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Activists from the British group UK Uncut have split off from a much larger anti-cuts protest in London at this hour to occupy the high-end department store Fortnum and Mason.
Protesters are staging the occupation to draw attention to Britain’s corporate tax avoiders, but critics have leaped to criticize the group, claiming that Fortnum and Mason is actually a charitable enterprise, donating all of its profits to charity.
Are they right? Not really.
Fortnum’s is owned by Wittington Investments Limited, which is in turn owned by two entities — the Garfield Weston Foundation, one of Britain’s biggest charities, owns almost 80% of it, and the Weston family owns the rest. So most, but not all, of Fortnum’s profits go to charity.
UK Uncut claim that they have good reason to target Fortnum’s, though. In a press release today, they say that “Whittington Investments … have a 54% stake in Associated British Foods who produce Ryvita, Kingsmill and others and own Primark, and that “ABF have dodged over £40 million in tax.”
I’m still trying to track down the source of UK Uncut’s claims about ABF, but that’s the deal. Fortnum and Mason is owned by Wittington Investments, and UK Uncut says Wittington Investments is a tax dodger. Wittington is mostly, but not entirely, charitable.
Update | And there’s this. The Garfield Weston Foundation was found last year to have violated British charity law because it allowed Wittington Investments to make donations to non-charitable political organizations amounting to some £1.32 million. The donations, all to right-wing groups, included £900,000 in gifts to the Conservative Party.
First the students rose up. Then everybody rose up.
Half a million people are marching in London today against Conservative-LibDem plans for massive cuts in government services. The government’s budget drew little protest when it was originally announced, but public opposition has grown in the wake of a series of huge, high-profile student demonstrations.
I’ll be liveblogging today’s demos, so be sure to check back. For starters, you can watch live coverage from BBC News here and get reports directly from the scene via the #March26 Twitter hashtag.
2:30 pm London time | Liveblogs from the Guardian and Telegraph newspapers.
3:30 pm | Okay, so it turns out I’m livetweeting today much more than liveblogging it. Follow me at @studentactivism if you’re interested in my take.
One year ago today a student protest action took place in Canada that was, as I put it at the time, “unlike anything I’d ever heard of before.” Here’s how I described it then:
Student activists and others at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, a Canadian university some seventy miles northwest of Seattle, held a teach-out on “food democracy” and sustainability issues. There was music, a slate of speakers, pamphlets to read, and tea. At the end of the event the group planted a garden.
On the lawn.
In front of the library.
They ripped up the sod, built some raised beds, and planted a variety of vegetables and other native plants. They planted, they mulched, they designed rock borders. They put up fences to keep rabbits out.
On the lawn of the quad, in front of the library.
There’s a symposium about that action — which was hugely controversial in the campus community — being held on the U Vic campus tomorrow. And though organizers have been circumspect about the details, there’s apparently some sort of follow-up action happening today.
More as I get it.
Twenty-seven faculty members from the City University of New York were arrested in a budget protest at the New York state capitol yesterday, along with six CUNY students.
The thirty-three were participating in a joint CUNY/SUNY protest organized by the Professional Staff Congress, a faculty union. The governor’s proposed budget slashes funding to New York’s two public higher education systems by $170 million.
Not long ago, someone tweeted the following from Willow Smith’s @OfficialWillow Twitter account:
So Chris Brown is going to prison now breaking a window at ABC, but he didnt go for hurting Rihanna?
The tweet has since been deleted, but it’s burning up the Twittersphere.
The first question people are asking is: Is it real? Was Willow’s account hacked? Did someone else send the tweet on her behalf?
The second question folks are asking is: If the tweet was real, was it appropriate?
I’ll have more on this in a little bit.
Update | It’s been suggested that the link in the Willow tweet may contain a virus or phishing attempt. I’ve cut it out of my version of the tweet until that’s resolved.
Morning Update | Late last night someone used Willow’s Twitter account to put out a denial that the tweet came from them. So it’s clear that the account was hacked, and folks should avoid clicking the link in the original tweet.
studentactivism.net 
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