Category: Culture Jamming/Subvertising

Sat­ur­day, 25th Novem­ber 06: Buy Noth­ing Day, a day where you chal­lenge your­self, friends and fam­i­ly to switch off from shop­ping and tune into life. This is how a group of colour­ful hap­py peo­ple cel­e­brat­ed Buy Noth­ing Day in Man­ches­ter UK.

Rhythms of Resis­tance Man­ches­ter, Aliens, singers and their love­ly friends took over the city in a colour­ful cel­e­bra­tion of Buy Noth­ing Day , that includ­ed:

A FREE MARKET with lots of books, clothes, tapes, dvds and toys. All for peo­ple to take away (free) to pro­mote re-using items rather than bin­ning and re-buy­ing.

FLYERS: Aliens, sam­bis­tas, singers and stu­dents gave out fly­ers with infor­ma­tion on Buy Noth­ing Day and reusing and recy­cling. Aware­ness was also raised regard­ing eth­i­cal shop­ping, ask­ing peo­ple to think about the envi­ron­men­tal dam­ages that prod­ucts may result to.

SAMBA: the sam­ba band, Rhythms of Resis­tance Man­ches­ter, enter­tained hun­dreds of peo­ple with sam­ba encour­ag­ing them to “Stop Buy­ing Start Danc­ingâ€?. The band was joined by singers and poets too! The sam­bis­tas entered the Tri­an­gle Shop­ping Cen­tre, with a ban­ner and fly­ers and full sam­ba swing. The acoustics were great and the band sound­ed excel­lent – the secu­ri­ty guards though pushed the sam­bis­tas out. The sam­bis­tas re-entered through the oth­er door in clown­ing fluffy lov­ing style. The tough secu­ri­ty guards were lib­er­at­ed with sam­ba rhythms, as they smiled to the fun of RORM!

GAMES: games were played in the shop­ping cen­tres, reclaim­ing the space from a mad buy­ing zom­bie area to a space of friend­ships, fun and positivity.The games engaged young peo­ple and shop­pers too!

BANNER FLOAT (the action which was also known in code: “banner drops, they are so last year sweet­ie dar­lingâ€?!): A ban­ner sus­pend­ed by 28 heli­um bal­loons was released next to the Christ­mas tree in the Arn­dale Shop­ping Cen­tre. The ban­ner which sim­ply stat­ed “Buy Noth­ing Dayâ€? was admired by hun­dreds turn­ing the shop­ping cen­tre in a beau­ti­ful space! The ban­ner float was accom­pa­nied by more fly­er­ing.

In sum­ma­ry it was a beau­ti­ful day… and remem­ber kids:

Think …
Only 20% of the world pop­u­la­tion are con­sum­ing over 80% of the earth’s nat­ur­al resources caus­ing a dis­pro­por­tion­ate lev­el of envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth.
Re-think…
Buy local­ly sourced fresh organ­ic pro­duce
Say No to ani­mal test­ed prod­ucts
Few­er air miles – Stop Cli­mate Change
Buy envi­ron­men­tal­ly and eth­i­cal­ly sound prod­ucts.
Re-use and recy­cling.

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Bath activists took to the streets on fri­day to cel­e­brate ‘buy noth­ing day’

On Fri­day, six mem­bers of Bath Activist Net­work vis­it­ed some of the biggest, badest chain stores in Bath and hid anti-con­sumerist let­ters in books/items of clothing/crappy Xmas tack. The let­ters encour­aged con­sumers to con­sid­er where their prod­ucts were made, who made them and the envi­ron­men­tal impact of mak­ing and trans­port­ing them. Con­sumers were also asked to con­sid­er what we could do with the spare time we would gain if we for­sook recre­ation­al shop­ping and 40 hour work­ing weeks. Sev­er­al hun­dred leaflets were hid­den in Gap, Dis­ney store, water­stones, FCUK and loads of oth­er shops in the town cen­tre. The text of the leaflet should be up on the B.A.N web­site in the next cou­ple of days.

bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

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Cru­el Tesco Tar­get­ted for Buy Noth­ing Day

Free­dom for 20 super­mar­ket trol­leys in Bris­tol
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Last night a group of activists con­cerned for trol­ley wel­fare cut the fence at Tesco’s bloody super­mar­ket com­plex in East­ville.

