No one is throwing bricks through the windows of Citibank or Morgan Stanley. There has been none of the violence of the recent riots in London or the Paris banlieues, nothing to resemble the anti-globalisation street warfare during the 1999 World Trade Conference in Seattle, or the angry street marches that turned IMF meetings here into besieged encampments.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell/rupert-cornwell-capitalisms-heart-occupied-ndash-where-will-it-all-lead-2367782.html

The Wall Street protests against economic inequality and corporate greed that targeted the nerve centre of American capitalism are no longer merely a New York phenomenon. This weekend, from Seattle and Los Angeles on the west coast to Providence, Rhode Island, and Tampa, Florida, on the east, as many as 70 major cities and more than 600 communities have joined the swelling wave of civil dissent. The slogan "Occupy Wall Street" has been suitably abbreviated to a single word: "Occupy"

"This could be the tipping point," said Dick Steinkamp, 63, a retired Silicon Valley executive at the Occupy Seattle protest being held in the heart of the city's shopping and restaurant district . He and his wife had driven two hours from their home in Bellingham, north of Seattle, specifically to join the rally and give it support from more conventional professionals.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/08/occupy-america-protests-financial-crisis

Regulators in the United States and overseas are cracking down on computerized high-speed trading that crowds today’s stock exchanges, worried that as it spreads around the globe it is making market swings worse.

The cost of these high-frequency traders, critics say, is the confidence of ordinary investors in the markets, and ultimately their belief in the fairness of the financial system.

“There is something unholy about them,” said Guy P. Wyser-Pratte, a prominent longtime Wall Street trader and investor. “That is what caused this tremendous volatility. They make a fortune whereas the public gets so whipsawed by this trading.”

Regulators are playing catch-up. In the United States and Europe, they have recently fined traders for using computers to gain advantage over slower investors by illegally manipulating prices, and they suspect other market abuse could be going on. Regulators are also weighing new rules for high-speed trading, with an international regulatory body to make recommendations in coming weeks.

In addition, officials in Europe, Canada and the United States are considering imposing fees aimed at limiting trading volume or paying for the cost of greater oversight.

Perhaps regulators’ biggest worry is over the unknown dynamics of the computerized stock market world that the firms are part of — and the risk that at any moment it could spin out of control. Some regulators fear that the sudden market dive on May 6, 2010, when prices dropped by 700 points in minutes and recovered just as abruptly, was a warning of the potential problems to come. Just last week, the broader market fell throughout Tuesday’s session before shooting up 4 percent in the last hour, raising questions on what was really behind it.

“The flash crash was a wake-up call for the market,” said Andrew Haldane, executive director of the Bank of England responsible for financial stability. “There are many questions begging.”

The industry and others say that the vast majority of trading is legitimate and that its presence means many extra buyers and sellers in the markets, drastically reducing trading costs for ordinary investors.

James Overdahl, an adviser to the firms’ trade group, said that they favor policing the market to stamp out manipulation and that they support efforts to improve market stability. The traders, he said, “are as much interested in improving the quality of markets as anyone else.”

Some academic studies show that high-frequency trading tends to reduce price volatility on normal trading days.

And while a recent analysis by The New York Times of price changes in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index over the past five decades showed that big price swings are more common than they used to be, analysts ascribe this to a variety of causes — including high-speed electronic trading but also high anxiety about the European crisis and the United States economy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/business/clamping-down-on-rapid-trades-in-stock-market.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

Plunder .....

We must all hope that the Occupy Wall Street movement is the first wave of a great global uprising against the greed, stupidity and incompetence of the world financial system. It is early days, but the signs are that it might be. Increasingly, the guitar players, hipsters, and starry-eyed dreamers who kicked it off are being joined by middle-class, Main Street Americans infuriated by the havoc brought to their lives by bankers and governments.

