 11. c4xd5

11.Bd3 ??? When I saw the move that came next, I didn’t need Shredder to tell me I was in real trouble. Shredder suddenly calls the game as won by black (-5.63). Curiously, Shredder suggests the move Black actually plays isn’t the best, preferring instead 11. … Nxg3 followed by (best moves for either side) 12.a3 Bxc3+ 13.Rxc3 Nxg1 – had that sequence been played I would just have resigned. Playing on from a position you know you’ve lost is pointless, unless the 17th piece (time) is dramatically in your favour. It just familiarises you with losing positions.

11. … Ba4 this move is almost as bad for White (-5.51). I knew it but wondered whether, under the very short time controls and perhaps some external influence might help me. His telephone might ring. Since s/he lives in Qatar, perhaps he might be very tired and make a blunder himself. Desperate stuff. If it hadn’t have been a blitz game I would have resigned.

12.O-O Being unable to win back any material with my inevitable Queen loss by attacking with the Queen, I left it in situ to see if I could recover more material and a positional gain. Thanks to Shredder I now see this was a hopeless ambition but I can’t think as quick as the processor which normally sits in my pocket.

12. … Bxb3 13.Nxe4 My plan was to get my Bishop on e4. Shredder doesn’t have a tip which says, “Resign! Resign! Resign!”, so instead it suggested the same move.

13. … dxe4 d5xc4 would have been better…

14.Bxe4 Bxa2 15.Bxb7 O-O 16.Bxa8 Nd7 17.Bc6 Nf6 18.Ra1 Qc7 ??? This was the catastrophic blunder I was hoping for! Although I have been steadily decreasing my disadvantage (down t0 -3.11 before that move), I’ve been fighting a lost game until this point, to borrow a phrase from Churchill I had been “buggering on”. With this move, Shredder calls the game for White (+7.79). It is the chess equivalent of David Cameron suddenly announcing the capitalism cannot be made to work and calling a general election on the spot. Unfortunately, I missed the startlingly obvious nature of this blunder. Come on Scrapper!! He’s only just plonked his Queen directly in the firing line of my Bishop. I was thinking about something else and the clock was ticking…

19.d5 that’s almost all of my newfound advantage squandered. As soon as I play this move, I realise what I have missed.

19. … Qa5 Black isn’t going to make the same mistake again but seems to be rattled. Don’t forget his grade is significantly higher than mine. He moves his Queen back to protect the hanging Bishop

20.dxe6 The far better move would have been to push my pawn to d6. White’s Queen is protecting its Bishop but the Bishop is also pinned to the Queen.

20. … fxe6 21.Ne5 Nh5 This move just looks all wrong. It does nothing to resolve the pinned Bishop. Shredder now has White’s advantage down to (-1.77). Basically, my standard of play has been consistently better over the last few moves. If I can keep up the better play, I might claw this back?

22.Rfd1 Nxg3 23.hxg3 Qc7 24.f4 gxf4 25.gxf4 Bb3 ?? This is one of those moves which just assists the opponent’s development. I was never going to keep my Rook on d1, that was a transitory occupation. It was heading for d7. Shredder calls the advantage as swinging back to White, decisively (+2.68).

26.Rd7 I’m launching an attack with a potential mating threat buried in it. If there’s any non-chess players still reading, please note that in this context mating is not in any way connected with the conclusion of a romantic episode.

26. … Qc8 White appears to disregard the threat. Perhaps there’s work to do in Qatar? (+4.9)

27.Raxa7 Qxd7 White has realised the risk and killed it along with his Queen. By now, he probably thinks I’m a chess hustler.

28.Rxd7 Bc2 29.g4 Bh7 30.Kf2 Ba5 31.Ke2 Bd8 Knowing that I have a distinct advantage, I’m preparing for the end game by bringing my King forward and putting it to work. 

32.Nd3 Bf6 33.e4 Bd4 34.Kf3 e5 35.f5 Rb8 36.Bb5 Kh8 37.Ke2 Bg8 38.b3 Ra8 39.Ba4 Rb8 I’m playing fast solid moves, improving my position. I didn’t think Black could attack. With every improving move, Black’s position becomes harder to maintain or s/he is reduced to time wasting moves, whilst I become stronger. Although time is short, Black’s time is shorter than mine. Having come back from certain defeat, I’m determined not to foul this up.

40.Kf3 Ra8 Black is plays a time wasting move as quickly as he can. His only hope now is that I run out of time before him. We’ve got about 30 seconds left each. S/he may have slightly more.

41.Kg3 Given Black’s predicament, I decide to throw in a series of quick solid moves. Shredder seems to agree (+4.33).

41. … Bxc4 This move gave me a fright. I didn’t see it coming. It means I will lose material. I haven’t got time left for the full analysis. Leaving that to Shredder now, I can see that it makes little difference (+4.33 again). I quickly decide to ignore it. Always remember, you are not being forced to swap pieces, except when you are!

