The 12 Days of Tax Avoidance

I’m a terrible singer, so when my husband said he could hear me singing a Christmas carol from the other end of Briggate on Saturday I was mortified!

But then again I was even more mortified when I learnt that the top man of Topshop had avoided paying £285 million pounds in tax.

So making a bit of a scene in the street was the least I could do. I was part of about 50 people who had braved the cold (and the Christmas shopping crowds) to come and make a stand as part of the UKuncut day of action against tax avoidance.

It was a right old mismatched group of folk down at Topshop, and I didn’t know many of them, but I was there with a small group of amazing individuals who I have got to know since October through a shared sense of disbelief about what is happening to our country, and a desire to do something about it.

We got chatting to each other on Twitter when the Comprehensive Spending Review was announced, decided to meet in the pub and recognised a joint passion to try and do something to oppose the cuts to public funding in the UK.

Most importantly we all passionately believe in the power of creativity and peaceful protest.

For the protest on Saturday we decided to conduct an impromptu choir of fellow protestors and passers-by in singing an amended version of ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’.

Penned the night before in the pub, our version, ‘The 12 Days of Tax Avoidance’, lays out some of the things that could have been paid for with the £285 million pounds Cameron’s ‘efficiency advisor’ for public spending Sir Philip Green, tax dodged in 2005.

If you want to know more, leave a comment, or tweet us on @anticutsleeds or use the tag #anticutsleeds on Twitter.

We hope we don’t take ourselves too seriously but we do believe the threats to our country are serious.

Keep an eye out for our interventions at a protest near you! In fact, scratch that, come and join in!