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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.
So this afternoon Serena Unrein, the Executive Director of the Arizona Students’ Association and a graduate of Arizona State University, tweeted that she was
Seriously contemplating moving to a new state right now. You know, one that won’t cut every vital service we have. This budget is NOT okay.
The budget she was referring to, which is currently moving toward adoption by the Republican-controlled state legislature, would end full-day kindergarten in the state. It would cut more than a third of a million Arizonans from the state’s health care rolls, including nearly fifty thousand children. It would propose that voters defund a land conservation program and eliminate an early childhood education program.
State Senator Jack W. Harper saw Unrein’s comment, and was moved to reply. That reply?
Drive safely
Class. Pure class.
By the way, Harper deleted his tweet after Unrein responded to it. Cute.
Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl is moving forward with a plan to impose a one percent tax on college tuition, and he’s citing universities’ willingness to gouge their students as justification.
“When you look at some of the fees these places charge,” Ravenstahl told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “we think it’s only fair to include a fee for the city.” Ravenstahl pointed to “charges for everything from athletic facility use to orientation to security,” the paper said.
A member of the Pittsburgh city council has introduced a proposal to charge universities a set amount for city services, but such a scheme would depend on voluntary compliance by the institutions, which is unlikely. Mayor Ravenstahl freely admits that students represent a softer target — as tax exempt institutions, universities are protected from such schemes.
studentactivism.net 
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