Com­bin­ing skin-tight plan­ning with dar­ing elan, the activists gained access to the perime­ter and round­ed up 20 scarred and bat­terd shop­ping trol­leys.

These trol­leys exist in the most appalling of con­di­tions, forced day after day to shoul­der the weight of cap­i­talisms worse excess­es, their backs lit­er­al­ly bro­ken by the wild eyed hoard­ing of crazed con­sumers.

To mark Buy Noth­ing Day, a plan was hatched to lib­er­ate these poor beasts of busi­ness bur­den, and slow down Tesco’s prof­it machine in the process.

As soon as the gag­gle of trol­leys was herd­ed close enough to the edge of the com­pound, a ramp was hasti­ly erect­ed and the trol­leys were herd­ed out, straight into the Riv­er Frome and free­dom!

I am sure that their free­dom wil be short­lived, and they will be soon returned to their cap­tors, but for a few hours we were able to show them what life would be like if they no longer had to strain as the work­hors­es of an all-destroy­ing prof­it machine!

DOWN WITH THE PROFIT MACHINE!

WE ARE ALL SHOPPING TROLLEYS NOW!

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Anoth­er five bite the (saw) dust

More bill­boards lib­er­at­ed across Bris­tol in hon­our of Buy Noth­ing Day

In the last few days, more bill­boards have been lib­er­at­ed across Bris­tol.

At least five have been torn down, from Eas­t­on to Bed­min­ster. Many more have been altered or tam­pered with, rotat­ing bill­boards have been dis­abled and lights have been well and tru­ly put out.

In the run up to the con­sumer mad­ness that is Chist­mas, our sky­line is lit­tered with thou­sands of these mon­strosi­ties.

Adverts play on our hopes, fears and inse­cu­ri­ties to serve just one pur­pose — to sell us prod­ucts regard­less of how much we real­ly need them. In the run-up to Christ­mas they are all vying for a share of our hard-earned cash.

Kids have to have the shini­est, newest gad­gets, the most up-to-date rip-off com­put­er games, while teenagers are sold the lat­est line of sweat­shop-made design­er gear.

The admen realise that if we feel inad­e­quate we’ll buy prod­ucts to make us feel and look bet­ter. They use images of air­brushed mod­els to rein­force gen­der stereo­types; to the adman you‘re only a woman if you’re stick-thin, have a big chest (if not you’ll need to buy a won­der­bra), a pink mobile phone and cov­ered in design­er make­up. Like­wise you are only a man if you are toned, tanned, wear Calvin Klein after­shave and Dolce & Gab­bana and dri­ve a big­ger, faster car than oth­er men.

One of the lib­er­a­tors said; “We are Bris­tol res­i­dents, sick of adver­tis­ing hoard­ings mak­ing a mess of our streets, clut­ter­ing our sky­lines and block­ing our views. Bris­tol res­i­dents have com­plained for years about these bill­boards, erect­ed against our wish­es but the Coun­cil won’t lis­ten. We are tak­ing non-vio­lent direct action to tear down and remove unwant­ed bill­boards from our com­mu­ni­ties.”

“Walk through the streets of Eas­t­on, St Paul’s, Bed­min­ster and St Wer­burghs and you find hun­dreds of these mon­strosi­ties on every main road, sell­ing us cars, beau­ty prod­ucts, cred­it cards and soft drinks. But how many bill­boards do you see in Clifton where the ad execs live? They are hap­py to lit­ter our com­mu­ni­ties with their vul­gar images but they won’t have them in their own back­yard.”

