28 October 2011

Black is white, according to the Guardian. Well, orange is purple at least.

Let me start by saying that my frustration with the "Occupy" London protestors is that if they put their energy and idealism into promoting practical ideas to reform the cronyist brand of capitalism that abetted the economic crisis, rather than throwing a temper tantrum against the vaguely identified system as a whole, or obscure structures of local governance (talk about going from one extreme to the other), then we might get somewhere.

I am all for protesting about this sort of thing - but performance art (as Hopi has put it) isn't protesting.

"Occupy" are not helped in their detachment from reality by the cheerleading of the likes of The Guardian. Maybe I'm going a little mad or blind (or at least colour blind) but can someone explain this to me?:

                   

The Guardian website heads this up with a claim that it proves that thermal imaging photography doesn't work when someone's in a tent and so all those pictures of purply-blue tents taken late at night do not mean that everyone's popped home for a shower, hot meal and to catch up with TOWIE, rather than comitting themselves whole-heartedly to the New Jerusalem.

Butbutbutbutbutbut....the tent turns orange doesn't it? Doesn't it? The activist pops inside for five seconds and the tent starts glowing orange, no? And as soon as she leaves, it stops, yes?  

It's like something out of Orwell. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. And orange is purple. Or maybe they should have captioned it with "All tents ARE purply but some are more purply than others".

And one other thing. Well done Anti-Capitalist Hero Woman on getting hold of some state-of-the-art technology, quickly and cheaply. I wonder what sort of socio-economic system might allow us all to do that?

What? Oh.

UPDATE: And yes, I agree, the original thermal photograph probably didn't prove very much about tent occupation as it was taken at 11 pm-ish when probably hardly anyone had gone beddy-byes. But its "Occupiers" themselves who have been quite open about the optional nature of the overnight stages of this adventure in urban camping.


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