The initial demands of the Occupiers are being bandied round the press after they got upset with attacks from the right that they lack any coherent message:

A Demand For The Democratisation of ‘The City of London Corporation’

The City can no longer be tolerated as a State within a State governing above and beyond the authority of Parliament. This situation is undemocratic and unsustainable.
In the City and its anachronistic institutions our collective betrayal is writ large. The City is an anomaly in British politics – it has more power than the Scottish parliament. Democratic reform of The City Of London Corporation is urgently needed. The ancient political institutions of the City are surely unconstitutional and unfair. By permitting City firms to vote in elections the banks are afforded a disproportionate level of representation at the expense of local residents.

This is not in keeping with our Democracy.

The risk taking of the banks has made our lives precarious – they are accountable to no-one but themselves, unduly influencing government policy across the centuries both at home and abroad. This is not Democracy. Standing in the tradition of Clement Attlee we demand Democratisation of the City of London Corporation.

Reform of the Corporation’s political institutions will mean: An end to business block-votes in all elections – full democratisation of the City’s political institutions.

Abolition of the office of Remembrancer in the House of Commons.

Abolition of existing secrecy practices within the City and total and transparent reform of its institutions in order to end corporate tax fraud.

The City of London police to be decommissioned and its officers brought under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police Force.

Abolition of the offices of Lord Mayor of London, the Sheriffs and the Aldermen.

A truth and reconciliation commission to examine corruption within the City and its institutions

These are our initial demands.

Guido thinks they might have been  better off just staying quiet…

The PM is going to tell the Commonwealth that we need to modernise the Royal rules of succession to end male primogeniture and the explicitly anti-Catholic nature of the rules. All very good in these more democratic and egalitarian times.  

It has to be said that, given it is the twenty-first century and all, perhaps Britain should choose its head of state on a more meritocratic basis rather than selecting it from the extremely narrow gene pool it does currently. Do we really still think it a good idea to have one family as the titular head of the country? If the best the supporters of the monarchical principle can come up with is that “it is good for tourism”, perhaps the Royal Family could be sponsored by the tourist industry rather than hard-pressed poor taxpayers? 

Whilst we’re at it, can we disestablish the Anglican church as the official state religion…

According to The Times “Dozens of civil servants have been reprimanded, cautioned or jailed after spending thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money by misusing government credit cards.” From behind the pay-wall we learn that “at least 30 officials, of whom four have served prison sentences, fraudulently spent a total of £20,756 on government credit cards in the past five years.” Prescott must be sweating a little more than usual at this news…

Under the new transparency rules, only expenditure over £500 will be published, which means without the leak of Prezza’s whole credit card bill we would never have known about his sandwich binges, £400 taxpayer-funded chinese meals, mysterious cash withdrawals, or the £456 he spent in an Australian casino.

Why isn’t it all published down to the last public penny?

George Osborne told MPs…

“Britain will not be putting money into the bail-out fund either directly or through the IMF…. The IMF exists to support countries, it does not exist to support currencies… The IMF contributing money to the eurozone bail-out fund, no; Britain contributing money to the eurozone bail-out fund, no. That is Britain’s clear position.”

A classic snippet from Kevin Maguire’s column that Guido thought deserved more than New Statesman’s niche, and still declining, audience:

“Boris Johnson’s pledge to take the last of London’s bendy buses off the road by Christmas could prove costly for Zoe Williams, the Mayor of London’s foe-in-chief at the Guardian.Williams, I discovered, is a self-confessed fare dodger. Your columnist’s eye was directed to a hitherto overlooked admission in the pages of her rag. “I actually had a lot of affection for bendy buses, mainly because evading your fare was so easy that to pay was almost missing the point,” wrote Williams in May. “We used to call it ‘freebussing’. I said that to the photographer and she said: ‘But they only came in a few years ago. You weren’t 12 . . . You weren’t even a student. You were . . .’ I was 31. Can I be arrested for saying this? Ach, I will just pretend it was a joke.”

Do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do from a Guardian hack? Well, well. Perhaps Rusbridger can use the same “it was just a joke” line when it comes to their investment and tax affairs…

“By abolishing indeterminate sentences, the Government shows how out of touch they are on crime and law and order” screams a press release from Labour’s Sadiq Khan. Something he must know rather a lot about given that this week we learn that a third personal friend has done time in Wandsworth nick – the prison in his very own constituency. Khan used an interview with the Standard to put a positive spin on yet another dodgy connection:

“Shadow justice minister Sadiq Khan was being shown around Wandsworth Prison by the governor when a voice rang out from behind the locked gates: “Saadiq! Saadiq!” Mr Khan stopped instantly in his tracks. Only childhood friends pronounced his name in that way. “I spun round,” recalled Mr Khan, “and I recognised him straight off as one of my best friends from when I was 12 and lived on the Henry Prince Estate in Tooting. We used to play football and cycle round together for hours.”

Was his other childhood friend Babar Ahmed there too?  We are still waiting for an explanation from Khan about his relationship with a chum who just happened to build a couple of websites for Chechen and Afghan insurgents. Silence…

The press release  goes on: “the public want to be protected from serious violent offenders and safe in the knowledge that they won’t be released from prison.”  Is that not a bit rich coming from a man who spent most of his life before parliament trying to get dangerous types freed?  Sadiq wasn’t very tough on crime when he was helping Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s Reza Pankhurst. Then we had his cosy love in with Ali Dizaei, maybe he could become an advisor on policing? Either way he’s certainly “in touch” on prisons…