42.Kh4 I’m on about 25 seconds but my opponent has less than 10 now. Can he win or draw the game before he runs out of time? A strong player could but we’re not at that level, apparently. Whilst this may not be the best chess, it is perfectly acceptable as fair play. We both started with the same time on the clock. If you mismanage your time, you deserve to lose. Shredder, however, knows nothing about the time controls. It preferred 42. Kh4 with best moves for either side then being 42. … Rxa4 and then my first move on the following go 43.Kh4

42. … Bxd3 43.Kh5 Bxe4 44.Kxh6 Be3+ 45.Kg6 Rg8+ 46.Kf6 Bf4 47.b4 cxb4 48.Bb3 Rf8+ ?? Shredder suggests steady play here instead for Black (not easy when you’re short of time, of course) with 48. … Rxg4 (the move actually played converts my advantage to +8,000,000)

49.Kg6 0-1

Shredder is no doubt whatsoever, it’s a lost position for Black. Black also didn’t manage their time properly, which is probably what caused the errors. That’s a lesson in life, as much as it is chess.

When there are just seconds left on the clock and you’re in a losing position, sometimes playing complicated threatening moves can force your opponent to think about them and thus take longer. This is a perfectly legitimate tactic. A well organised player will not allow themselves to get into this scenario, hopefully! Let’s see how Shredder sees the game playing out, without time controls…

49. … Rf6+ 50. Kxf6 Bc6 51.Rd8+ Kh7 52.Bf7 Bc6 By this point, Shredder realises that Black’s best chance is to somehow get a stalemate (a position where it cannot move and thus the game is drawn).

53.Rxa8 Bg5+ 54.Kxg5 and the game is very obviously lost for Black.

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Posted in 2012, Blitz Chess, Chess

Tagged , ,

Bad web design by Brighton & Hove Chess Club

Posted on 14 July 2012 | Leave a comment

These days you can look not only at the code for any website but also a three-dimensional representation of it. This can be pretty useful if you’re trying to work out why something has gone wrong or if you’ve realised very late in the day that you still haven’t posted anything on your blog yet. Let’s take a look at how it works, with the website which Brighton & Hove Chess Club set up after I left the club. Being unable to continue with the all singing all dancing bells and whistles 162 page beast I made for them, they opted for an off the shelf number instead. Unfortunately, from that day to this, the new website hasn’t been able to show the most crucial pages properly. The original desire for a website was to allow the club’s competition members to see how they were doing by showing them game charts. The most famous tournament in the club is the Plummer Knight, named after the beautiful silver trophy awarded to the winner each year. Here’s the tournament page from the club for the Plummer Knight:

Brighton & Hove Chess Club Plummer Knight Tournament.

Brighton & Hove Chess Club Plummer Knight Tournament.

As you can see, the right-hand side of the chart disappears! This means that everyone has to add up the number of games played and the totals by hand. I’m told that the club’s president, Ms Sue Chadwick, has declared that there’s nothing wrong with the website. Yet the same problem crops up on another page too – this time, the page which shows the fixtures for the club’s teams in the Mid-Sussex Chess League:

Mid-Sussex Chess League Fixtures.

Mid-Sussex Chess League Fixtures.

This page is all over the shop. Not only does the table disappear on the right but also the text at the top of the page disappears underneath the picture on the right-hand side. Looking at this page in 3D reveals its construction problems in a way which someone without much knowledge of website design can understand. Here’s the page in 3D:

Mid-Sussex Chess League in 3D.

Mid-Sussex Chess League in 3D.

A simple angle rotation and we have:

Can you see the problem with Brighton & Hove Chess Club's website?

Can you see the problem with Brighton & Hove Chess Club’s website?

A quick perusal like this, reveals that the site is a ghastly combination of both CSS and tables mashed together in a manner unseen in web design since the very end of the twentieth century. The table containing the league fixtures is obviously wider than the container it sits in. There’s nothing wrong with using tables to present data, like the league fixtures. The problem has arisen because a table has been used to hold the layout of the page, leaving no room for compromise with anything thereafter. Presumably, this sort of off the shelf number leaves no room for proper tweaking, with the result that more than a year after these design problems emerged, they have not yet been fixed. This page probably needs to be completely rewritten or, which may be the preferred option of the club, the tournament needs to have less entrants.

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Posted in Brighton & Hove Chess Club, Chess, Plummer Knight Trophy, Web Design

Tagged

Graham Cox bloodstains his new clean sheet but there’s no pleasure in deflowering a political virgin

Posted on 31 December 2011 | 3 Comments

Graham Cox has recently been elected to represent the voters in Westbourne ward on Brighton & Hove City Council. He has been described, by the infamous Brighton Politics Blogger, as an inspired choice by the local Conservative Party. Perhaps this plaudit has gone to his head? He’s rushed into the blogosphere and will find it takes some time to find his feet under his virtual desk. Unfortunately, time is in short supply for Mr Cox because to win the respect of his dutiful voters he must demonstrate respect for the political office he holds. To be respectable, he must be responsible. To be responsible, he must be measured in his pronouncements. He’s got off to a sorry start.

His first couple of posts proffer his personal perspective on his success. They introduce little information worth remarking upon. It is the usual fare from a local politician: he attacks the party in power, points out the effort made by his opponents to defeat him and forgets to thank the voters who elected him.

