The UK media have, for the most part, been either patronising or insulting about the Occupy protesters camped out at St Paul's Cathedral (odd choice) and Finsbury Square (not so odd -- that's where Bloomberg's London office is located). The main charge is that the protests are "incoherent".
Well, if the media were thinking about this lady, at the Occupy Atlanta protests, maybe they'd have a point.
Some of the protesters in London have been just as spaced-out, but as a group they seem to be very respectable. Many of them are even, gasp, gainfully employed. Now they've started to issue specific demands, which turn out to be very far from incoherent. They're looking for wholesale reform of the governance of the City of London, which is in many ways unaltered from mediaeval times. There's a summary of their wish-list on the website of, what else, The Guardian.
Their chances of achieving any of this are, of course, smaller than John Terry's conscience. Still, there's another story breaking today that may just serve to get them quite a bit more support. Apparently directors of the major FTSE companies saw an increase in pay of just shy of 50% in the past year, notwithstanding the poor state of the economy and a decline in share prices (which are, you might think, the ultimate measure of a director's value). The BBC's report on the story can be found here.
One of the named-and-probably-not-even-a-little-bit-shamed, Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, has already responded by saying that the risks he takes are key to the success of his company. For goodness sake, Sir Martin! WPP is an advertising agency. You don't exactly face the same kind of risks as a coalminer, or a cop, or a bus driver or just about any other job you might name. (Blogging possibly excepted). The difference is that folks doing those jobs don't have a little cliquey thing going where they get to set each other's pay rates. Now THERE'S something crying out for reform, even if a tent city outside St Paul's is the wrong way to go about it.
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