Surely now we must recognise that the 1980s capitalist model has run itself off a cliff, as it was always bound to do. Call it Reaganomics or Thatchernomics or supply-side economics, whatever you like, but unshackling the banks to let them rip'n'tear in an explosion of debt upon debt has been an unmitigated disaster.

At the heart of it all was the lie that conservatives cling to even today, the so-called "trickle down theory" that everyone would win if the rich were allowed to get ever richer. Or as the great American economist John Kenneth Galbraith memorably put it: ''If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."

The money just funnelled upwards and stayed there. Consider these interesting facts:

The richest 1 per cent of Americans now control more wealth than the bottom 90 per cent.

In Britain, half the population holds just 1 per cent of the country's cash. The gap between rich and poor is wider than at any time since World War II.

Forbes magazine, the plutocrats' bible, chortled this year that the world now has 1210 billionaires, up from 1011 last year, with a total worth of some $US4.5 trillion, more than the gross domestic product of Germany.

Even here, in lil ol' Australia, median pay for the chiefs of our top 100 companies has rocketed by 131 per cent in 10 years, with bonuses up by 190 per cent. But the stockmarket value of those companies has increased by just 31 per cent.

And what is being done about this scary state of affairs? Answer: nothing. Governments print money so that bankers can merrily continue to capitalise their profits and socialise their losses. Greed is as unbridled as ever. Roll on the occupation of Wall Street.

Mike Carlton

Conservative groups responding to Occupy Wall Street argue that hard work, not protests, will bring people out of poverty. Is that true?

As the Occupy Wall Street movement has grown, more and more Americans are stepping up to share their stories and air their grievances.

But not everyone is angry at Wall Street. Conservative reaction to the movement has resulted in counter-protests and new memes, like conservative columnist Erick Erickson's new site, We Are The 53%.

The site is a reaction to We Are The 99 Percent, a website that allows citizens to upload photos of themselves holding a sign with their story - such as too much student debt, trouble getting a job, or no health insurance.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15301200

---------------------------

Of course, most of the rich people will point out how hard they've worked (they basically used slaves to do the work for them) but rarely do they allude to the way they got lucky by walking over other people to get there...

Dozens of people have been arrested in New York as thousands of anti-corporate protesters marched to the city's famous Times Square at the culmination of a day of global demonstrations inspired by the 'Occupy Wall Street" movement.

Police, some on horseback, packed 71 protesters in vans after thousands of demonstrators mixed with tourists converged on the major commercial intersection, divided by police barriers.

The demonstrators in lower Manhattan on Saturday banged drums and chanted "We got sold out, banks got bailed out," "All day, all week, occupy Wall Street," and "Hey hey, ho ho, corporate greed has got to go."

Protests were also held elsewhere in the United States and Canada, notably in Washington DC, the US capital.

Violence in Rome

Violence broke out during the day in Rome as tens of thousands nicknamed "the indignant" marched in several European cities in protest against capitalism and austerity measures.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2011/10/2011101515123592784.html

Reminds me of the Arab Spring...

As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to grow, the response from the movement’s targets has gradually changed: contemptuous dismissal has been replaced by whining. (A reader of my blog suggests that we start calling our ruling class the “kvetchocracy.”) The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask, Don’t they understand what we’ve done for the U.S. economy?

The answer is: yes, many of the protesters do understand what Wall Street and more generally the nation’s economic elite have done for us. And that’s why they’re protesting.

On Saturday The Times reported what people in the financial industry are saying privately about the protests. My favorite quote came from an unnamed money manager who declared, “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it.”

This is deeply unfair to American workers, who are good at lots of things, and could be even better if we made adequate investments in education and infrastructure. But to the extent that America has lagged in everything except financial services, shouldn’t the question be why, and whether it’s a trend we want to continue?

For the financialization of America wasn’t dictated by the invisible hand of the market. What caused the financial industry to grow much faster than the rest of the economy starting around 1980 was a series of deliberate policy choices, in particular a process of deregulation that continued right up to the eve of the 2008 crisis.

