Issue 44
Monday October 24th 2011
The Newspaper of Queen Mary Students’ Union
QM Students join in London Occupation
The UGM
A Barts perspective on the Union General Meeting.
Page 10
Life's A Riot A London Citizens’ investigation looks into the societal issues surrounding the August riots. Page 4
The Occupy movement reached London on Saturday October 15th and was joined by QM students. Image by Tom Stevenson.
Tom Stevenson Queen Mary students from the Socialist Workers Party joined thousands of protesters on October 15th as the City of London joined the global ‘Occupy’ movement. An estimated 3,000 people joined the demonstration in total and, nine days on, around 70 tents remain. In front of St. Paul’s Cathedral members of UK Uncut, Right to Work, and the Socialist Workers Party were joined by many new to activism to occupy the Lon-
don Stock Exchange. The protest took its inspiration from the international ‘Occupy’ movements that began with ‘Occupy Wall Street’ in the United States and seeks to imitate their success. The movement serves to demonstrate against the hoarding of wealth by the top 1% of society, giving rise to the slogan of ‘the 99%’. Ross Speer, a Queen Mary student who attended the protest, told QMessenger that he was very impressed with Occupy London. “It is an intensely democratic forum”, he said, “the question is,
where next?” The involvement of unions, he went on, “is encouraging, and the movement may feed into the November 30th strikes”. The demonstrators planned to set up tents in Paternoster Square, home of the London Stock Exchange (though in modern times purely a symbol of the financial sector), but were repelled early in the day by a police blockade after their private owners gained a preemptive injunction, closing the square to the public. At midday, the demonstrators assembled at the steps of St.
Paul’s Cathedral and marched on Paternoster Square, chanting, ‘we are the 99%’, but were prevented from entering by police, who used mounted officers, and supporting dog-units within the square. The demonstrators had reconvened at the steps of St. Paul’s by 1pm, and proceeded to hold a general assembly to organise the specifics of the occupation. They quickly developed a voting system based on hand signals, in emulation of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. Continued on page 3...
Fairtrade debate: Should choice lie with students?
QMessenger debates whether our student outlets should stock Fairtrade. Page 7
Researchers find E. coli on one in four phones Matthew TK Taylor Sixteen percent of phones are contaminated with bacteria originating from faecal matter, a Queen Mary study for Global Handwashing Day has shown. Researchers from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and
Chemical Sciences, in combination with The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and The Wellcome Trust, found that a staggering 92% of phones and 82% of hands were contaminated with bacteria, even though 95% of people, when asked, said they washed their hands regularly.
Dr. Ron Cutler, who led the research, said: “Our analysis revealed some interesting results from around the UK. While some cities did much better than others, the fact that E. coli was present on phones and hands in every location shows this is a nationwide problem. People may claim they wash
their hands regularly but the science shows otherwise.” Londoners were most likely, at 28%, to have the potentially-harmful bacteria E. coli on their hands. E. coli is associated with stomach infection, and a strain was associated with a fatal outbreak in Germany last June.
Experts believe there is a link between their findings and people not washing their hands after visiting the toilet. Each year worldwide, 3.5 million children under five years old die from pneumonia and diarrhoeal diseases, which can easily be prevented through proper hygiene.