“Can you spare a moment for cancer research?”
    “Yes, mate. I can – but I don’t think a moment will do much good. The greatest scientists of successive generations have been working on it for years with little success.”
    “Well, that’s exactly why I’m here. We’re trying to gather promises from people”
    “Promises?”
    “Yes. We are trying to collect promises from people to commit to the future of cancer research in the UK. All we need from you is the equivalent of 23p a day. What can you buy for 23p? Hmmm?”
    “Two and a third copies of the Sun”
    “I’ll just take your details down – what’s your Bank Account number?”
    “Get tae fuck! You think I’m gonnae commit to paying 23p a day to cancer research so that they can keep paying you?”



    That was the first time I ever saw the be-dreadlocked, cargo panted, grey trainered, clipboard wielding fool that was in danger of disturbing my karma, and more importantly unsettling my Guinness, at the moment. I had made a schoolboy error. I had gone for a pint in a pub near the Uni. In mitigation, I thought with the proliferation of fair trade (slavery) coffee shops in the area I may avoid the worst of the students. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
    The charity mugger was apparently readying himself to chair the meeting of the Glasgow West End Stop the War Coalition, or GWESWC. His apparel and attitude was certainly making me think of alternative uses for modern weaponry. The longer I sat there the more skirts over trousers and pierced eyebrows appeared, until the situation got so bad that they were removing the seats from my table (without asking). There must have been twenty five sets of identical ideals sitting around two tables designed for eight.
    I was about halfway down Lucille, my latest Guinness, when the meeting was called to order. As Lucille hadn’t been too unsettled by the whole experience thus far I thought I’d hang around to see if I could learn something. It would be ironic if I learned anything here after spending the best part of a decade hanging around a University without ever learning anything.
    Charity man, the chair, started by reading out the agenda. The usual formal meeting type stuff. As they all settled down for the distribution and reading of the minutes of the previous meeting (item 1) a man with more piercings than all the rest burst in and tried to find a seat, in the process managing to entirely disrupt the meeting.
    I heard a voice say “Those anarchists are always late – why can’t they just get here on time like everyone else.”
    Charity Mugger coughed to clear his throat and suggested that they get underway without reviewing the minutes of the previous meeting.
    Two long haired types said words to the effect of “Right on, brother”, whilst the anarchist (if indeed that’s what he was happy to classify himself as) piped up and said
        “Who made you in charge anyway?”
        “Well, as the minutes say, a democratic vote was held of all attendees at last weeks meeting. The result of said vote was that I was instated as the chairperson of this group – I’m not the leader though. We are all equally in control of the groups destiny and direction.” Charity Mugger said in a bored tone.
     “I don’t respect your authority to preside over this meeting” said the anarchist, making a thorough nuisance of himself.
     “Did I not just say that I have no authority other than trying to organise the meetings can take place without too much hassle?”
     “You’re forming a system, man. I never knew that signing up for this group would involve systems and hierarchies and fascism and that.”
The anarchist was getting very excited at being listened to. Everybody else who knew him just told him to shut the fuck up when ever he started talking like this.
     “Listen, friend. If you don’t like it you can bugger off” Charity Mugger’s affected Sarf-Landan accent was beginning to betray signs of annoyance and the greater crime of middle class.
    “But that’s exactly what you want me to do” said the anarchist.
    “It’s not. But if you want to stay then can we please get on with the meeting?”
    “Only as long as my opinion is noted in the minutes.”
It was done. A girl with the white head-phones of an iPod and the dark rims of National Health Service designer glasses (currently retailing for £220 a set or a NI contribution from your pay packet for life) was taking the minutes. She seemed a bit vague as to what she was actually supposed to note so she wrote down some lyrics from Belle and Sebastian’s new album.
    The Charity Mugger talked for a little while about the GWESWC boycott of the week. This week, apparently, it was to be Nestle.
    “What, if you’ll pardon my ignorance, have Nestle actually done?” asked a man with knee-length shorts on. My father always told me not to trust a man in a pair of shorts with more than two pockets. I didn’t trust this bloke.
    “Well,” said Charity Mugger, settling into his preferred role of conscience informer.
    “What they do is they give new mothers in Africa free powdered baby milk”
    “Evil Bastards!” I uttered under my breath as I headed to the bar to reacquaint myself with a full pint glass.
    In the time it took me to get to the bar, order a Guinness, wait on it settling and carry it back to my seat the group had obviously decided that the Nestle boycott was a good thing and had voted in favour of never eating another Toffee Crisp or Kit Kat until at least next Wednesday.
    I made a resolution to buy the Financial Times the next day in order to see just how Nestles’ profits had been affected by the news that 20-odd students in Glasgow were boycotting them. Or maybe just to see if anyone had noticed.
    The next item on the agenda was the war.
    “I know this is a huge issue and a very important one. I feel that all the Stop the War Coalitions the world over need to link together and form an integrated strategy for stopping the war.” Said Charity Mugger.
    A man with spiked black and red hair piped up for the first time during the meeting and said
    “What war? What war are we trying to stop? Why are we all here? What war do we need an integrated strategy to combat?”
    Charity Mugger sighed “The Iraq war.”
    “There is no Iraq war – it’s over. It’s been over for months. Remember big moustachioed man going to jail, statues falling, celebrations, that kind of thing. That was the end of the war. There is no war in Iraq.”
    “You’re just being naive. The official war may be over but there is still fighting in Iraq. The soldiers are still shooting at one another.”
    “Well, if the official war is over then what are we trying to achieve. Are we going to turn into the Glasgow West End Please Stop Arguing Coallition? The Glasgow West End Stop Having Disagreements With People You Don’t Quite See Eye to Eye to Society? If the war is stopped then we have won (yes, there are winners in war). Our job is done. Who can we appeal to to stop an unofficial war – the Government has already stopped their “official” war. There’s nobody to listen to us.” Said the Black and Red Haired man.
    This caused a buzz of murmuring to swing round the crowd. They had all realised that he, kind of, had a point. The issue was important – if they stopped coming to the Stop The War meetings how else could they establish their credentials as radical free thinkers? Where else would they pick up valuable bohemian experiences to tell their friends in the tennis club?
    This was going to be a big moment for Charity Mugger. He really had to pull something good out of the bag. The last thing that these radical free thinkers wanted to be was a laughing stock – they needed a war.
        “But the point is that nobody listened to us anyway. The politicians and war mongerers don’t have to please a group of middle-class studenty types in the West end of Glasgow. The have to please the majority of voters - and they do. Their only goals are re-election and when they get re-elected they have been justified in their actions, the population has given them a mandate to act in that way. So if they didn’t listen to us in the first place and now there is nobody to listen to us then nothing has changed. We can continue exactly as we were and everything’s the same. We always knew that our society was futile. At least we’re doing something though.”
        “Yeah” piped up a little man. If only he had decided to get his multiple ear and nose piercings earlier he could have saved the steel industry in both Sheffield and Motherwell.  
“We’re registering our contempt and disapproval of the war. There doesn’t need to be a war for us to do that. In fact, thinking about it, it’s probably better all round if there isn’t a war.”
With that an audible sigh of relief was heard. The West End trend setters were happy again. They had their little society for keeps – whether there was a war or not. I was happy too; the Guinness was just warming my brain up nicely for the rest of the day.