The G20 Summit
WORDS: Yasmin Begum (Sprout editorial Group)
The G20, or as they're known offically, the Group Of Twenty Finance Ministers And Central Bank Governors, is a group of finance ministers and central bank governors from nineteen economies and the EU.
Together, they make up 85% of global gross national product of world trade, and two-thirds of the world population.
People in their thousands have taken to London this week to protest against them. You may have woken up this morning to see protestors on the front page of your newspaper.
Some people doubt their ability to make any real change to the global economy, others are anti-globalisation protestors, anarchists and?socialists. But the one thing that unites them all?is the fact that they are there this week protesting.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund?(IMF) will also be present?and come under criticism for their lending of millions if not billions of dollars to countries where dictators are in power.
A 'rainbow group' of different groups such as Friends Of The Earth, Save The Children and many more took to the streets last Saturday with the slogan 'jobs, justice and climate'. With?35,000 protestors in London, it was the biggest march in the UK since the credit crunch began.
Michael Parenti, a political speaker, even went as far as saying: "The World Bank and the IMF have created a system of modern day colonialism that make people in the developing world poorer under multinational corporations".
The last time a similar (G7) summit happened in London it was 1991. John Major was Prime Minister, and violent riots erupted like a volcano, spreading through the streets of London; a tense situation between protestors and police.
Forty-six people were injured in that protest, and it caused?£200,000 worth of damage to the centre of London. For a picture of how these protests can escalate, just type 'WTO Seattle protests' into Google.
Rioting today was imminent. This credit crunch - the one that bankers have caused with their greed- has plunged more people into poverty or living on the breadline than ever before in recent times.
So much for Blair's pledge to end both child and adult poverty.
Millions of people have lost their jobs, inflation has meant that food has?become more expensive, and?banks have gone bust. Yesterday, the price of petrol went up yet again by 2.2p with the AA stating that it would add around?£50 each year to a family's bill.
Water's rising 4.1% and BT have raised their line rental by a whopping 10%. This isn't an April fool's joke, and it's easily understandable why so many people have made their voices heard.
Police treatement of protestors in recent times has come under scrutinity, with complaints shooting up. The stop and search laws that were put into place after 9/11 has meant that anyone who looks 'suspicious' can be stopped and searched at any time on terror laws.
Many people disagree with this, and public figures such as Shami Chakrabati have made their views known on these infringements of our civil liberites, including?a database of known suspects.
For something closer to home, a local Grangetown-based musician had his house raided by policemen who pointed a gun at him, his wife and his 12-year-old daughter. It's not a London thing: it's happening everywhere.
For more?allegations of gross misconduct by police, let us look to the Climate Camp last year at which £5,000,000?was spent?policing the site. Not a single policemen suffered any injuries, but?allegations of?police brutality led to complaints by protestors. It's also?rumoured that police dress up as protestors and aggravate situations as well as purposefully provoking protestors into acts of violence.
Could it be that they lost all credibility and respect after their treatment of our fathers and grandfathers when they went on strike twenty years ago? All people in South Wales will know what I'm talking about.
On the streets of London we are faced with an oxymoron; a contradiction of the highest power. We've got angry stock traders and pushy bankers, yet we also have protestors furious at?where this world is heading.
Thousands of people angry at one group of people isn't going to go well. One of the most recent summits in the UK was the G8 summit in Edinburgh, and?we all know how that went.
If a decision is not made on this summit about the economy, it is said that the economy will go the same way as in the 1930s where a global depression hit, leaving many people living in poverty.
