We did it! About 100 people turned up at Parliament Square, each with their own particular issue to protest about, and there were some very amusing issues too. Some memorable ones were: the planetary status of Pluto, free chocolate for pensioners and calls for the exiling of Robbie Williams. My protest against the surveillance state was somewhat less surreal, but in keeping with the spirit of the event I did include my objection to microchips on wheelie bins (I’m not kidding).
Queuing at Charing Cross police station to get permission
It was touch and go whether I’d have the permission from the police that I’d applied for the previous week. As it was, my letter arrived the day of the protest. The atmosphere was very good natured, in fact it was the most fun I’ve had at a demonstration.
Permission to protest
The police were as well behaved as the protesters and wisely kept their distance (after all this was entirely legal). I met up with some of my fellow bloggers; Rachel who was rightly demanding an inquiry into the July 7 London bombings and also protesting against crap laws, Tim who wants Tony Blair to pay him the £2000 he owes him, and Justin who wants everything legalised and everything banned.
Brian Haw was in fine form encouraging the protesters to make plenty of noise and making good use of his loudspeaker (he needs a new one incidentally, one that can be powered from a car battery so if anyone can help out…).
The mass lone protest was organised by the well-known comedian/activist Mark Thomas and there are other similar events planned soon to highlight the stupidity of the SCOPA laws (.pdf).
We protested for an hour and then made our way to the Red Lion pub for plenty of liquid refreshment (cheers everyone) before staggering off home.
Tags: Mass Lone Demonstration
[...] D-Notice has more photos. Davide has some as well. [...]
Pingback by Chicken Yoghurt » Mass Lone Protest Pictorial — September 1, 2006 @ 8:36 am
good on you for being there and posting on this. i should’ve been there myself and totally wanted to but for the goddamn way expensive train costs from Bristol (i’m not working and my money’s running out fast). yeah, i feel very guilty about this…
keep up the great work and keep on keeping on, dude.
Comment by rimone — September 5, 2006 @ 10:07 am
ps, have you an rss feed? i can’t find it.
Comment by rimone — September 5, 2006 @ 10:08 am
Hi Rimone,
I’m not sure if I’ve sported an RSS feed for this site yet as it’s just a mirror for for the blogspot site which has a habit of going down from time to time. You should be able to get the RSS feed for that at http://nether-world.blogspot.com. The posts are exactly the same, I’m preparing to move to WordPress but I’m nowhere near ready just yet.
Regarding lack of money to travel to demos etc. I know exactly what you mean
Comment by netherworld — September 6, 2006 @ 12:49 pm
at the mo’ i’m getting a 404 at your blogspot addy. this doesn’t surprise me cause a lot of blogspot sites i read are in screwy-land lately and one must refresh to get to anything on them. i reloaded but still got a 404.
wordpress rocks–i’m on it for almost 3 years now and haven’t any complaints.
i shall check back daily (as is my wont) not only for your writing but to try to find the feed.
Comment by rimone — September 7, 2006 @ 7:13 am
duhhhh. just got your feed here (i’m so anal about feeds cause those sites which i have in my feedreader are the first sites i read every day).
thanks for the blogroll link. i’m about to add you to mine.
Comment by rimone — September 7, 2006 @ 7:22 am
Bush goes ballistic about other countries being evil and dangerous, because they have weapons of mass destruction. But, he insists on building up even a more deadly supply of nuclear arms right here in the US. What do you think? How does that work in a democracy again? How does being more threatening make us more likeable?Isn’t the country with
the most weapons the biggest threat to the rest of the world? When one country is the biggest threat to the rest of the world, isn’t that likely to be the most hated country?
Are we safer today than we were before?
We have lost friends and influenced no one. No wonder most of the world thinks we suck. Thanks to what george bush has done to our country during the past three years, we do!
Comment by Antibush — February 14, 2007 @ 8:31 pm