GLUE-ME RETAIL OUTLOOK

The nine UK Uncut activists who superglued themselves to Topshop last December will be either sentenced or acquitted today following a two-week trial at Brighton Magistrates Court (see SchNEWS 788. The trial has been a mix of technical arguments about what constitutes damage and evidence from expert witnesses on multi-billion pound tax avoidance and spending cuts.

The 9-day trial is reputed to be costing in the region of £100,000 (just slightly more that the £3,700 claimed by Topshop as the cost of replacing damaged mannequins. But then Topshop’s owners Arcadia Group are a billion dollar company and the police and CPS have fallen over themselves to defend their interests, and sod the cost to the taxpayer.

One defendant said: “That was what the protest was about. The extent to which our whole society revolves around large corporations and their interests, to the exclusion of all other considerations. Corporate profits must be propped up with bailouts and tax loopholes however badly they screw up and however many ordinary people must suffer.”

She continued, “Despite the fact massive corporations have only really come to dominate our society over the last 150 years, no one seems now able to imagine a world without them. We should let them fail and move on, to a world centred around real people not fictional entities.”

Meanwhile in a parallel universe, in last week’s Telegraph, Arcadia’s top dummy, Philip Green, blamed the entirety of the UK riots on the activists.