Everyday working class heroes: link dump

July 11 2017

Teen blasted NWA's Fuck Tha Police out of his window on repeat, as 1000s of police were outside for the funeral of another cop.

http://nypost.com/2017/07/11/teen-blasted-f-k-tha-police-during-slain-officers-funeral/

Who can forget this guy?

A Lidl supermarket cashier who let customers walk out without paying for up to £3,000 worth of shopping has been jailed for 13 months.

Oyinloye, 40, pretended to scan all the items – including power tools, parasols and champagne – but only charged for a single can of plum tomatoes or a carrier bag.

The fraud only ended when an eagle-eyed member of staff spotted one customer walking off with a full trolley worth more than £400 after paying for just one 85p tube of toothpaste.

He was sentenced to 13 months in jail!

But it's almost one year since the story, so perhaps we ought to do a joke Working Class History thing?

Probably inspired by Raoul Vanigeim, who wrote:

"The system of trade and wage slavery will be replaced by the free distribution of goods which are necessary to the lives of every one of us [....] Supermarkets and department stores will be turned into outlets for free distribution"

Yes indeed, the Situationist International lives.

Sources:
- http://courtnewsuk.co.uk/champagne-power-tools-parasols-will-85p-please/
- http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/14636946.JAILED__Lidl_cashier_who_let_customers_through_without_paying_for_everything/

2015, Indian civil servant dodged work for 25 years - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/indian-civil-servant-sacked-after-failing-to-turn-up-to-work-for-25-years-9965488.html

"[He] joined the department as an assistant executive engineer in 1980 and worked for the next decade.

But after he went on earned leave in December 1990 he never returned. Instead, Verma sought further time off and when this wasn’t granted, continued not to turn up to work regardless."

2016, Spanish civil servant who dodged work for between 6 to 14 years.

Only when Joaquín García, a Spanish civil servant, was due to collect an award for two decades of loyal and dedicated service did anyone realise that he had not, in fact, shown up to work for at least six years – and possibly as many as 14.
[...]
He said he was the victim of workplace bullying because of his family’s socialist politics and had been deliberately sidelined at the water board.
[...]
The engineer made the most of the confusion, becoming an avid reader of philosophy and an expert on the works of Spinoza, the Dutch philosopher credited with laying the foundations of the Enlightenment.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/12/long-lunch-spanish-civil-servant-skips-work-for-years-without-anyone-noticing

2013, US programmer 'outsourced job to China'.

A security check on a US company has reportedly revealed one of its staff was outsourcing his work to China.

The software developer, in his 40s, is thought to have spent his workdays surfing the web, watching cat videos on YouTube and browsing Reddit and eBay.

He reportedly paid just a fifth of his six-figure salary to a company based in Shenyang to do his job.
[...]
The employee, an "inoffensive and quiet" but talented man versed in several programming languages, "spent less than one fifth of his six-figure salary for a Chinese firm to do his job for him", Mr Valentine said.

"Authentication was no problem. He physically FedExed his RSA [security] token to China so that the third-party contractor could log-in under his credentials during the workday. It would appear that he was working an average nine-to-five work day," he added.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21043693

Pub warned after DJ played Peppa Pig theme when police walked in.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/pub-warned-after-dj-played-6985628

Edit: removed.

Great video:

Security Guard quits job and curses out the entire store on intercom. "You can take what you want cause at this point ain't no security in this bitch"

https://www.facebook.com/hiphopdugout/videos/448141288925495/

In Chile, 2014: "Artist named Fried Potatoes removed tuition contracts he says were worth up to $500m from private university and burned them"

For a whole year, a Chilean artist using the name Fried Potatoes (Papas Fritas) planned his revenge. Saying he was collecting material for an art project, the 31-year-old visual artist sneaked into a vault at a notorious private, run-for-profit university and quietly removed tuition contracts.

Fried Potatoes – whose real name is Francisco Tapia – then burned the documents, rendering it nearly impossible for the Universidad del Mar to call in its debt – which he claimed was worth as much as $500m (£297m). “It’s over. You are all free of debt,” he said in a five-minute video released earlier this month. Speaking to former students, he added: “You don’t have to pay a penny.”

Tapia’s move is just the most radical of a three-year campaign by students and children to demand free, improved public education. With monthly marches– and four former student leaders elected to parliament – the students have built a potent citizen’s movement rarely seen in post-Pinochet Chile.