Not coincidentally, the era of an ever-growing financial industry was also an era of ever-growing inequality of income and wealth. Wall Street made a large direct contribution to economic polarization, because soaring incomes in finance accounted for a significant fraction of the rising share of the top 1 percent (and the top 0.1 percent, which accounts for most of the top 1 percent’s gains) in the nation’s income. More broadly, the same political forces that promoted financial deregulation fostered overall inequality in a variety of ways, undermining organized labor, doing away with the “outrage constraint” that used to limit executive paychecks, and more.

Oh, and taxes on the wealthy were, of course, sharply reduced.

All of this was supposed to be justified by results: the paychecks of the wizards of Wall Street were appropriate, we were told, because of the wonderful things they did.

From George Monbiot...

...

Today, sponsorship by millionaires and corporations explains why free-market thinktanks outnumber and outspend the thinktanks arguing for public services and the distribution of wealth. Or so I guess. But their absence of accountability means that guesswork is all we've got. As I showed last month, only one of the rightwing thinktanks I contacted was prepared to reveal who funded it. All the others refused on the grounds that they had to respect the privacy of their donors. These organisations exert great influence in public life. But we have no means of discovering on whose behalf they do it.

Revelations about this secret funding network have now brought down a cabinet minister. Liam Fox was enmeshed in a web of corporate influence about which we still know little. The organisation he founded, Atlantic Bridge, was registered with the Charity Commission as a thinktank. Like many others, it looked more like a lobbying outfit, demanding privatisation, deregulation and tax cuts. The key question remains unanswered: who funded it?

As a result of better transparency laws in the US, we know more about Atlantic Bridge's partner organisation, the American Legislative Exchange Council. It claims, like most thinktanks, to stand for limited government and free markets. What this means in practice is lobbying against government action such as regulating tobacco and greenhouse gases. By an astonishing coincidence, it turns out to have been funded by the tobacco companies Altria and Reynolds American, by the oil giant Exxon and by the billionaire Koch brothers, who run a fossil fuel and chemicals empire they call "the biggest company you've never heard of".

read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/17/millionaires-corporations-tax-breaks-sway-opinion

Naomi Wolf, the celebrated feminist author and campaigner, has been arrested at an Occupy Wall Street protest outside an awards ceremony held to honour New York's governor.

Wolf and a companion were led away in handcuffs from the street in front of Skylight Studios in Manhattan.

Inside, the New York state governor, Andrew Cuomo, was being presented with the "game changer of the year" award from the Huffington Post website, for which Wolf is a contributor.

She was detained after ignoring police warnings to stay off the street in front of the building and where a crowd of about 50 Occupy Wall Street protesters had gathered.

Wolf had been at the event, hosted by Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and attended by a number of celebrities, including the reality TV star Kim Kardashian, who was presented with a "business leader" award.

The protesters arrived at the event in SoHo to demonstrate their support of a "millionaires' tax", which Cuomo, a Democrat, opposes.

According to Ryan Devereaux, a reporter for the liberal TV news organisation Democracy Now, some chanted: "Where is Cuomo? Protecting the 1%!"

There was a dispute with police, who said protesters were blocking the sidewalk. Wolf came and told them they "didn't need a permit for a megaphone".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/19/naomi-wolf-arrested-occupy-wall-street

The decision by St Paul's Cathedral to drive protesters from its steps using force threatens to further divide the Church of England – and has prompted the Prime Minister to look at measures to curb protest camps.

The cathedral, which reopened its doors at lunchtime yesterday after closing the previous Friday on health and safety grounds, will go to the High Court next week seeking to evict the demonstrators. The legal action has isolated it from many Christians.

The hundreds of protesters camped on church land, who want to draw attention to the role the City has played in the financial crisis, as well as its continued high pay and bonuses, also face a separate challenge from the City of London Corporation, which acts for the interests of businesses in the Square Mile. City firms will argue that the camp breaches highway regulations. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, privately despairs of the cathedral's handling of the financial protest, The Independent understands.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/god-vs-mammon-britain-takes-sides-2377387.html

The silence of those remaining in St Paul's speaks of complete moral and intellectual failure

THE RESIGNATION of Dr Giles Fraser, the Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, over his sympathies for anti-capitalism protestors prompted some commentators to wonder what the Church really stands for.

