Never a rabid protester in the past, and never one to kick up much of a fuss in public…

An ordinary, middle-aged, working-class white male, wanting to try and change things for the better in my own small way.  After all, it’s a democracy we live in, isn’t it? Aren’t we supposed to be good citizens and participate in the decision-making process rather than sit at home in front of the telly, never voting and never taking part as full members of the society in which we live?

When it comes to the next General Election, they’ll be imploring us to vote and take part, maybe even collect us and give us a lift to the polling station to get our vote. They LIKE us to care about our country and get involved, don’t they? Or is that only when it suits them?

I arrived not long after midday, expecting a little bit of pushing and shoving and the odd police helmet knocked off,  and sensed there was a real mood of anticipation and just a little apprehension in the gathering crowd over what might happen if it all kicked off in the way suggested by the media over the past week or two.
Shades of Grosvenor Square in ’68,  Brixton in ’81 and all that – for those of you who remember.

But we’re now living in such a police state that you couldn’t get near the leading small core of marchers (for it was small – nowhere near the thousands I – and probably the cops – had expected).  Hordes of police and their vans, far too many for the numbers of people involved, had divided the crowd into manageable pockets, where they tamely looked on at a distance in each of the streets surrounding the Bank of England.

Some particularly nasty and aggressive constables got the nod from someone and immediately started shouting loudly and moving in a line towards us, forcing us back.  I had no idea why, as we were all just quiet onlookers trying to get a decent shot with our cameras and mobile phones.  No threat whatsoever.

In the few minutes of police shouting I got a bit of an adrenalin rush and quickly devised a plan of action if confronted with a snarling rozzer wielding a baton at my head:  keep to the edge, not the middle, don’t get hemmed in and caught up in the melee just in case the fuzz think you’re a middle-aged white terrorist and send in a snatch squad to take you out, Taser you and cart you off in a black maria or whatever they’re called these days (you probably can’t call them black any more and they’re a rather nice gunmetal grey, anyway).

But - as they said about Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ – nothing happened. Twice.
Fat chance of a bit of a rumble. I should have known.

No way through.
And no way out if you were in the core group.

Separated and segregated from the march and with no chance of any meaningful action, even if there were any brave souls to lead us out of the trenches and over the top.

And as if to rub salt in the wounds and make the frustration  worse, you could see those who were obviously bankers in their ‘dress-down’ gear (cashmere jumpers, Jermyn Street shirts, designer jeans and brown brogues or loafers), looking on with amusement in between deep conversations about the size of the bonuses you and I will be paying them this year.

It was tempting to find the nearest bucket of something brown and smelly to throw over them.

After two frustrating hours of trying to find a way into the middle and join my fellow citizens for a bit of concerted shouting and chanting, I gave up.

Every now and again some cheers rang out in the distance and you thought ‘this is it – it’s kicking off’… but it never did.

Apparently a couple of RBS windows got broken (which  belong to all of us anyway) but more importantly, several heads got bludgeoned by the government’s police thugs as we saw on the TV news later.

So that’s it. That’s the state… or should we say police state… of Britain today.

Screwed by politicians and bankers,  thousands of us made jobless, homeless and powerless,  and you can’t even do anything about it because the long and heavy-handed arm of the law will be brought in to keep you down under some trumped-up terrorism charge in the interests of national security.

Doesn’t feel like a democracy to me.

Well, let’s make it sooner than that and have an early summer this year, shall we?

And while we’re at it, how about protesting against the vulture capitalism of bankers and financiers, screwing British citizens and then expecting us to pay for its mistakes?
Watch this space for events.

Read the lips, Dave.      NOTHING, nada, zilch.    Got it now?  Pass it on to Gordon and Alistair.

See the sleazy Scottish banker justify his obscene payoff…  if this is a ‘grilling’, we’re Scottish Nationalists.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7914321.stm

Surprisingly, the four masters of the universe – Hornby, Goodwin, Stevenson and McKillop -  didn’t appear too scared by the Westminster hard men and started off with a daring apology to try and take the wind from the MPs’ sails:  “We are profoundly and unreservedly sorry”, said Stevenson.    Phew, that’s all right then. As long as you’re sorry we’ll say no more about it.

His fellow chairman at RBS agreed, as did Goodwin and Hornby, resulting in a co-ordinated and rehearsed (yet somehow lifeless) series of apologies which they clearly hoped would do the trick.

“We’ve lost a lot of money too,” insisted Goodwin.      Really?  Whose money was that, then, chaps?

It seems that most of them don’t have “banking qualifications”.  Hornby said he took finance courses while doing his MBA at Harvard, and would everyone like to see his swimming badges?

