The Global Day of Action gets under way in London as 500 protesters gather at St Pauls, a map given out on the steps of St Pauls indicates where the Banks, hedgeFunds, lobbists and private equity firms are based around the city of London. At 1pm a teach-in started introduced by Tent City University. A tour of the financial institutions responsible for much of the crisis looks on the cards. The tour will include visits to those that; gambled with our pensions, brought the global economy to the brink of ruin and evaded billions in taxes. They are benefiting by the crisis by grabbing fat privatisation contracts of our public services, forced ordinary people to pay for their mess, and taken more than £1tn in bailouts from the taxpayer and continue to pay themselves exorbitant bonuses.

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Some background from Occupy London:

From banks and hedge funds to lobbyists and private equity firms, they’re all in the ‘Map of the 1%’ that has been produced by Occupy London and will be available on the day.

Nowhere in Europe is the unequal distribution of wealth as striking as in the UK. The richest 1,000 persons, just 0.005% of the adult population, increased their wealth by £155bn over the last three years. That is enough for themselves alone to pay off the entire budget deficit and still leave them with £30bn to spare. [1]

We’re all in this together’ never rang so hollow. Whilst the rest of the country is being crippled by war-time austerity, the very same people who caused the crisis are now sitting on wealth even greater than what they had before the crash.

The day will see citizens using peaceful, creative ways to deliver their own messages to the financial and corporate elite of the City.

We will continue to exercise our right to peacefully assemble in public spaces and develop the democratic processes to address the problems we face.

*** Stay in touch ***
- The rules of the game: From your phone text follow @occupymay to 86444 for free SMS notifications on the day.