As the Coun­cil con­tin­ues to allow com­pa­nies to erect bill­boards it con­tin­ues to clamp down on “anti-social van­dal­sâ€? who spray “graffitiâ€?. How­ev­er often graf­fi­ti is the only option, the only way alien­at­ed indi­vid­u­als can express them­selves in our soci­ety. What is com­mon­ly called “artâ€? is in real­i­ty elit­ist, con­fined to ster­ile gal­leries which only dis­play work from “artistsâ€? priv­i­leged enough to go through art school, only to be viewed by those who can afford it. The real van­dals are the adver­tis­ers who erect­ed these bill­boards with­out our per­mis­sion, often with­out even plan­ning per­mis­sion.

The lib­er­a­tors urge every­one to take action to reclaim our visu­al space; “Wouldn’t it be bet­ter if instead of these ugly bill­boards our pub­lic space was used for art, for peo­ple to be able to express them­selves with beau­ti­ful and chal­leng­ing images, words and sculp­tures rather than for images aimed only at mak­ing more prof­its for fat cat share­hold­ers? .…”

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Buy Noth­ing Day in Red­ditch

As part of Inter­na­tion­al Buy Noth­ing Day, mem­bers of Red­ditch Friends of the Earth held a ‘free shop‘ & leaflet stall in Red­ditch Town Cen­tre on Sat­ur­day, the aim being to high­light the envi­ron­men­tal & eth­i­cal con­se­quences of con­sumerism, and also to encour­age peo­ple to live more and work/spend less!!

5 mem­bers of Red­ditch FOE held a 3 hour stall where we gave away over 100 items(incl videos, toys, books, house­hold stuff etc) to the gen­er­al public(one item each per­son). We also hand­ed out over 400 leaflets(see above) about BND, plus many more about Freecy­cle etc and copies of Red­ditch FOE‘s lat­est newslet­ter.

We felt the day was a great suc­cess and 2 local papers print­ed great arti­cles about the forth­com­ing event, in last weeks edi­tions. This is the first time that a BND event has been staged in Red­ditch, but it won‘t be the last!

Red­ditch FOE are part of the recent­ly formed Red­ditch Alliance of Greens, set up to boost co-oper­a­tion and sup­port between local ‘green‘ goups, and to cre­ate more aware­ness of the good work we‘re all involved in.

For more info see the fol­low­ing web­sites:
Buy Noth­ing Day http://www.buynothingday.co.uk/
Enough http://www.enough.org.uk/index.html
Freecy­cle http://freecycle.org/
Red­ditch Alliance of Greens http://www.redditch-ag.info/

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Every­thing instore half price today!!!

For this year’s Buy Noth­ing Day, the Hijack­ers decid­ed to resurect one of our favourite projects. The Half Price Sale.

The plan is sim­plic­i­ty itself. Print up a bun­dle of “EVERYTHING INSTORE HALF PRICE TODAY” t‑shirts, then wan­der into shops, tidy things up and watch chaos ensue.

A dozen Hijack­er secret agents came along for the action, and vis­it­ed Nike Town, Top Shop, HMV, Sel­f­ridges and oth­ers on the day. Nike as always were the least impressed with our antics, with a pack of over eager secu­ri­ty guards ush­er­ing us out of the store with­in about 5 mins. Top Shop were far to vast to catch us, and total­ly con­fused by our actions.

assis­tant with clip board: what are you doing here.
Hijack­er: just here to help
acb: where are you from.
Hijack­er: I’m from Lon­don.
acb: no one told me you where coming(pause) why are you here
Hijack­er: just here to help
acb: but your are not on the plan(leaves con­fused)
HMV were clear win­ners with a secu­ri­ty guard exclaim­ing:
“You have to stop tidy­ing things up, you’re being ille­gal, you have to leave!”

to see more please vis­it:
http://www.spacehijackers.org

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York Buy Noth­ing Day — report & pic­tures

Inter­na­tion­al Buy Noth­ing Day came to York today. As only four peo­ple turned up our plans had to be scaled back a bit, so we did­n’t quite man­age to over­throw the cor­rupt cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem (mebbe next year, eh?!).

