Ihave been trying to blog about the anti-capitalist
protestors since they first took up camp, but have held back until I had really
understood what they were about. It would have been too easy to mock them for
moaning about capitalism whilst sleeping in shop-bought tents and chatting on
mobile phones: wearing an itchy jumper does not remove you from being a cog in
a capitalist society.

At first I was scathing if you inherently dont like
capitalism, then you should probably move to a country that has a different way
of organising itself, as 200 people nibbling on stew and sipping at Starbucks
lattes cannot change the way our country has established itself over a thousand
years. But then I listened a bit more and realised that anti-capitalist was
possibly a mis-nomer, and bank re-organisation lobby might be more accurate.
Then I had a bit more sympathy but only a bit.

Yes, bankers earn far more than me but they possibly
generate their company more money than I do to mine. Anti-capitalists tend to
forget that in the private sector people have to earn their company more than
they cost, and that is what determines their level of pay.

Of course, no-one has the right to bring down a bank
especially one that I want to pay my cheque for 37.50 into, but I think bankers
would be even stupider than people think they are if there were all these
wonderful ways of making lots of money, but they turned them down as it might
be a little unfair to earn more than the bloke who potters around in the
wholefood caf round the corner.

The real villains are obviously the people who set the rules
that allowed our banks to exchange their foundations of gold to foundations of traws
(hedging detritus), but 200 people pissing
behind St Pauls Cathedral isnt going to get to the inner circle of them.

I think the thing that sealed my opinion of the
Anti-capitalists was the fact that within hours of setting up camp, they had
established a kitchen tent (maybe fair enough), a prayer room, a library and a
university! To me, if youve time to set up a university, your work has been
done. If I wanted to protest about something,
I would spend my time banging on doors, debating convincingly with people who
can make decisions, and thinking of clever things to say to TV cameras. I
wouldnt spend it arguing about where the tent poles for the prayer room were
put when there is a bloody great cathedral next to it.