The trustafarians are revolting

sADIES TAVERN

THURSDAY, 2 APRIL 2009

The trustafarians are revolting

You'd have to try pretty hard in usual circumstances to get me nodding along with sentiments aired by Guido chuffing Fawkes, but the truly tragic behaviour of the middle class sons and daughters of Teh Poshez in response to the G20 summit has had an affect on me that is only usually achieved by several beers and Chris Moyles.

For a start, what are they protesting about? As far as I can see, the issue that unites them is that they are "against bad stuff" and in favour of "nice stuff wot makes people happy". Well, whoopee shit! I'm "against bad stuff" too, but this rarely manifests itself in a desire to pitch up to work trussed up like Lady Astor's horse, sporting a self-righteous expression, and speaking as if I'd just swallowed a copy of THE BIG BOOK OF ANARCHIST CLICHES in the kind of mockney vernacular that would have even the Jamie Oliver production team blanching in horror.

And as for the stories of police brutality - get a bloody life! This lot may flatter themselves that they are the hottest thing to hit the protest scene since things got a bit fraught at Orgreave pit, but you're not. You're just not, and this is not a scene from Life on Mars: 2009. I know everyone's desperate for a bit of Police State heavy-handedness, but it would appear that it's all been reasonably restrained. Gutted, eh? You spend all your time chuntering about the oppressive powers of the rozzers, yet they can't even be guaranteed to adminster a good beating when the Sky crew have got their cameras trained on you. Bang goes the chance of you getting your mug on the 9pm bulletin.

Which brings me to my next point (and one that's backed up by the following comment on Liberal Conspiracy):

"Although I am not a “city worker” I both live and work within 500m of Bank. There was nothing whatsoever today to be frightened about.Half the crowd were journalists. And even Russell Brand turned up at one point - wow, scary! Other than the ritual bit of broken glass, the whole thing was a damp squib."

That was my overall impression. Take out the Skycopter, the Sky river boat (!), several hundred employees from Auntie, on-the-spot reporters, those Twittering the event from mobile phones (mobiles, presumably, not being a symbol of capitalism run amok) and the array of tourists bearing cameras and you've probably halved the "protest" in one fell swoop.

Oh, and then they trashed RBS. Nice one, guys! Destroy the institution that's owned by, uh, us. The taxpayer. Well done. If anyone's going to knacker RBS then it should be democratically elected politicians, dagnammit, not a bunch of over-privileged trustafarians desperate to get on the telly.

On a final note, there was one thing that made me pause in my analysis: an elderly couple interviewed last night as to why they were on the march. They replied that they had worked hard and saved all their lives, but now their savings and pension aren't worth anything and they have to carry on working until they are into their eighties. They wanted to demonstrate their anger against the culture of recklessness and greed that had ruined their plans for old age. And quite frankly, fair enough. I think we can all stand shoulder to shoulder with that sentiment and applaud their reasons for going on the march.

What a pity that their story and so many like it was lost in a slurry of self-referential posturing from those whose motives are, let's be charitable here, questionable at best. As another commentator on LibCon said:

"Sorry but I can’t take a bunch of well-meaning people in silly costumes seriously. John O’Farrell in his amusing book “Things Can Only Get Better” summed it up perfectly - when the people see a bunch of middle class twats riding unicycles and wearing floppy missile costumes they’ll think “what a bunch of twats”!"

Amen.