So yesterday, a few of us from Salford Green Party, and at least 400 people from Manchester, went down to London to join the big anti-austerity march. A few of the photos I took are in this Flickr gallery. Not all the banners were as amusingly blunt as the one above, and, even on a demo, I couldn’t keep myself from taking the occasional architectural photo. There are a lot of clocks on Fleet Street.
Turnout was estimated to be as high as 250,000. It’s the Tory conference in Manchester in October, so expect to see something similar here then.
There’s a Salford Greens group on Flickr now, which we’ll fill up with pictures from events and campaigns. So far, only my pictures are on it, but I did just create it ten minutes ago.
We have gathered outside the Bank of England, ready to march on Parliament. Maybe if enough of us surround the building, we can speed up its shift into the Thames.
If any of this makes it onto television, I’m in the Green block.
Far too much of what I know of London comes from Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine lyrics. It’s been odd listening to them and flicking over to Twitter to read of riots in the capital. I don’t know where all these places are, absolutely or in relation to each other, and, apart from Croydon, I haven’t been to any of them. So I don’t know how big the riots are and how dangerous they are.
Anyone I know in London- hell, anyone in London- I hope you’re safe.
I walked from my baby’s Brixton flat
Into a riot
I thought of maybe turning back
Till things were quiet
When all the buildings to be burned
Had been burned
And all the cars to overturn
Were overturned
Outside the prison they were screen testing the free
Open auditions for closed circuit T.V.
Your baby brother would be there outside the jail
Throwing bottles as the police sirens wailed
And a love song might not be suitable
But you look beautiful tonight
Death and disaster only make me love you more
The morning after the night that went before
When the brains of Brixton with conflicting points of views
Are outside The Ritzy on the local TV news
A love song might not be suitable
But you look beautiful tonight
And if you feel the same way as I feel
Everything will be alright
I was thinking,
Let’s forget about the car
And do some late night drinking
In a late night drinking bar
It isn’t far, well it’s my local anyway
I know the barman
And there’s a small vocal P.A.
Now the insurance man has left you with the news
That your third party fire and theft would be no use
And I know a love song isn’t suitable or right
But you look beautiful, beautiful tonight
And if you feel the same was as I feel
Everything will be alright
Tonight, Big Brother is watching you
And I am watching too
I will watch over you
Like a thunderbolt out of the blue
Something told me it was true
God created me and you
And God created Brixton too
Hallelujah!
Praise the Lord!
Tonight you can rest assured
The Father, Son, The Holy Ghost and I
Will love you more than most
Tonight
Airplot is a scheme dreamt up by Greenpeace to scupper plans for a third runway at Heathrow. They’ve bought up land on the planned site (not quite on the runway itself, but near) and will refuse to sell it. I think the idea is that everyone named as a co-tenant/owner of the land will have to be approached by the Government when it comes time to start buying up the land, making the job particularly hard.
That’s one of the slogans proposed for the Atheist Bus camapign, a counter to increasing religious advertising on buses. I’d love to see a few of these on Manchester buses. The increasing number of King’s Church adverts have been annoying me lately. Even as an atheist I’m insulted by their slogan “Making Jesus famous”. The sheer arrogance of believing they can improve the profile of the most famous imaginary Jewish person ever tells you all you need to know about what King’s Church is really about. It’s about feeding the ego of whoever runs King’s Church, not spreading any of the more positive aspects of Christian teaching or helping in any way the vulnerable people who will most likely respond to the ads.
The scary thing is, this happened in London. A man wearing a Barack Obama t-shirt was harassed whilst shopping by a man who later came back with an airgun and shot him. The attacker was obviously an unhinged racist looking for a reason to attack someone, but the Obama-hate is the sort of thing I expect to see more of from the right wing nuts in the US. All the morons currently going all Godwin and equating him to Hitler will go into full on armed uprising fantasies if (when? please make it when) he wins the election.
Update I forgot to mention that the link is to a Daily Mail article, so if you do read the comments be prepared for a lot of frothing “political correctness gone mad”, “homosexual agenda!” type stuff. Apparently it’s good that he has stood up and chosen to counter all the homosexual propaganda that’s out there. Where is this homosexual propaganda exactly? I’d love to see some, just to find out what it looks like. I guess those perfume adverts with David Beckham could be guerilla gay propaganda- it can claim to be about something else, but smelly stuff is a bit gay isn’t it?
I can’t believe that I’m so much less aware than the average Daily Mail reader that I can’t see the great big billboards that must be out there emblazoned with catchy mesages like “Become a poof- it’s good clean fun”. I assume that’s what they mean by homosexual propaganda, because they can’t possibly mean calls to treat homosexuals equally when they go on about it. Can they?
Telegraph blogs are doing a series on New York vs London and all of their contributors have been invited to join in. I’ve yet to visit New York and I’ve probably spent less time in London than any of the Americans I’ve met. (Staines doesn’t count as London, it’s just a rather dire place tauntingly close to the capital.)
With luck I’ll get to visit both cities this year. I could try out my accent over the pond to see who’s impressed, but I’m sure it will be less of a novelty in New York than elsewhere in the US.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/nicholas_kusnetz/2007/03/recycling.html The troubles of finding a second hand bike in London. My local bike shop (Withington Cycles) has a sign on the door saying they don’t take second hand bikes, probably because they get so many scallies coming in trying to pass on stolen rides. For a very short period last year the Ride Manchester scheme was probably the best place to go to get a second hand bike, but they’re gone now.
I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook’s Going to get himself a big dish of beef chow mein Werewolves of London