Having dispensed with the pleasantries, Mr Cox turns his hand to his specialist subject – policing (the following quotes comprise his whole third post at the time of writing). With a distinguished career in the force behind him, he might have been expected to share his organisational wisdom with the rest of us, to support the police and make genuinely constructive suggestions. Instead, he attacks the police! Traditionally, the Conservative Party supported the police. Was the New Labour project of leaving no issue safely in the hands of the Tories really that successful? His first proper political posting has style of a rough and ready bar back room bare fisted brawler. Here’s how he throws his punches:

I really am trying to avoid posting about policing – honest. However I offer this observation which could be confirmed by about 30 other people who saw the same thing.

Here’s a man who recognises that he must raise his political game from being restricted to mouthing off about his old job, yet cannot manage it. Had the incident describes been really serious or of much local significance, his claim to wish to avoid the subject might carry some weight. He has hung up his cap but still thinks he is wearing it. Look at his description of the trivial incident which has bothered him so much that he cannot hold his tongue:

Today at 10.10am I was waiting for the bus opposite Waitrose to take me back to Kings House. A police officer drove up in his fully marked police car. He parked the car outside Waitrose in Western Road, one half on the double yellow lines and one half of the car on the pavement.

Where Cox Bussed His Political Balls

Mr Cox must be congratulated on his attention to detail. If only regular members of the public were so aware of its importance when describing events, then much crime would be easier to sort out. So far, so good and also he gets some political brownie points for subtly mentioning that some members of the Conservative Party use the bus, like the rest of us. He continues:

The officer got out, hatless inevitably, and walked slowly into Waitrose carrying an envelope. He walked past two men sat on the bench outside Waitrose. They were already drunk and openly drinking from their Special Brew cans. They shouted ‘happy new year’ to the officer as he tried to avoid their gaze. He ignored them and wandered into Waitrose.

Bench Marked For Temperate Citizens Only

Obviously Mr Cox thinks that a copper should wear his hat always. I dare say that he is more knowledgeable about the official grooming protocol than my humble self. Personally, I do not think it is all that important to have the thing glued to their heads.

We are told that the officer walked slowly. Being an ex officer himself, nothing he reports about this scene is insignificant to him. He draws attention to the officer’s speed of movement deliberately. Clearly, we are being told that this was not an emergency call. The implication is that is was a casual matter. Except that the police don’t do casual, hatless or not. When in uniform they are on duty. Here we have an officer carrying out his official duties, which was probably connected with the envelope.

Did Cox Rise To The Occasion?

Next, Mr Cox stoops to a fiction which neatly fits his prejudged view of the situation. Despite waiting for the bus opposite Waitrose, which places him on the other side of the road, he declares that the errant officer tried to avoid their gaze. Someone on the other side of the road would have be exceptionally well sighted to be able to see where a man getting out of a car to enter a shop was actually looking. He probably had one eye on the traffic, to start with. Mr Cox clearly doesn’t have a clue where the officer tried to look. Did he declare telepathy in his election manifesto? Most probably the officer was trying to look where he was going!

Sadly, many of us locals have become accustomed to not making eye contact with our local street drinkers. We prefer not to see them at all. Their conspicuous personal problems upset us. Mr Cox is clearly of the belief that they should simply go away, where we can’t see them. Perhaps this officer is of the same point of view? Perhaps he was just getting on with his job? Perhaps he didn’t even notice them? Mr Cox certainly noticed them.

What was the police officer doing? I have no idea. It certainly was not an emergency but he could have been investigating something.

He could have been doing any one of the vast range of activities that comprise the complex job of policing, as Mr Cox well understands. Having himself been in various positions of high responsibility when he was in the profession himself, he surely knows that pretty much anything this officer was up to was purposeful and probably under instruction from a more senior officer. Doubtless, he was focused on the task in hand.

What message did he send out to the 30 people watching him? Well presumably  it is ok to park on double yellow lines and the pavement if you drive a police car. As for the public bench, don’t worry about old people who might want to sit there while waiting for the bus, it is reserved for Brighton street drinkers to sit there consuming high strength lager.

Oh dear. As a local fellow, Mr Cox knows perfectly well the impossibility of finding a parking space in Brighton or much of Hove. Did he, when he was the last Superintendent in charge of Hove Police Station, order his officers always to find legal parking spaces when carrying out official duties? Doesn’t seem very likely, does it? That stance would have defeated the ability of his force to carry out their duties in sensible time frames; they would have spent much of their working lives driving around to find the free spots and then walking to and from their destinations. What sort of message would that sort of carry on give? None of us like to see parking on pavements but few of us begrudge the officers we pay for, especially when they park on really wide pavements. Where’s the real harm?

If Everyone Swept The Pavement In Front Of His House, The Whole Street Would Be Clean - Chinese Proverb

Mr Cox could have concentrated on the evident social problems faced by all end of the line places like Brighton. Street drinkers are the most visible end of that spectrum. Drinking in public is not illegal in Brighton. Perhaps Mr Cox wishes that it was? He doesn’t say so… what annoys him is that these particular alcoholics have sat on a public bench.