Instead, we set up a free fair-trade cof­fee stall out­side Star­bucks on Coney Street, and made life a lit­tle bit eas­i­er for their cor­po­rate accoun­tants.

In an hour and a half, over 150 cups of tea and cof­fee were dished out to slight­ly bemused passers by. Some want­ed to know what the catch was, some asked if we were con­nect­ed with the church (“def­i­nite­ly not!” was the resound­ing reply), and one per­son even tried to give us a dona­tion (“def­i­nite­ly not!” was the resound­ing reply!).

A fair few peo­ple stopped and talked at length, and some promised not to buy any­thing for the rest of the day.

A gang of enthu­si­as­tic teenage girls kind­ly held our ‘Buy Noth­ing Day’ ban­ner and adver­tised our wares for 45 min­utes.

Two friend­ly cop­pers walked past, but unfor­tu­nate­ly could­n’t be tempt­ed to free drinks, and just as we were wind­ing up, some­one from the coun­cil came along to tell us ‘the rules’ about stalls in town. He told us that we need­ed per­mis­sion to hold a stall, and gave us a form to be com­plet­ed for next time. He was very pleas­ant about it and was hap­py for us to car­ry on for anoth­er 15 min­utes (we’d run out of every­thing by then any­way, so we agreed), but we couldn’t per­suade him to take a free cof­fee. In all the excite­ment, the form appears to have been lost, so it looks like our next event will have to be ‘unau­tho­rised’ as well.… . .

After the cof­fee stall had been wound-up, a cou­ple of activists had some “funâ€? on the esca­la­tors in Marks and Spencers — until they were asked to leave by secu­ri­ty.

So, that’s it for this year. We did­n’t change the world, or stop much shop­ping, but we divert­ed a small amount of cash from Star­bucks’ cof­fers, had a lot of fun giv­ing stuff away and put smiles on peo­ples’ faces!

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Birm­ing­ham’s Con­tri­bu­tion to Buy Noth­ing Day 2006

A great suc­cess with protest San­tas, FreeShop, repet­i­tive beats, Guan­tanamo Bay Cam­paign, and Food Not Bombs com­ing togeth­er attract­ing and cre­at­ing a vibrant street event.

Buy Noth­ing Day has been cel­e­brat­ed in Birm­ing­ham for a few years now, ini­tial­ly by Birm­ing­ham Friends of the Earth­’s anti-con­sumer info-stalls and San­ta Claus demon­stra­tions. Last year, in addi­tion, autonomous events were staged: in-store pranks and games, Food Not Bombs, and a Free Shop.

This year the anti-con­sumerist protest San­tas were back, as were Food Not Bombs, who serve free food in town fort­night­ly. The Guan­tanamo Bay cam­paign was present rais­ing aware­ness, a fan­tas­tic portable sound sys­tem turned up, and the Free Shop returned. All these groups came togeth­er to make the event what it was, attract­ing a strong crowd and cre­at­ing a busy, vibrant street par­ty.

Why Free Shops?
It has long been recog­nised that cap­i­tal­ism is over-pro­duc­tive of goods, and that our con­sumer cul­ture pro­duces a very waste­ful soci­ety.

A free shop is a shop where we exchange goods with­out a pric­ing sys­tem: unwant­ed items are donat­ed and want­ed items tak­en away.

‘Junk belongs to us, the peo­ple. It does not belong to coun­cils, shires, gov­ern­ments or con­trac­tors’. Freeshops pro­mote direct recy­cling and re-use of goods, local­ly, and in a way that answers imme­di­ate need.