Impetuous act
The inevitable resignation of Giles Fraser was a sad day for one of our great national churches, says Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey in The Daily Telegraph. But the departure of this able man and the planned reopening of the cathedral should at least "bring to an end the hand-wringing and posturing of the past two weeks". 

My main concern throughout has been that the reputation of Christianity is being damaged, says Carey. But I am also concerned that mismanagement by St Paul's authorities, and "self-indulgence by protestors", could make peaceful protest and public debate the subject of "even greater cynicism and apathy".

http://www.theweek.co.uk/uk-news/occupy-movement/35779/fraser-resignation-shows-church-has-lost-its-way

It has been a long tradition that churches around Europe should affort the right of asylum to those seeking protection from an over active law-enforcing police or government forces...

Clerics suppress report on bankers' greed to save church embarrassment

Brian Brady, Jane Merrick

A highly critical report into the moral standards of bankers has been suppressed by St Paul's Cathedral amid fears that it would inflame tensions over the Occupy London tent protest.

The report, based on a survey of 500 City workers who were asked whether they thought they were worth their lucrative salaries and bonuses, was due to be published last Thursday, the day that the Canon Chancellor of St Paul's, Giles Fraser, resigned in protest at the church's tough stance.

But publication of the report, by the St Paul's Institute, has been delayed in an apparent acknowledgement that it would leave the impression that the cathedral was on the side of the protesters.

Organized labor’s early flirtation with Occupy Wall Street is starting to get serious.

Union leaders, who were initially cautious in embracing the Occupy movement, have in recent weeks showered the protesters with help — tents, air mattresses, propane heaters and tons of food. The protesters, for their part, have joined in union marches and picket lines across the nation. About 100 protesters from Occupy Wall Street are expected to join a Teamsters picket line at the Sotheby’s auction house in Manhattan on Wednesday night to back the union in a bitter contract fight.

Labor unions, marveling at how the protesters have fired up the public on traditional labor issues like income inequality, are also starting to embrace some of the bold tactics and social media skills of the Occupy movement.

Last Wednesday, a union transit worker and a retired Teamster were arrested for civil disobedience inside Sotheby’s after sneaking through the entrance to harangue those attending an auction — echoing the lunchtime ruckus that Occupy Wall Street protesters caused weeks earlier at two well-known Manhattan restaurants owned by Danny Meyer, a Sotheby’s board member.

Organized labor’s public relations staff is also using Twitter, Tumblr and other social media much more aggressively after seeing how the Occupy protesters have used those services to mobilize support by immediately transmitting photos and videos of marches, tear-gassing and arrests. The Teamsters, for example, have beefed up their daily blog and posted many more photos of their battles with BMW, US Foods and Sotheby’s on Facebook and Twitter.

“The Occupy movement has changed unions,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “You’re seeing a lot more unions wanting to be aggressive in their messaging and their activity. You’ll see more unions on the street, wanting to tap into the energy of Occupy Wall Street.”

Unions have long stuck to traditional tactics like picketing. But inspired by the Occupy protests, labor leaders are talking increasingly of mobilizing the rank and file and trying to flex their muscles through large, boisterous marches, including nationwide marches planned for Nov. 17.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/business/occupy-movement-inspires-unions-to-embrace-bold-tactics.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=print

It’s one small step for a canine, one giant leap for canine-kind.

Occupy Denver’s newly elected official leader is young, politically independent and has mixed ancestry. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it almost is: that leader is a dog.

Shelby, a three-and-a-half year-old Border collie/cattle-dog mix, was elected leader of Occupy Denver in an astonishing five minutes when she earned more than the required majority of votes.

