Capital (ism) in action

Walking back to Kings Cross after the HEFCE/AoC Additional Numbers workshop yesterday, I passed the latest tented village to spring up on the streets of our capital: the one apparently welcomed by Giles Fraser, the Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral when the Occupy London Stock Exchange protesters gathered at the start of the week.

Now though, with the Evening Standard claiming that this national icon could be closed due to health and safety issues, he's not quite so keen. The position has rapidly moved on from his only telling the police to go away (Monday) to complaining that tourists are no longer visiting his Baroque masterpiece (Thursday) and therefore aren't contributing to its upkeep. Or to put it in free market terms: no visitors equals nothing spent in the gift shop, no food bought in the restaurant, and no donations from those with change to spare.

The free paper also includes an interview with Naomi Colvin, spokesperson for the protesters, who says that money might be raised to compensate the church for its losses, but she's obviously not bothered to think through how much needs to be put into the collecting tin to balance the lost income of one of the ten most popular tourist attractions in the country.

This is capitalism in action: it's not slogans, protests and collective sleepovers, it's a businessman (for that's effectively what Canon Fraser is) unable to predict the effect of 200 demonstrators outside his door on passing trade, customer access and turnover, and a well-meaning motley crew closing him down because of his naivety.

Leads me to wonder, that since neither of the parties involved seem to understand what they've got themselves into, maybe they ought to start charging the likes of me to take photographs of the tents and possibly sell some refreshments while they're doing it?
Then, they could simply give the money raised to the church and everybody would be happy; except possibly protesters protesting about protester's profiteering...