Edinburgh Financial Protest: "We wont pay for your crisis!"

People all around Scotland are angered by the huge amount of taxpayers money planned to be spent on bailing out the very banks that have caused this crisis, and this demonstration is sure to attract a large crowd as a result.

The top of the Mound in Edinburgh's Old Town is a symbolic and apt choice of rally point for this protest, with the corporate headquarters of HBOS (one of the crisis banks set to be bailed) out and the High Court just across the road. HBOS even has a public "Museum of Money" in its building.

Interestingly, the protest seems to have first been announced on a facebook group called "We wont pay for your crisis", and begun by a person calling themselves Tom Joad, a character from John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath', who is angered and radicalised by the 1930's the economic crisis and exploitation of that time.

The description of the facebook group states: "The banks are being bailed out with £500 billion of our money. This is 5 times what the government spends on the NHS per year. Due to the greed of the bankers and speculators, there will be rising unemployment, lowering of wages, rising bills, public services cuts. Let's meet at HBOS headquarters on the Mound and tell them that they won't get away with this robbery."

This planned protest comes quickly in the wake of a lively student and Socialist Worker Party demonstration about the financial crisis in the centre of the City of London on Friday 10th. The Edinburgh protest no doubt aims to be a similarly heated event.

We can all see that the militant rhetoric of the facebook group is correct. Ordinary people like ourselves will get hit twice by the governments plans to rescue the banks - Firstly, we, the ordinary people, are paying for the bailout - this will happen through higher taxes. service cuts and benefit cuts. These things hit those who cant afford it hardest.

Not only will we have to spend our tax money to correct the mistakes of the greedy bankers, but Secondly the economic collapse, that they caused, will mean that we cant afford our repayments on our mortgages and secured loans. This is because this crisis will will mean that we will lose our jobs, wages, pensions and benefits, and we will see a rise in the cost of living, making ordinary people poorer. This means that for many of us our homes are now at risk of repossession from those same banks we will be bailing out.

Instead, what should be happening is that our £500 billion be used to guarantee that our homes will not be repossessed, that our jobs wont be lost, and wages wont be cut. However, with this bailout plan, the banks will be getting our tax money, and our homes, and most likely aim to continue business as usual. This is criminal!

See you at 16:30 on the 24th, at the top of the mound.