Approved Rebellion

Funny old world this. One day you get an email from Nottingham City Council including the following;

"We were successful because of the link to the riots of October 1831 when a crowd of Nottingham citizens surged towards the Castle, furious with the residing Duke of Newcastle who had just openly declared his opposition to the Reform Act. This banner is a representation of the democracy the Nottingham rioters were protesting for.

The people of Nottingham burnt down castles for the right to vote. What a talking point for the electorate of the city today!"

Riots! Protest!! Burning down castles!!! Heady stuff. This concerned the planned transformation of the castle which will include a museum of rebellion.

Another day we get this in the paper from Leader of the Council Lord JoCo;

"[Staff] were subject to some frankly appalling behaviour from protesters at the weekend when they vandalised this building at significant cost to local council tax payers.
 
Let's be absolutely clear, they were not homeless, there have not been homeless people in any number in any of those protests. We are talking about the same people who have been involved in taking advantage of Mickey Summers around his particular issues, and Tom Crawford around his particular issues.

This is a small number of antiestablishment protestors whose interest is in protest, damage, threatening and actually, from time to time, violent behaviour towards council staff."

Anti-establishment! Appalling behaviour!! Chalk on buildings!!! What a wanker.

You see, there is approved rebellion eg, that which happened a long time ago or which was against someone else, and there is forbidden rebellion, that which tackles the unfairness and injustice happening today which the council is at least partly responsible for. This is the kind of thinking that requires us to celebrate burning down castles yet condemn chalking slogans on the Council House.

Fun fact; this celebrating the reform act riots was actually my idea, I included it in an April Fool post about 6 years ago. We all know they read the blog (nasty letters threatening me over the state of my garden tend to coincide with my now occasional flurries of blog posts or anti-council Twitter rants) but strangely, I haven't been given any credit yet.

Wonder if the homeless camp will find it's way into the forthcoming 'Museum of Rebellion'?

Fun fact 2; more people have been arrested and/or charged over the homelessness camp and associated protests than over the entire housing allocations scandal which saw hundreds of council houses misallocated and several disappearing off into dodgy right-to-buy deals. It also included a council employee attacking squatters with a cricket bat...