Freeshops ‘have their roots in the anar­chist move­ment’ and are well estab­lished in North­ern Europe and in the USA. There are always tem­po­rary freeshops too, and a month­ly freeshop has been run­ning in Nor­wich since 2004. Inter­net freeshops have giv­en new life to the move­ment through the online ‘FreeCy­cle’ com­mu­ni­ty [see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/birmingham_freecycle].

Occa­sion­al­ly, FreeShops can be stolen. This hap­pened to a freeshop in Whitechapel in 2002. Such inci­dents for­tu­nate­ly are rare; because no mon­ey changes hands and no one makes an unfair prof­it, freeshops don’t encour­age crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, unlike those oth­er kinds of shops.

Any of us can start a freeshop. This reporter would like to see it become a reg­u­lar event, with peo­ple swap­ping goods in town as a more sus­tain­able chal­lenge to the con­sumer cul­ture of Birm­ing­ham City Cen­tre.

An organ­is­er com­ment­ed on last Sat­ur­day’s event

“Today has been a huge suc­cess. Almost all of the stock from the shop has been tak­en away by the shop­pers of Birm­ing­ham. Along with this they’ve hope­ful­ly tak­en away a new way of look­ing at con­sumer habits in this coun­try. Peo­ple vis­it­ing the stall have been very enthu­si­as­tic about what we’re doing; some indi­vid­u­als were very enthu­si­as­tic about get­ting involved them­selves so there may be more than one Free Shop at the next Buy Noth­ing Day. Every­thing which we gave away today has been saved from being sent to the local incin­er­a­tor and all of the stock was hauled into the city cen­tre in a small bicy­cle con­voy. Hav­ing music at the event real­ly got peo­ple inter­est­ed and made the after­noon feel like an event worth ele­brat­ing”.

Food Not Bombs returned after a 2 month break to serve reclaimed food to the hun­gry and cam­paign against pover­ty, rub­bish food, home­less­ness and mil­i­tarism. The group strength­ened it’s com­m­mit­ment to using non-alu­mini­um cook­ware, fea­tured inno­v­a­tive new recipes, an improved infor­ma­tion shop, and was great­ly ener­gised by new peo­ple. Three Food Not Bombs first-timers took part, with one com­ment­ing that FNB was the ‘one of the most pos­i­tive polit­i­cal expe­ri­ences’ she had had in years of cam­paign­ing expe­ri­ence. ‘The group’s abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate and organ­ise made for a great team expe­ri­ence,’ she said. ‘We all were so pos­i­tive and sup­port­ed each oth­er. It felt like a prop­er team effort which was fan­tas­tic and I want peo­ple to know about that’. As usu­al the food was enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly con­sumed and infor­ma­tion on local and glob­al issues dis­trib­uted. The col­lec­tive end­ed the day with a social and met again the fol­low­ing Tues­day for a review meet­ing and to plan future actions.

Food Not Bombs will be back Sat­ur­day 9th and Sun­day 10th Decem­ber (as part of the vig­il for Human Rights Day), and there is a meet­ing to plan this on Tues­day 5th; social events are also in the works. Email brum_fnb@riseup.net for more infor­ma­tion.

For more on the freeshop move­ment check http://colorado.indymedia.org/newswire/display/12028/index.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_store

All in all it was an excit­ing event that brought a vibrant and polit­i­cal street cul­ture to Birm­ing­ham, and showed how dif­fer­ent groups can col­lab­o­rate to strength­en the move­men­t’s range and appeal — here’s to many more of these kinds of events.

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Oxford Shop­pers Left Bemused By Con­sumer Cult

The Rev. E. Lit­tle­helps, Lord High Pur­chas­er of the Cult of Con­sumerism, explains in his own words what hap­pened when a group of activists pre­tend­ing to be cor­po­ra­tion-wor­ship­pers descend­ed on Oxford City Cen­tre for Inter­na­tion­al Buy Noth­ing Day.

