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“Louise Mensch On Occupy London-LSX (HIGNFY)“
A discussion on BBCTV’s satirical news panel show Have I Got News For You (HIGNFY), featuring Louise Mensch, Danny Baker, Paul Merton and Ian Hislop, chaired by Alexander Armstrong.
Discussion embedded above on YouTube HIGNFY highlights reel.

The Conservative MP Louise Mensch and the comedy writer Danny Baker are guests on a Friday night satirical news panel show in October 2011. The Occupy camp outside London’s St Paul’s cathedral has just become front page news. The host Alexander Armstrong asks the panellists to comment on what’s happening. Mensch argues that these Occupy protestors can’t be against capitalism when they’re enjoying its fruits – like the ‘fancy tents’ they’re living in, the iPhones they’re tweeting from and the Starbucks coffees they’re queuing for. The other panellists disagree and mock her argument. She seems to be saying that anyone who participates in capitalism should not be criticising it. And, if people are critical of capitalism, you don’t have to listen to what they say. This is the ‘hypocrite’ accusation that even the mildest anti-capitalist can expect. It’s a strategy for dismissing criticism of trade injustice , and was quickly labelled the ‘Mensch Fallacy’. Taken to its extreme, it means that only people with zero involvement in capitalism can criticise it. And that’s nobody on earth! Here at followthethings.com, we love to spot patterns in audiences’ responses to trade justice activism. This is a big one. This page looks at the only example on our site that is a response, and the way that the panellists and audiences online challenged it. Read on.

Page reference: Jon Chick, Matt Bhol, Dee Wood, Tom Lyle, Olly Woodford & Henry Owen (2012) Louise Mensch On Occupy London-LSX (HIGNFY). followthethings.com/louise-mensch-on-occupy-london-lsx-hignfy.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 49 minutes.

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“Homeland“
A social art work created by Dan Gretton, John Jordan, & James Marriott of Platform London, funded by Arts Council England, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, London Arts, London Borough Grants Committee, Paperback & Rex.
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There’s a lot of social tension about immigration in the UK in the 1990s. So a group of arts-activists called Platform invites Londoners into the back of a truck for conversations about their lives and how their city is lit. Its lightbulbs have been manufactured in Hungary, the tungsten for their filaments was mined in Portugal, and the coal firing the power stations providing their electricity was mined in Wales. Their argument is that, if London’s global sense place is created by such border-crossing commodities, Londoners could appreciate its border-crossing people too? So what happens in the back of that truck? What conversations take place? How does Platform measure its effectiveness? At followthethings.com we love this example. It’s one of the earliest examples we can find of this kind of arts-activism, and it’s fascinating to learn that one of Platform’s most famous fans at the time of Homeland was Professor Doreen Massey, the author of the (1991) ‘Global Sense of Place’ article that has influenced so many culture-crossing thing-followers since that time. We love it when trade justice activism and geographical theorisations of relationality come together like this.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Homeland. followthethings.com/homeland.shtml (last accessed <add date here>)

Estimated reading time: 40 minutes.