The alcoholics he finds so distasteful are members of the public but Mr Cox doesn’t think they should sit on a public bench. Therefore, he wants them to sit on the pavement. Has he tried to sit on the pavement at this time of year? I guess not…

Although street drinking is not illegal, antisocial behaviour can be dealt with by the police. However, these alcoholics were not being antisocial. In fact, they wished the hatless police officer a happy new year. This kind sentiment is exactly the sort of vibe which Brighton is famous for.

Such a shame – if the officer had parked round the corner, put his hat on and had a quiet word to the street drinkers the 30 people watching might have thought the authorities in Brighton cared a bit more.

The shame is on you Mr Cox. When was the last time you had a quiet word with our local street drinkers? When was the last time you spoke to them at all? You are now a member of our local authority. Respect for the local authorities rests on your shoulders too. If you want to criticise others, you must be prepared to show some of the public care which you complain is so lacking. When did you last ask alcoholic street drinkers if they might give their seat up for someone else?

What sort of message are you sending out? That it is okay to shoot your mouth off without investigating the facts? What policies does your party offer to cure Brighton & Hove’s serious problems with alcohol and drug abuse? Criticising a police officer like this is a really cheap shot. You would struggle to sink much lower. It is political gesturing gone mad. It serves no purpose whatsoever.

Had you really cared about this incident, which has apparently bothered you so much that you could not resist the urge to issue a public posting about it, you could have taken some constructive action and then written about that. You could have nipped over the road, noted the officer’s number and contacted your old colleagues to enquire whether it was considered acceptable for hatless officers to park on the pavement, to walk slowly, to ignore sociable citizens in the circumstances at the time. Being a local councillor and an ex-police officer, your enquiry would have been treated seriously. You’d have got a reply which dealt with the issues.

If you want to be taken seriously as a councillor, you’ll have to start thinking local issues through a more clearly, before shooting from the hip. This time your aim was ill advised. Consider yourself politically deflowered. Time to start acting the part you have obtained in the theatre of local politics, if you want to be taken seriously.

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Posted in 2011, Alcoholics, Blogging, Brighton, Brighton Politics Blogger, Graham Cox, Green Party, Homelessness, Hove, Police, Politics, Politics in the Cave, Thieving Tory Bastards

The elite of Occupy London could learn a chess lesson

Posted on 20 December 2011 | 39 Comments

Occupy London’s politics has become fundamentalist. The public expression of opposition is treated as treasonous. Anyone who challenges the creed of the camp is shouted at (as I have been several times, most recently in a telephone call last night from a key activist inside the media team), mocked, asked to leave and even threatened. I have been personally threatened a number of times inside the camp. Someone even threatened to kill me. At the time I thought I had inadvertently challenged the status of the young Arab man who made the threat. Understanding something of North African culture I thought perhaps I should have conducted myself more wisely and braved the situation out. Looking back and having heard the fearful conversations of many activists, I think my experience is relatively commonplace. Even one of the key activist witnesses in the High Court case is no longer prepared to give evidence, because he was physically attacked.

Some people disagree with me in Brighton but they don’t threaten my life. There is a decent community atmosphere down here on the Sussex coast. We take our politics seriously; witness us having elected the most radical MP in the country, Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green Party. As with any political grouping, there are occasional rows inside the Greens but I’ve never heard of anyone issuing threats. Yet inside Occupy London threats and actual violence have become commonplace. Unfortunately, this encampment has created a dangerous community. The problem stems from the founding principles of the camp, which are:

  • the sovereign body is general assembly, which anyone may attend and fully participate in
  • everything will be completely transparent and public
  • nothing is agreed until everyone agrees
  • there will be no leaders
  • no-one will have any form of individual enforcement powers

The upshot of these principles combined is dithering and an intense distrust of anyone who takes responsibility for anything. I took responsibility for the legal team early on in the Occupation by personally instructing counsel and, later, solicitors to defend the eviction proceedings. (Please note, they represent Occupy London for free.) When I did this, I was criticised heavily and widely for “taking over” and accused of trying to usurp the general assembly. Particular anger was vented towards me for refusing to freely share the legal advice I received from counsel. Anyone with experience of legal proceedings will know, legal advice should not be shared. If you do this you waive your right to the confidentiality of that advice, past, present and future.

I instructed Mr Cooper QC myself on behalf of Occupy London Stock Exchange, so that I could taken objective expert advice. I had to make careful choices about who should be privy to that advice. It could not become properly public. This basic legal principle clashed with a principle of Occupy. From that moment on, I have struggled with the conflict, attempting to justify myself holding back some information in the face of increasing hostility. The problem was not resolved by the general assembly eventually approving the instructions I had given. Despite the activists clearly enjoying watching Mr Cooper QC cross-examining witnesses for the City of London Corporation in the High Court on our behalf yesterday, there remains plenty of criticism of the decision to instruct lawyers at all!

Other working teams inside Occupy have had similar experiences. The media team in particular has been heavily criticised. In my view this criticism has been hugely unfair. Naomi Colvin and Ronan McGivern have been outstanding. Without their expertise, their total commitment and them giving every waking hour (and probably some of their unconscious ones too) to Occupy London, much of the attention and success the camps have enjoyed would not have been possible. Given the scale of their commitment, I’ll forgive the former for shouting at me and the latter for not returning the odd text message! These two in particular have taken responsibility for organising the Occupation’s media output. Consequently, they are hated by many people inside the camp. Absolutely hated, by people who have become accustomed to disliking anyone with a specialist skill.

