Hell No, We Won't Work

CAPITALISM has the last laugh. If you go to the Occupy Melbourne livestream you now get .... an ad for McDonalds!

http://www.livestream.com/occupymelb


UPDATE (via twitter): Call 043412651 for free legal advice (but only if you are a protester being ground beneath the pro-chocolate Zionist jackboots of the running dog enforcers)

UPDATE II: Follow the twitter action at  #occupymelb.


UPDATE III: This feed is working  http://www.justin.tv/occupymelb/b/297951749 (for what it's worth) 

UPDATE 4: Why didn't police make their move at 3am? Just asking

UPDATE 5: Sign says "Obama Is With Us. The Masonic Queen Is Not". Who knew she is into billygoats AND corgis?

UPDATE 6: Adam Bandt gets behind the Occupists. Figures

UPDATE 7: All the usual suspects. Phage luvvie Michael Short sides with public nuisances: "riot police the WRONG response to a valid and important movement#occupymelbourne".

"Valid and important, eh? Yeah, valid and important like The Phage.

If you have trouble getting home from work tonight, remember what the Phage stands for when you go to the newsagent tomorrow morning. Then buy The Australian instead.

UPDATE 8: An adult (sort of) leads a scared little girl into the heart of the protest.... ignores her terror ... and then sits the sobbing tot in the middle of the street.

Let's Drink To A Quick Eviction

ONE of the best places in Melbourne to get a vodka and tonic is a little bar that fronts the City Square. Unlike many other establishments, staffers always open a fresh, cold mini-can of tonic with every glass, meaning lots of bubbles and a sharp, vibrant beverage. Lesser establishments all too often keep a large bottle under the counter, draining it slowly and caring not all that the contents will have gone flat long before the last drink is poured. It is a cheap, mean and nasty practice that produces nothing but disappointment  with a slice of lime -- and it is one of the reasons why that City Square watering hole is the Professor's favoured spot for rendezvousing with friends and lovers.

On Saturday evening, Opera Melbourne will be staging Carmen at the Athenaeum, just across Collins Street, so the Bar of Fresh Bubbles would have been the perfect spot to meet the evening's winsome companion.

Sadly, the City Square occupantists have put pay to that idea -- and, one assumes, to the profits of the businesspeople who operate the bar and the City Square's other coffee shops and eateries. Who wants to step over rubbish, be hectored by fools or obliged to view a broad acreage of bongo-banging idiocy?

The right to rally and protest is undisputed, and the occupiers have exercised it in spades.

For much longer will Melbourne's city fathers allow the protesters' pleasure to diminish that of others?

It is time they were served an eviction notice, with dogs and fire hoses if that is what it takes.

UPDATE: Reader Jim observes that the calendar will force the authorities' hand. With Christmas coming, the municipal tree needs to go up where the protesters are camped. As for the stage, that is where Santa sites his throne and magic tent, to which he repairs for a smoke (and probably a stiff drink) whenever the Ho-Ho-Hoing gets a bit too much.

Perhaps, if the city council promises that this year's Santa is keen on pogroms and plans to rob rich children of their presents, the occupiers will welcome him. If he is your more traditional Santa, it may be that he finds his most useful elves are wearing riot gear and blue uniforms. With Christine "Golly, Those Fires Make Me Hungry" Nixon no longer in charge, they may be a tad more confident in deciding who is naughty, who is nice, and who needs a truncheon around the ear hole.