Thought For The (Buy Noth­ing) Day
By Rev. E. Lit­tle­helps

It was half past ten in the morn­ing, on Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 25th. The skies over Oxford City Cen­tre were grey as I wait­ed out­side the Tem­ple of St. Claren­don (known to the unini­ti­at­ed sim­ply as “The Claren­don Cen­treâ€?), pulling my robes tight­ly around me. The morn­ing was chill, but I was filled with a fiery pur­pose. Today was “Buy Noth­ing Dayâ€?, a false fes­ti­val cre­at­ed by infi­dels in an attempt to dis­cred­it the holy cor­po­rate brands; it was our sacred mis­sion to counter their foul sac­ri­lege by preach­ing the Good Word of The Holy Multi­na­tion­als to all who would lis­ten. Glo­ri­ous work, my chil­dren. Glo­ri­ous work.

Some loose-mouthed folk call us the Cult of Con­sumerism; we know our­selves as the iPos­tles, and work for the greater good of our won­drous cor­po­rate pan­theon and all of their noble prof­its.

As my broth­ers and sis­ters assem­bled around me, my heart soared in antic­i­pa­tion of the great work before us. All five of the Inner Cir­cle were there: Sis­ter Bucks, Preach­er Bright, Padre Sta­tion, Sis­ter Swoosh and Apos­tle Mac­in­tosh. We began our first incan­ta­tion (“Shop, Shop, Till You Dropâ€?), to cleanse our­selves of any impure, non-con­sumer thoughts, and strode bold­ly out onto the con­se­crat­ed ground of the Corn­mar­ket pedes­tri­anised shop­ping precinct.

So many brands, all around us, already glow­ing neon in the weak morn­ing light! So many small but per­fect chapels to con­sumerism, where even at this hour wor­ship­pers were flock­ing to make their offer­ings! The rap­ture was soon upon us, and we began to pros­trate our­selves before each gleam­ing altar, cry­ing our prais­es to the skies.

Sing praise to McDon­alds! We wor­ship you, St Ronald, and your won­drous pow­er, the pow­er to trans­form rain­forests into obese chil­dren. All hail Star­bucks, and the Sacred Busi­ness Mod­el – we mar­vel at your abil­i­ty to pay cof­fee grow­ers 40p for a pound of cof­fee, keep­ing them pover­ty-strick­en and ful­ly in your thrall, whilst sell­ing lattes for £4 a cup! All hail Voda­fone – we thank you for sell­ing us a new phone every six months when the old one still works, and thus strip­ping away the planet’s resources and fuelling wars over rare min­er­als, all in your glo­ry! All hail!

Tru­ly, as Apos­tle Mac­in­tosh observed, the prof­its were speak­ing through us. And o, most won­drous thing, in front of The Dis­ney Store (all praise the spark­ly cor­po­rate plas­tic tat, made by chil­dren for chil­dren), that same good broth­er was sud­den­ly filled with the spir­it of Mick­ey Mouse, and began to speak in high-pitched tongues, to our utter delight and won­der!

At West­gate Cathe­dral we beheld façade upon glo­ri­ous façade, beg­ging us to con­sume the whole plan­et piece by shrink-wrapped piece. We had bare­ly begun our wor­ship out­side the Church of Sony (“all hail stand-by mode!â€?), when one of the guardians of the tem­ple, jeal­ous of any favour we might be win­ning from our shared cor­po­rate deities, escort­ed us firm­ly from the premis­es – but we were unde­terred, and showed our defi­ance with a spon­ta­neous chant­i­ng and rap­ping med­ley out­side the tem­ple gates. Mal­lelu­jah!
We threw our­selves as hum­ble sup­pli­cants before Gap, singing praise to the enor­mous gap between the wages of the sweat­shop work­ers and their high street prices. We wept tears of grat­i­tude before the sign of the holy Vir­gin, thank­ing St Bran­son for solv­ing cli­mate change by telling us all to fly more. Out­side Argos, we invoked the words of the great the­olo­gian Sir William of Bai­ley, and gave praise to the Lam­i­nat­ed Book of Dreams, sheathed in sacred plas­tic to catch the tears of joy from those who stand in awe before it. Help us, Argos! We need a pink Play­boy liq­uid lamp! A plas­tic flamin­go to sit beside our Golf­ing Gnomes! My toast­er is the wrong colour, Argos – sure­ly you hold the key to my sal­va­tion with­in the Mys­te­ri­ous Dun­geon of Plen­ty?