George Mudie MP sounded like a hapless Goldfinger interrogating James Bond on the laser gun table:   (“Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger?”  “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die…”) “We didn’t bring you here for a public humiliation; we brought you here to find out what the bloody hell happened.”  About as tough as it gets from a man who is effectively a public sector worker out of his depth in the company of slick and devious money men.

Bankers McKillop and Goodwin were visibly bored by it all, with a look of  “You-know-and-we-know-you-can’t-touch-us-but-we’re-going-through-the-motions” written all over their faces.

MP McFall : “You’ve all said the banks were victims of an unprecedented event. If it happens again, does the taxpayer take it on the chin? Should regulators clamp down or should the government separate retail from investment banking?”

The bankers all sheepishly go for option 2  – but they seemed to like the bit about taxpayers taking it on the chin.  That’s always been a key part of the banks’ customer service policy, after all.

After a few hours of pussyfooting around and playing to the gallery, the toothless and witless MPs had talked themselves and everyone else into a bored and listless stupor and finally realised it was time to send everyone home. They thought, no doubt, that they had been suitably tough with the four men in the dock, to whom they would normally be doffing their caps in misguided respect.

Let off the hook as they knew they would be, the bankers surely stopped off at their respective clubs, had a couple of snifters, allowed themselves a wry smile and then started working out what they would do with their bonuses, stock options and golden parachutes once this minor inconvenience had blown over.

What a bloody farce.   It’ll all return to the status quo in a few months and nothing will change unless British voters and taxpayers do something about it.

A lot has been said about IKEA in the UK – the poor quality of its flat pack furniture, the missing parts in the box when you come to assemble it, the failure to put enough staff on the checkouts so you don’t have to spend an hour getting out of the place… and so on.

Now they don’t even seem to care about delivering the goods you’ve ordered and paid for.

It seems that in the past few days their ‘system’ has had problems (its never anybody’s fault, of course) and having promised to deliver furniture and goods to HUNDREDS of customers, they simply failed to keep their promise. Many hundreds of people had their orders accepted online last week and were given firm delivery dates, arranging to stay at home all day, and many taking time off work to do so.

Of course, IKEA don’t seem able to give a rough idea of the actual time they might deliver, simply saying ‘between 7am and 6pm’ on the appointed day. This week, IKEA’s customers have waited… and waited… and waited, fearful of popping out for a few moments or going out into the garden lest they missed the delivery driver.

One such customer is a man from SW London who feared the worst, having waited in all day on Monday for delivery of his kitchen table, and at 5.10pm decided to call IKEA’s ‘Customer Service’ number. The call centre operator was very polite and almost immediately confirmed that ‘there was no tracking number’ so it was not going to be delivered that day after all. She went on to explain their ‘problems with the system’, in the past few days and admitted that it was IKEA’s fault and not Parcelforce, their delivery contractor.

When asked why someone from IKEA hadn’t contacted him beforehand to say the delivery wasn’t going to happen, she explained to him that ‘there were too many people to contact and too many calls to make’, so they simply didn’t bother doing anything. As to when they might be planning to deliver the missing goods, she could not say at all.

Naturally, when asked to be put through to a manager or someone who could take responsibility, get the item delivered and arrange compensation for his inconvenience and the loss of a day’s income, the hapless customer was told that nobody was available to speak to him. He was given the names of two ‘supervisors’ (Nicola Jenkinson and Ian Baker, who were obviously off somewhere supervising something very important), who would ring him in the next 72 hours. Note: not 1 hour, not even 24 hours, but 72 HOURS: THREE DAYS.

So why is it, in the age of ever-increasing efficiency with computers, email, mobile phones and all the other technology at their disposal, companies like IKEA cannot get customer service anywhere near right?

More importantly, why do agencies like the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and any number of others who are supposedly there to protect the consumer from rogue traders and errant retail chains, never punish and penalise the IKEAs of this world to the extent that they would never do it again?

We can of course vote with our feet, and our unlucky customer will certainly be doing that – never setting foot, or opening his wallet, in IKEA again. He will tell all of his family and friends the story and they will sympathise and swear to do the same… but if the OFT won’t do anything to put these dodgy retailers out of business, shoudn’t we all make it our business to?

Do we want them to walk all over us as they get bigger and bigger and their wretched shareholders fatter and fatter? Or do we want something better?

The British Citizen thinks we should take positive action. We will be organising demonstrations outside stores, retailer and product boycott campaigns, petitions to the relevant government ministers, lobbying of parliament and the widespread use of the media to end this blatant disregard of consumers by rogue retailers.

Shall we start with IKEA?

Editor

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