Occupy London’s third Occupation is the Bank of Ideas. The building is owned by the failed investment bank UBS. UBS’s attempt to evict the Occupationists was incompetent. UBS obtained an injunction to remove the activists but the method by which the injunction was obtained looks so flawed that the Bank of Ideas activists have won the right to have a full hearing in the Court of Appeal, with the result that they can remain in the building until well into the New Year. These are seriously well organised squatters!

The Bank has been a terrific success by all accounts (I haven’t been there myself), with daily events and it now hosts approximately 30 community groups which would have been closed down because of the government’s spending cuts. Although the Bank of Ideas was not set up as a residential camp, people have been sleeping in it. The most organised people have been living there. Hardly surprising, given that the alternative is an icy tent. Despite their obvious commitment to the cause, their enjoyment of the bank’s protection from the elements has caused a deep division within Occupy London. Those left outside complain bitterly that the bank dwellers are an elite group who benefit from special conditions and no longer see the value in the people outside the window, looking in.

The people working in the night watch crews, formally known as “Tranquility”, have repeatedly quit the scene. Several times, the crew has stood down because they could no longer cope with the social problems they faced. Specifically, they bore the brunt of the violent threats. Whilst wider society may not regard security teams as having any particular expertise in the way that lawyers and media people do, in reality they perform a particular craft. Occupy London was blessed to have a festival security expert create the night watch, who goes by the name of Bear. His experience benefited the entire Occupation. Without it, doubtless it would have been swept away by the police by now. He has been widely criticised for taking individual responsibility, threatened and attacked, with the result that he has now quit the scene. Who can blame him?

This distrust of anyone with expertise is a paranoia about anything connected with the realms of power. It didn’t help set up the Occupation, it didn’t help maintain it and it isn’t going to help it build on the successes so far. It goes nowhere. Rejecting any form of success is bound to lead to failure.

A few years ago, I took chess lessons from Luke Rutherford, who is currently Sussex County Chess Champion. He taught me to resign a game that I knew I had lost, rather than pointlessly fight on. His reasoning was that the more time I spent concentrating on failed positions, the more familiar failure became. If I resigned a failed position and played again, he argued, I would spend increasing amounts of time concentrating on winning positions and my game would improve. This turned out to be true. As with chess so it is in life. Some have only ever tasted failure but rather than quit when they lose their advantage, they drink from the well of despair too deeply. Consequently they never stop drinking from it. They imprint their consciousness with the feeling of failure, they recognise it as an old friend.

Living without a leader is possible but living without leadership is not. A life without direction is a disaster. Occupy London is a part of a wider political movement, which seeks to become the mass movement created by the Spanish earlier in the year. The Spanish movement (15-M or The Indignants) counted its activists in the millions. They raised their standard against the power of the banks and corporations, occupied public spaces for months and then left at a time of their choosing. Theirs was a peaceful movement promoting an alternative vision for society. They recognised when the immediate advantage was waning, when it was time to retreat and take stock and quit before losing control of the situation. Occupy London must find the same sense of direction. The alternative is to lose all the advantages won and the people who won them, myself included.

Two months under the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral has hardened the interpersonal views held there, activist and alcoholic alike. Leaving to one side the hardcore street drinkers, directed to the camp by the Metropolitan Police, there are plenty of other people with alcohol and drug problems inside the camp. It would be surprising if it were otherwise: we are a nation that hits the sauce hard, especially around midwinter. There are also plenty of genuine activists who do not intoxicate themselves each day, unless you count the coffee served up by the local Starbucks.

This is the critical moment. The original camp must find direction anew to keep the movement alive. To some extent it matters not what the decision will be. Occupy London’s general assembly must decide its own future, rather than having it decided for it. Over the last two evenings, the general assembly has failed to settle its direction definitively, despite having weeks to think about it and hours in formal debate over it. It has neither accepted nor rejected a plan to remove all the residential tents from St Paul’s Churchyard. This is said to be a complicated decision. It is not, it is a simple decision.

It is made complicated because of the social structure that Occupy London has created for itself to deal with. On a chess board there are pawns and pieces. Whereas popular culture describes the pawns as expendable, a serious player will tell you that they are not. They are “the soul of chess”, said the mighty Philidor. Many games are won or lost on pawn structure but not without the support of the pieces. Each piece has a specialist function. The King is almost incidental to the game, in terms of its power. The other pieces perform specific roles. They must be utilised in what they do best. Consequently, knights play best in the centre of the board, wielding power around them in circles. Rooks are most suited to end-game play and work best when united with each other. In any battling force you need two types of fighter – the specialists and the generalists. Neither can win without the other.

This is as true in the life of a group of political activists as it is over the glorious chess board. Occupy London needs its specialists and needs to let them take charge of their tasks. Cursing them as an elite is to play without them. It is playing to lose. Equally, the specialist activists need the body of people who keep the movement alive. Without them, there is no legitimate claim to represent the 99%. This was why Occupy London welcomed everyone and when the street drinkers turned up, why welfare initiatives were created for them.