As the day pro­gressed, many crowds of onlook­ers gath­ered around us, drawn by the truth of our words. Many of them seemed strange­ly gripped by fits of laugh­ter, doubt­less over­come by joy at the thought of the blessed cor­po­ra­tions per­vad­ing every aspect of our lives; oth­ers fol­lowed us, shout­ing out sug­ges­tions for where we should wor­ship next. Great mul­ti­tudes beheld our cer­e­monies, and many hun­dreds of pam­phlets were hand­ed out to the curi­ous con­gre­ga­tion. It was only after the event that we realised that a ter­ri­ble error had occurred, and we had some­how been dis­trib­ut­ing a blas­phe­mous Buy Noth­ing Day “Anti-Catalogueâ€?, which warned peo­ple of the sup­posed dan­gers of exces­sive con­sump­tion, and encour­aged them to shop less and live more, even going so far as to sug­gest a num­ber of “funâ€? and “freeâ€? things that peo­ple could do instead of con­sum­ing.

Despite this dread­ful over­sight, as dusk fell over the city we decid­ed that our work had been well done, and returned to our indi­vid­ual home­life con­sump­tion mod­ules with a sense of deep and blessed sat­is­fac­tion.
Rest assured, peo­ple of Oxford, we shall return in good time to deliv­er more sacred shop­ping ser­mons. Unless, of course, those accursed Cor­po­rate Plun­der Pirates get there first and steal our thun­der.

WTO-approved bless­ings to you all,
The Rev. E Lit­tle­helps

“And behold the splen­dour of KFC, and the mirac­u­lous buck­ets of greasy fried gunk. Yea, for the rain­forests are an abom­i­na­tion unto the Most Right­eous Colonel Saint Sanders, and must be torn down to make way for the boun­teous fields of chick­en feed, to fat­ten the birds in the Holy Cages of Won­der. Thus we may all share the glo­ri­ous boun­ty of the Fam­i­ly Spe­cial Offer Bone­less Box. Rejoice!”

For an elec­tron­ic copy of the Anti-Cat­a­logue, email dan­ny­chivers [at] wildmail.com.

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“Put me down! I won’t bring you hap­pi­ness” More Buy Noth­ing Day Pix­ie-ing

A mer­ry band of Oxford pix­ies full of the joys of the sea­son vis­it­ed many, many shops — includ­ing Miss Sel­f­ridges, Top­shop, Gap, HMV and Dixons — plac­ing thought-pro­vok­ing stick­ers in dress­ing rooms and on prod­ucts.

Why did these pesky pix­ies make life dif­fi­cult for the staff who then had to peel the labels off? Well, read on and dis­cov­er why some the afore­men­tioned places were tar­get­ed.

***About Arca­dia Group (owns Top­shop, Top­man, Dorothy Perkins, Miss Sel­f­ridge, Wal­lis, Evans, Out­fit)***

Arca­dia Group is owned by bil­lion­aire Philip Green. In 2005, Arca­di­a’s prof­its “rose to £326 mil­lion in the 52 weeks to 27th August 2005…As a reward, Arca­dia shelled out a £1.3bn div­i­dend to its share­hold­ers, £1.2bn of which went to Green, already the UK’s fifth rich­est person.”[1] How­ev­er whilst this was already well and good for Green and Arca­dia share­hold­ers it was a dif­fer­ent sto­ry for the work­ers who pro­duced the tacky t‑shirts for Top­shop and their ilk. In a fac­to­ry in Cam­bo­dia in 2004, after over 1000 work­ers went on strike to protest against poor pay, “19 union lead­ers and 120 union work­ers were fired”[2].