This week, they claimed their biggest victory so far when the president, Michelle Bachelet, outlined a multibillion-dollar package of educational reforms and invesment. “Chile needs and the people have clamoured for this reform, which must transform quality education into a right,” Bachelet said at a bill-signing ceremony. Her proposals include an end to state subsidies to for-profit universities and schools, and – potentially – the introduction of free university education for all. While Bachelet spoke, students outside the congressional hall scattered ashes from the burned Universidad del Mar documents in symbolic protest against for-profit educational scams.
Students with unusual names: 'at least no one forgets us'
Read more

The ashes have since been converted into a mobile art exhibit built into the sides of a Volkswagen camper van. The back window of the van holds a video screen so that Tapia’s message can be played to crowds of curious onlookers.

The van, laden with ash, has toured the streets of Santiago and Valparaiso, and even went on display at the GAM – a prominent Santiago art gallery and cultural centre. When Chilean detectives, wearing white body suits, attempted to confiscate the fine grey dust as evidence, they too were incorporated into the exhibit’s PR blitz and listed as “media partners”.

According to government investigators, the Universidad del Mar, in the swanky seaside resort of Renaca, was less a university than a money laundering operation. The university was shut last year, accreditations stripped away and thousands of students left with half a diploma – but who still found themselves lumbered with outstanding debts.

Lawyers say that Tapia’s destruction of the files does not technically rescind the debt, but it does make it extremely difficult to prove the debt exists. Only by formally testifying in court and acknowledging the debt would students now be forced to pay, said Mauricio Daza, a lawyer.

Daza also argued that the debts were of questionable legality even before Fried Potatoes destroyed them. “These debts are product of a fraud by the owners of the university over a long period of time,” said Daza. “They pretended to have a non-profit [university] but really it was all a cover-up for getting money from the students and the state and transferring those resources into the pockets of the university owners.”

Chilean students brought up the accusations of for-profit education schemes during huge street protests in 2011. As hundreds of universities and high schools were seized and occupied by teenage students, legislators began to investigate the charges. Eventually the students were proven right, university leaders were jailed and institutions shut down.

Tapia said his plan was hatched after reading press accounts that Universidad del Mar students were being forced to pay debt even after the university was shut down.

In a statement delivered to a Chilean court, Tapia defended his action. He claimed to have smuggled the documents to Santiago, where he began to investigate the credit files, case-by-case, student-by-student. By day Tapia would investigate the financial situation and life struggle of a single student. Then in the evening, he would destroy the documents related to that particular debt. “Every night, like a ritual, I burned the documents that detailed the debt.”

A university spokesman confirmed the documents had been stolen but refused to quantify how much the papers were worth.

Former Universidad del Mar students have celebrated the unorthodox protest. “This is spectacular, this is the only victory we have had in economic terms,” said Raul Soto, a spokesman for the former students. “This gives us the peace of mind that we are not going to still be in debt to Universidad del Mar.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/23/chile-student-loan-debts-fried-potatoes

Thanks for this Craftwork, absolutely brilliant!
The ‘chips’ were down for those debt ridden students, but along comes Fried Potatoes and gives them a chance to ‘oil’ out of making the payments! He really saved their ‘skins’.
Etc.

From 2017: "Chimpanzees overthrow, kill and then eat their tyrannical leader"

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/chimpanzees-chimp-tyrant-eat-cannibal-tyrannical-leader-a-propos-of-nothing-a7557916.html

An irate Santa Claus astonished children at a Christmas event in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, this week when he burst out of his grotto during a fire evacuation to shout and swear at them while tearing off his hat and beard.

The entertainer is understood to have told attendees to “get the fuck out” after a smoke machine at a family-friendly rave in the same building as his grotto set off a fire alarm.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/12/raging-cornish-santa-angers-parents-with-beard-ripping-tantrum

OK but who'd win out of sweary Cornish santa vs radge Teesside mam? https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/17293877.angry-mum-accused-of-spitting-at-stockton-elf-when-child-couldnt-see-santa/

It's elf & safety gone mad.

Indian civil servant claims that he cannot work, because he is the 10th avatar of Vishnu:

"I am doing penance at home by entering into fifth dimension to change the global conscience....I can't do such penance sitting in office"

https://www.ibtimes.co.in/gujarat-official-10th-avatar-vishnu-cant-work-he-trying-change-global-conscience-769577

Craftwork

Indian civil servant claims that he cannot work, because he is the 10th avatar of Vishnu:

"I am doing penance at home by entering into fifth dimension to change the global conscience....I can't do such penance sitting in office"

https://www.ibtimes.co.in/gujarat-official-10th-avatar-vishnu-cant-work-he-trying-change-global-conscience-769577

Oh boy, this really made my day. The best thing of all though is that there’s at least a small chance that it’s true. If so, we can abandon the revolution project, instant communism ftw!

This is a particularly bold and imaginative approach to fighting wage theft.

A followup: https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/fundraising-target-digger-driver-who-15712577

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/nexweb/five-questions-about-the-scouse-lad-who-rammed-a-digger-into-a-travelodge