On the famous checker-board, there is a clear set of rules. The game has to progress according to them. Occupy London doesn’t play according to any agreed set of rules. It allows itself to constantly change instead. Consequently people seized a major bank building and declared that they would not inhabit it but then living there anyway. Everybody repeatedly declared, in general assembly, that drugs and alcohol would not be tolerated on site but nobody was prepared to enforce that rule either. Fixed rules are perceived as a threat to the liberty of the players by camp culture. This caustic attitude must be remedied before the movement splinters completely.

Occupy London has just announced the seizure of a fourth site: an abandoned court house, which is going to be used to stage mock trials of the 1%. To the converted it is yet another brilliant move. To outsiders it is starting to sound like a lawless rabble running amok around London. To the people in tents, there will be much rejoicing at the general strategy and demands for bricks and mortar accommodation. It could be that this is the beginning of a general move indoors over the winter.

The seizure of new sites is not agreed by general assemblies. To even mention them there would be to lose the element of surprise, which is of course crucial to the successful cracking open of a new squat in commercial premises. Whilst few insiders would disagree about the need for specialist activists to plan these adventures, they dismantle the idea that a general assembly is in charge of anything much. Only the original occupation was agreed by a general assembly. The three following occupations have been planned by an elite group.

The fact is that Occupy London does not adhere to any of its stated rules. Formally I am in the legal team and have been since the first day of the first occupation. The membership of this team has changed many times, usually without my knowledge. Once I convened a meeting of the entire team. Various people turned up, including one man who refused to remove a face mask! The team divided itself into two parts and I remained in the part dealing with the eviction proceedings. When the division was made, an agreement was made by all the people at the meeting, including the masked man, that the eviction team membership would be locked down to three people. Immediately after the whole team meeting broke up, the other members of the eviction team welcomed another person into the team. A few days later they allowed another to attend a meeting with the solicitors! These are the chaotic consequences of the camp culture. At various times since then I have been locked out of the eviction team’s email account. One explanation given was that someone else, who I had never heard of, had been given access and the password had changed. Three times I have been locked out of this official account. I am currently locked out. Yet I am still treated as being part of ‘the team’. Whoever else is in it, I can only hazard a guess at.

Political success requires proper organisation. Whilst I’ve been devoting my energies to Occupy London, my comrades in the Brighton & Hove Green Party have been preparing for a local bye-election. I’ve not been involved at all but I have been sent every email relating to the efforts made by my local party. They’ve run an impressive campaign and high hopes are held for Thursday, the day of the vote. The Green Party runs itself according to a constitution and local rules, which make participation fair for everyone. People do not get locked out of accounts, meetings or working groups. Masked people are not allowed to attend meetings. There is no fear and intimidation. Many people throw their weight behind this radical party but our energy is not wasted by continuously discussing core issues. Instead we make decisions and move on. Our local councillors were brave enough to support Occupy when it made sensible peaceful protest a reality and brave enough to close down our local camp when the inhabitants set it on fire and attacked the fire fighters who turned out to tackle the blaze. The residents of Brighton & Hove respect us for taking the business of politics seriously. That’s why they have elected our people to run their City and to represent us in parliament. For all the talk inside Occupy London of standing for office, everyone knows it will come to nothing because no-one has agreed even some basic principles of organisation.

Doubtless Occupy London will continue to organise more and more media stunts. This is no substitute for the mass movement it wants to be. It is incapable of recruiting many more people to its ranks because it doesn’t offer a coherent vision. After 66 days of Occupation, it’s policy pronouncements are restricted to three proposals for corporate law reform and a general mission statement. It has done well to raise consciousness, granted, but it isn’t going anywhere new. It is mired in financial arguments. For myself, I have never made an expenses claim, although I did spend money on legal research. Plenty of working groups have made claims on the expenses account, comprised of funds donated by Londoners and supporters generally. The lack of any sort of formal structure has inevitably led to allegations that someone has run off with the money! The finance team hasn’t even set up a bank account to hold the money; there are no proper accounts.

Occupy London’s reply to any complaint is this is what democracy looks like. It isn’t democracy at all. It is utter chaos. The people in the movement are not in charge of it. This movement does not offer a solution to society’s economic and political problems, it offers chaos, fear, confusion and violence.

Perhaps I have been naive to become so closely involved with this anarchist experiment. I had high hopes that it would turn into a mass movement. I am now convinced that it will not. It sucks the energy out of anyone involved in it and wastes it. It has wasted inordinate amounts of my time. Today my involvement stops. My parting gift has to been to convince a particular witness to give evidence in the High Court. His personal testimony will be worthy of us all.

Being brilliant at raising complaints does not equate with offering practical political solutions. We need political answers to the current crisis, not more crises. Today Occupy London used a tank to seize its fourth site. How many of us want our capital City to be led by soldiers driving tanks? This is not a peaceful gesture, this is gesture politics.