So what has happened to the economy and the U.S. over the past 30 years?

First of all, we face more and more intense competition from around the world, and at the same time we have adopted—­except in the eight years I served and the first two years President Obama was ­serving—this anti­government philosophy, which has mostly, as I point out, been an antitax and an anti­regulation philosophy, so that we have dramatically increased the national debt and our reliance on other countries to fund it. Now we are facing the retirement of the baby boomers and once again a dramatic increase in health care cost. So we have to figure out a way to put the country in the future business. We have to get ahold of the long-term debt problem, and we have to revitalize the private sector. And you can’t do it with an anti­government strategy. You have to have a smart government and a strong economy. That’s basically the argument of the book.

A US university has suspended two campus police officers over the use of pepper spray on students at a peaceful protest on Friday in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Video of the incident shows police blasting seated protesters in the face with the chemical at close range.

The chancellor of the University of California, Davis, who had called in the police, criticised the use of pepper spray on the protesters.

However, she says she will not resign.

The demonstration was intended to show solidarity with protesters at another branch of the University of California, in Berkeley, who were hit with batons by police on 9 November.

The footage of the pepper spray incident, which has been circulated widely on the internet, caused outrage among students.

The protesters are seen sitting in a line on the floor with their arms interlocked, refusing to move.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15809742

Police and bailiffs have moved in to remove tents from the Occupy London camp at St Paul's Cathedral.

The operation, which began just after midnight, was mostly peaceful but there were 20 arrests.

Occupy London was last week refused permission to appeal against a High Court decision to allow their eviction to proceed.

The City of London Corporation said it "regretted" that it had become necessary to evict the protesters.

Occupy London, which campaigns against corporate greed, set up the camp on 15 October.

Protesters in the square outside the Cathedral stressed their action was far from over, but most did not resist police and bailiffs as they removed tents and other equipment from the site.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17187180 

Scores of Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested on Saturday night as police officers swept Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan and closed it.

Dozens of demonstrators sat down and locked arms as officers moved in about 11:30 p.m. The protesters chanted “we are not afraid” as the police began pulling people from the crowd, one by one, and leading them out of the park in handcuffs.

The operation occurred after hundreds of people had gathered in the financial district to observe the founding of Occupy Wall Street six months ago. Earlier, protesters had embarked upon a winding march, after which police officers made initial arrests of about a dozen people near the park.

By 11:30 p.m., as police officers massed on Broadway, a commander announced that the park was closed. Those inside shouted back that the park was obliged through an agreement with the city to remain open. The commander then announced that anyone who remained inside would be arrested and charged with trespassing.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/arrests-made-as-protesters-mark-occupy-wall-streets-six-month-anniversary/?hp

Financial journalist Max Keiser, a former stockbroker, who now does hard-hitting financial shows on TV says deep inequality has been building for many years but has not been acted on:

 ...the inequalities in the US have been building up for decades, just recently they've reached really outrageous proportions - but you have to understand also that there's the inequality between the 1 per cent and the 99 per cent, but within the 1 per cent there's an inequality between the top 1 per cent of the 1 per cent and the bottom 99 per cent of the top 1 per cent and they're also at each other's throats trying to change laws and pass legislation to make it easier for them to make more money. So it's not really the 1 per cent, it's not there are a millions of people in the 1 per cent - you only need an income of something like $500,000 or $600,000 or $800,000 dollars a year to be in the 1 per cent.

Former Wall Street executive, and, briefly, President Obama's "Car Czar", Steven Rattner, goes even further, writing "New statistics show an ever more startling divergence between the fortunes of the wealthy and everybody else, and the desperate need to address this problem."

"Desperate" is not a term that pops up in most writing about the economy.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/04/201242118210650523.html

Evidence has emerged of the critical  role St Paul’s cathedral played in giving police permission to remove praying Christians from its steps when the Occupy London Stock Exchange camp was forcibly evicted earlier this year.

