It’ll come as no surprise that a game old bird like me is down with East Acton youth.

I found out that fighting political rapper Lowkey was speaking at a small Hammersmith meeting this week from the 17-year-old son of an East Acton friend. This kid finds Lowkey thrilling. I do too, even though I should be past it. He looks very good, which always helps, and he writes the sort of anti-American, anti-imperialist lyric that a young Iraqi with a big mouth could feasibly disappear for. Certainly, East Acton youths get their collars felt for less. The 17-year-old kid and his friends are stopped by coppers all of the time.

Anyway. Here is the man himself in Hammersmith this week, bigging up militant protest and praising students who engage in it (to no small applause). Yoof love him, as well they might. He’s one of the few people on their circuit at the moment who is making any sense.

He even makes sense to an old girl like me. I like a man who deals in simple equations. And the youth equation is simple: there are no jobs for young people and they’re being priced out of education. Little wonder that they’re keen to rumble – apart from anything else, they’re probably bored out of their minds. I thought the same thing when I watched plunging fire extinguishers and Millbank window-smashing last week. I mean, really – what else do people expect? Personally, I couldn’t give a damn about the rights and wrongs of kicking in windows. Kicking in windows is not the point. The point is that the next generation has nothing to do and no money to do it with. Pity that point didn’t get as much coverage as the fire extinguisher.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – this would be a very good time to legalise pot.

In praise of militant protest, then:

and the second part. He is eloquent, all right.

I posted on Sunday about my plans to stop shopping with retailers whose senior managers publicly champion George Osborne’s cruel, ideologically-driven spending cuts.

I thought that post would go the way of most women-and-shopping stories (and indeed of women-and-anything stories), but things went better than that. Thousands of people turned up to read and rightwingers went into tailspin – two very good reasons to push on.

The chance to hit pro-cuts businesses where they’ll feel it is the other good reason to push on. Consumer boycotts can be effective, especially in an online age where reputation control is painful for corporates.

Only ten days after business leaders signed a Telegraph letter backing Osborne’s cuts, consumers are redefining their notions of ethical business on the local scene. Ethical business cannot, by definition, cheerlead a widely-criticised cuts programme that threatens jobs, economic recovery and retail and local commerce. Companies with brandnames that become synonymous with unethical business have good reason to feel the fear.

Ethical consumer groups point to – with considerable justification – a proud history of successful buyer pressure.  Centuries-old anti-slavery sugar boycotts, the anti-fur trade campaigns of recent decades, consumer boycotts of battery-farmed animals and eggs – ultimately, all had profound effects on public perception and corporate reputation. A sulky corporate response goes down like a cup of the cold proverbial in the viral era. Continue reading →

Last week, 35 deluded business leaders wrote to the Telegraph to praise George Osborne’s cruel spending review.

I’m joining those who have decide to boycott every single company that those business leaders represent.

There are two reasons for this:

1) The first is that leaders on the list take us for suckers – a trait I rarely care for in people I spend my money with.

They wrote:

“There is no reason to think that the pace of consolidation envisaged in the Budget will undermine the recovery. The private sector should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector, and the redeployment of people to more productive activities will improve economic performance, so generating more employment opportunities.”

The letter authors decided the advantages of signing the letter meant more than being straight with their customer base.

And they weren’t straight with their customers at all. Liberal Conspiracy was leaked a private email that clearly demonstrated that people on the list had no confidence whatsoever in the nation’s ‘improved economic performance’ or the ‘generation of more employment opportunities’ of which their Telegraph letter spoke. Osama Saeed had the names of those who, when not flying pro-cuts and pro-government flags, were laying thousands of people off and/or telling grim tales about the realities of lie of the fiscal land.

It also seemed that many of the 35 had reasons for cheerleading Osborne’s mad plans – reasons that spoke of vested, rather than national, interests. Arup has just been awarded a major rail contract by the government. Another outstanding piece of Liberal Conspiracy work told us that BT’s government contracts had just been renewed and deals done on government contracts with Microsoft and AVEVA.

2) I do my best to spend my money with ethical businesses.

Companies that support the CSR are failed corporate citizens. They back an ideological programme of cuts that will throw thousands out of work and onto the mercy of a welfare system that itself will barely exist. In private, they have no suggestions for growth. In public, they’re collaborators who run a strong second line in denial. I would no more spend my money with them than I would with companies that beat t-shirts out of child workers in Bangladesh. Continue reading →

Mr McKeating’s take on Red Ed’s failure to turn up to today’s TUC rally against the cuts:

No less nauseating is the sight of once-and-future disappointment Ed Miliband checking his balls in at the door. Would he attend the TUC rally against Tory cuts, he was asked during the Labour leadership campaign. ‘I’ll attend the rally, definitely,’ said the Left’s last ‘hope’ in a pitch for the union vote. Now he’s in the big chair and lacking the guts or guile to fight (or, God forbid, defend) his ‘Red Ed’ nickname, we hear ‘there was never a firm commitment that he would attend the rally‘.

Fading hopes, then, of Red Ed leaping out of a cake for Friday’s reading of the Lawful Industrial Action bill – union members’ last real chance for a change to anti-union laws that would make striking to save services and jobs a genuine option. Alan Johnson’s tub-thumping about cuts means nothing. When it comes to standing side-by-side with the average working punter, Labour’s in-group is – as it has always been – on the first plane out.