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Posted in Bank of Ideas, Chess, General Assemblies, Occupy London, Occupy London Stock Exchange, Occupy Movement, Occupy Wall Street, Politics, Politics in the Cave, St Paul's Cathedral

The Lord Mayor and the master

Posted on 13 November 2011 | 2 Comments

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Yesterday ended with me in the tea and empathy tent, not drinking tea nor receiving empathy but playing the beautiful game instead: chess. I’d heard the talk of the legendary Hungarian encamped with Occupy London at St Paul’s. When I sat down across the board from him, it became clear very quickly that he was very good indeed. In a Queen’s pawn opening I presented him with, he swiftly played c5 and liberated both his Queen and light bishop. Realising that I knew something of the battle, he revealed his international grade – 2,300 something. In those four games I lost I learnt a lot, at the mercy of a master.

In the last four weeks we’ve learnt a lot about the City of London Corporation. It continues to hold power over all our lives but we’ve scored some important victories. For the first time in decades people have punched a peaceful hole in the fabric of corporate political containment. That shroud was wrapped around us so tightly that all forms of political expression which did not comply with the dominant ideology – predatory capitalism – were extinguished. Certainly in the UK the Green Party has been able in one place to escape the current consensus, obtaining both an MP and control of the local council in Brighton & Hove. The fact is that until recently the Green achievements looked dangerously like a high water mark for progressive politics in the UK. Us Green activists bore the weight of thousands of conversations along the lines of ‘ what’s the point, they’ll never let you change anything’.

The “they” in those conversations may not be eloquently enunciated but we all very clear about precisely who is being discussed. The corporations, the political elites and the arms sellers. This complex of power has long marched in step. Witness David Cameron rushing to sell weaponry to the Egyptian military just as its preferred regime faltered. With the Egyptian revolution and unfinished affair, he didn’t support the people in Tahrir Square. On another front, the entire country knows that all political parties have promised to preserve the NHS but now all three main parties have proven themselves deceitful. The coalition government’s provision of profiteering opportunities for corporations in the health care system simply continues a trend firmly established by Blue Labour. Our elected politicians fiddle their expenses en masse and barely a handful get prosecuted. These examples stack up with hundreds of others.

The vast majority of people have lost their faith in our particular breed of democracy. This entrenched belief in our inability to change our economic relationships has served the forces of capitalism well but it has also softened them. Here, “in the belly of the beast”, as David Harvey called our encampment between St Paul’s Cathedral and the London Stock Exchange yesterday, a diverse crowd of political activists has caught them out. Everywhere the Occupationists go, they receive support. Everyday and everywhere. Physical, financial and moral support. It’s anecdotal I know but never before in this country have I had a taxi driver turn off the meter on hearing my political conversation. The forces of high capital, buried inside the City of London, know that the Occupy movement genuinely represents the frustrations of the vast majority of the population and enjoy widespread support. They know the whole world is watching. They simply cannot afford a violent eviction of peaceful campaigners from the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral in the run up to Christmas. Christmas may have become capitalism’s cash cow but it remains a poignant reminder of people power.

This is a victory in itself: proving that we can occupy the heart of the City without permission. Suddenly the cry, ‘whose streets? Our streets!’ Seems a little less hollow. Thousands of people turned up yesterday for the Lord Mayor’s procession. They knew that his after show party had been moved because of squatters in its ancient location (it has taken place where the Occupation now is every year since 604 AD, except this year). After the procession they trooped around to check us out. It was an unusually busy day at the Occupation yesterday and last night over three thousand people packed the grand church steps to hear Mr Harvey, a famous marxist, give practical advice on the weaknesses of capital. Since when was any established political movement this popular?

The City of London knows that its forthcoming attempt to exist Occupy London is fraught with complications. Taking the people on in the next two weeks could be politically disastrous domestically, with a major strike on the immediate event horizon (30th November). It knows that the Occupations have the explicit support of the trades unions, who have the organisational networks to set up more encampments and grow the movement, spelling more trouble for corporatism. The City’s nightmare scenario is that just about everybody will know someone in a camp and realise they respect rather than despise them. Already we’re not as distant from that position as one might imagine. True, lots of people don’t yet know someone who has visited an Occupation camp but, even without that opportunity to have their media fuelled prejudices challenged, they support this new movement. I’m going to call this one. I can’t see the City daring to enforce an eviction until the start of December.

Once December comes along, the Church of England’s hand becomes much more important. We might be living in a country which has more subjects (we’re not citizens yet) who consider themselves to be followers of the so-called New Age belief culture rather than traditional Christians but the established faith remains rooted here and around the world. I’m going to call this one too. I can’t see the Bishop of London or what’s left of the clergy at St Paul’s Cathedral renunciating their promise to oppose a violent eviction. Therefore, if the City sends the police in to forcibly remove us, we Occupationists will retreat to the church steps and become untouchable. Surprising though it appears, it seems clear that the City, unused to dealing with social disorder let alone mass civil disobedience, is unwilling to take on the church. Therefore, if the City launches an eviction attempt in December, it will lose and it can’t stomach that prospect.

This is a beast which is used to winning. It has prowled the world largely unmolested for centuries. Occupy London has exposed it as secretive, undemocratic and uninterested in reform. Only yesterday we published notes from one of its private grand dinners. It knows that our support doesn’t just encircle it but runs inside its corridors too. There’s much more to come out. We haven’t defeated this feral monster but we have bloodied it. It knows that the wider progressive movement has smelt blood and now its undemocratic days are numbered. It plays the long game. It remains the master but, unlike the legendary Hungarian, it is suddenly unsure how to battle and we’re learning fast.