In con­clu­sion: not Green by nature at all.

***About Dixons (sis­ter groups: Cur­rys Dig­i­tal, PC World)***

In 2003, Dixons, who main­ly stock elec­tri­cal equip­ment (hi-fis, vac­u­um clean­ers, iPods etc) announced a part­ner­ship with ‘sup­port ser­vices firm’ Capi­ta to man­age one of Dixons’ call cen­tres. Uh oh — bad move — as Capi­ta is prob­a­bly best know for its mis­man­age­ment of the Crim­i­nal Records Bureau: after fail­ing to check teach­ers’ records on time the com­pa­ny was even­tu­al­ly fined £2 mil­lion; small change real­ly from the £400 mil­lion bud­get it received from the gov­ern­ment for the contract[3].
After the part­ner­ship deal was clinched, Capi­ta went on to sack staff at the Sheffield based call centre[4].

Dixons deal­ing with the Con­ser­v­a­tives, envi­ron­men­tal report­ing and tax avoid­ance has also been crit­i­cised by many in the past. In a report in 2001, Friends of the Earth found that Dixons was a busi­ness backer of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty; it also short-list­ed the store as “as [a] pos­si­ble tar­gets for a major con­sumer cam­paign over ‘dodgy’ chemicals.”[5] FOE also found that the com­pa­ny had no for­mal poli­cies on con­duct on over­seas labour stan­dards. Dixons has also been accused of using their sub­sidiary, Dixons Insrance Ser­vices ltd reg­is­tered in the Isle of Man as a tax haven[6].

Final­ly, at the begin­ning of this year, Which? mag­a­zine had found Dixons to be one of the worst retail­ers in Britain.[7]

All this is before we even go into the envi­ron­men­tal dev­as­ta­tion involved in pro­duc­ing some of the mer­chan­dise that Dixons sells!
****
Most of the above infor­ma­tion was from Labour Behind the Label, the cam­paign that sup­ports gar­ment work­ers’ efforts world­wide to improve their work­ing con­di­tions. http://www.labourbehindthelabel.org
***
Be warned. The Pix­ies may strike again…

Ref­er­ences:
[1] ‘Arca­dia: the high street of exploita­tion — Novem­ber 2005 Update’, Labour behinid the Label, http://www.labourbehindthelabel.org/content/view/17/53 viewed 30/11/06

[2] Ibid

[3] Sean O’Neill & Stew­art Tendler, ‘Blun­der on crim­i­nal records was revealed a year ago’, The Times, 22/05/06

[4] Tim Richard­son, (29/04/04) ‘Ex-Dixons staff ’ ”kicked in the teeth“ ‘, The Reg­is­ter, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/29/dixons_capita_redundancies viewed 30/11/06

[5] ‘UK Democ­ra­cy Plc How the cor­po­rate jug­ger­naut is crush­ing our democ­ra­cy’, Friends of the Earth brief­ing, Decem­ber 2001, http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/uk_democracy_plc.pdf viewed 30/11/06

[6] From ‘UK Democ­ra­cy Plc How the cor­po­rate jug­ger­naut is crush­ing our democ­ra­cy’
and ‘Com­pa­ny infor­ma­tion: Dixons’, Ethis­core, http://www.ethiscore.org/company.aspx?id=33640 viewed 30/11/06

[7] ‘Shop­pers snub Dixons and Pow­er­house’, Which? 31/01/06, http://www.which.co.uk/reports_and_campaigns/audio_visual/reports/audio/Shoppers_snub_Dixons_and_Powerhouse_news_article_557_59378.jsp viewed 30/11/06

http://adbusters.org/metas/eco/bnd/