The incident caused widespread anger among many Christian groups who were already dismayed at the stance London’s most famous cathedral had taken towards the anti-corporate greed protest that sprung overnight on their doorstep late last year.

The cathedral initially insisted that it had not ordered riot police to remove anyone from its steps. But in a letter obtained by The Independent, the head of the City of London police confirmed that permission was given by the Cathedral so that protesters could then be removed for trespassing on private property.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-letter-reveals-st-pauls-cathedral-involvement-in-occupy-eviction-7788730.html

see toon at top...

Top Bank of England director admits Occupy movement had a point

Andrew Haldane praises ‘loud and persuasive’ protesters who succeeded because ‘they are right’

Richard Hall

The Occupy movement received vindication from unlikely source tonight, as a senior executive at the Bank of England credited it with stirring a “reformation of finance”.

In a glowing appraisal of the movement’s achievements, Andrew Haldane, executive director of financial stability, said Occupy protesters had been “both loud and persuasive”, and had attracted public support because “they are right”.

“Some have suggested … that Occupy’s voice has been loud but vague, long on problems, short on solutions. Others have argued that the fault-lines in the global financial system, which chasmed during the crisis, are essentially unaltered, that reform has failed,” Mr Haldane said in a speech tonight.

“I wish to argue that both are wrong – that Occupy’s voice has been both loud and persuasive and that policymakers have listened and are acting in ways which will close those fault-lines. In fact, I want to argue that we are in the early stages of a reformation of finance, a reformation which Occupy has helped stir.”

Speaking at an Occupy Economics event in central London, Mr Haldane said that Occupy had been “successful in its efforts to popularise the problems of the global financial system for one very simple reason: they are right.” He added that protesters who camped out near St Paul’s Catherdal in London and dozens of other cities including New York,“touched a moral nerve in pointing to growing inequities in the allocation of wealth”.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/top-bank-of-england-director-admits-occupy-movement-had-a-point-8231521.html#

Warren and Grayson bring Occupy to Congress

If Cole Porter were alive today he’d say that Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was “just one of those things” that was “too hot not to cool down.” The loosely affiliated band of people fed up with the excesses of financial institutions saw their influence spread around the world. But OWS pretty much faded away in less than a year, thanks to its disdain for structure, order or coherent goals. And yet, through no fault of its own, two people who proudly carried the OWS banner just got elected to Congress.

“I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do,” Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told Samuel P. Jacobs of the Daily Beast last year. “I support what they do.” The Consumer Financial

Protection Bureau that sprang from the Dodd-Frank financial reform law was her idea. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/warren-and-grayson-bring-occupy-to-congress/2012/11/09/ca8d0bf6-2a74-11e2-96b6-8e6a7524553f_blog.html?hpid=z8

FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) pursuant to the PCJF’s Freedom of Information Act demands reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency acknowledges in documents that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did “not condone the use of violence” at occupy protests.

The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country. 

“This production, which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF).  “These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity.  These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html

Peaceful protests could be outlawed on the sole grounds that they might annoy nearby residents under contentious new powers being granted to councils, campaign groups warn.

The “shockingly open-ended” orders could also be used to ban youngsters from skateboarding, forbid teenagers from using local parks and prevent demonstrators from gathering outside council offices, it has been claimed.

The powers are contained within a little-noticed section of the Government’s Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, which is currently going through Parliament.

The new public spaces protection orders (PSPOs) are intended to give town halls the authority to tackle drinking, aggressive begging, and dog-fouling, in specified areas. The Home Office said it would stop public spaces being turned into “no-go zones”.

But campaigners claim that the legislation is so loosely worded that the new powers could be used to stifle legitimate demonstrations and criminalise youngsters.

They raised the alarm on the 30th anniversary of the women’s peace camp being set up at Greenham Common in Berkshire, which critics claimed was the sort of protest that could be thwarted by the new powers.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/councils-to-be-given-powers-to-ban-peaceful-protests-that-might-disturb-local-residents-8940535.html

See story at top...