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Posted in 2011, Corporations, Occupy London Stock Exchange, Police Violence, Politics, Politics in the Cave, Uncategorized

Normal service is suspended: this chess player’s strategy today is to bring down the government.

Posted on 15 October 2011 | Leave a comment

I’m supposed to be posting on chess today but there’s more important matters to attend to. I’m on my way to London to help occupy the stock exchange. I’m sick of our pretend democracy when the reality is that all power is held by corporations who avoid/evade taxation. Now that parliament has voted to privatise the NHS, it has become personal. I’m going to help set the camp up. It’s difficult for me to stay more than a couple of nights due to some unavoidable personal issues. Please note, these do not include the audition ITV invited me to but I’ll probably make that anyway. I’ll be donating a tent to the cano and returning a couple of days later with more donations.

Some people have commented how nice it must be to not have a job and be able to carry on like this. These people are, of course, trolls. They troll twitter for amusement. How very sad. I feel sorry for them.

Time for the inevitable chess analogy. Damn! Just remembered that I’ve forgotten to bring my board. Very often in our culture you hear the expression, “we’re just pawns in a game of chess” whereas anyone who knows how to play properly understands that the pawns, collectively, are the most important piece. If a game is not lost through a silly blunder, pawn structure is very often the deciding factor. On a chess board the pawns only constitute 50% of the population. In life, we are the #99%.

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Posted in "all necessary measures", Brighton, Chess, Chess In The Cave, NHS, Protests

The Day A Death Warrant Was Served On The NHS – Now It’s Personal!

Posted on 12 October 2011 | Leave a comment

The thieving Tory bastards have made this personal attack on us all. We are the 99%. They are the 1%. The Liberal Democrats know they are facing, as a good friend of mine described it, “political armageddon”. There’s now no distinction between these two forces of darkness. They have cynically manipulated the democratic process with bare-faced pre-election lies about protecting the National Health Service. Now they’ve signed its death warrant.

This treason will never be forgotten. This heinous crime against the most precious achievement of our civil society is far, far worse than a mere breach of the social contact between state and people. It is a direct attack by the rich against the poor, an ambush against our community spirit and a low point in British political history.

From here on in the ordinary rules of political combat have changed. The MPs who voted for the bill must be challenged every waking moment of their day. Everywhere they go, wherever they live, whatever they do. Politics is no longer polite or respectful, they have made that true. The gloves are coming off.

If you feel even half as angry about this as I do, this is the time to work out what you can do to assist the campaign of mass civil disobedience now beginning. If you can’t be involved personally as much as those of us who intend to occupy the London Stock Exchange on Saturday 15th October (see info below), please consider what else you can do. Remember, this revolution is not being televised.

Be creative, be peaceful, be persistent. Jam their phone lines, decline to cooperate wherever possible, donate cash and goods to the occupation camps.

I had been really looking forward to celebrating David Ingledew’s 60th birthday on Saturday and am gutted to miss it. My wife will go. She does plenty for the NHS already – she’s one of their doctors. One of our doctors! I’ll be heading to London with a sleeping bag, a tent, some solar power, some video cameras and an internet connection. I’ll be staying until necessary and if that means choking up the prison system, so be it. As Nye Bevan famously said, the NHS will only survive for as long as people are prepared to fight for it.

If you can’t be spared for this level of involvement, please do whatever you can to help those who can. There’s also plenty you can do on the home front. Follow the activists online to find out where this movement is going and what you can do to help. Doing something every day, even if it is just a telephone call in protest.

If you want to join us in London on Saturday, here’s how:

Occupy the London Stock Exchange
15th October
12pm
St Paul’s Cathedral

The words ‘corporate greed’ ring through the speeches and banners of protests across the globe. After huge bail-outs and in the face of unemployment, privatisation and austerity we still see profits for the rich on the increase. But we are the 99%, and on October 15th our voice unites across gender and race, across borders and continents as we call for equality and justice for all.

In London we will occupy the stock exchange. Reclaiming space in the face of the financial system and using it to voice ideas for how we can work towards a better future. A future free from austerity, growing inequality, unemployment, tax injustice and a political elite who ignores its citizens, and work towards concrete demands to be met.

Assemble in front of St Pauls Cathedral at Midday – please try to be on time and not early or late. When you are there be ready and attentive. Make sure to follow @OccupyLSX on twitter for updates on the day.

Try to come with a friend or group of friends. If you are thinking of staying for a while bring plenty of food and water, wrap up warm and you may want to bring tents and a sleeping bag.

Bring your energy and excitement, and be ready to create a better world!

If you have any questions or comments, please get in touch
Email: general@occupylsx.org
Twitter: @OccupyLSX
Website: occupylsx.org

This is not a party political affair…

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Posted in "all necessary measures", 2011, Abuse, Anonymous, Camping, Corporations, Facing Fear, Liberal Traitors, NHS, Occupy London Stock Exchange, Police, Politics, Politics in the Cave, Protests, Scams, Thieving Tory Bastards