It has been a while since i have had the time to write on my blog, which for everyone who reads them, is devastating. However, like a beacon of hope i have emerged from the embers of ridiculous amounts of uni work and much like a phoenix rise again to bring you some hard hitting, completely opinion based shananigans.
One of the reasons that i have not been able to write on here, as well as the uni work, has been that i have been working at the Times for a week. This was alot of fun, despite the obvious getting up at 8 every morning and fighting through the suits on the tube to get to the door. In this week i managed to get alot done, and have learnt a massive amount about working in a newspaper, and also a massive amount about how much free stuff they get. From the apparently unpaid work experience i managed to come away with a free xbox 360 game and two (slightly odd) books.
I think that i chose the right week to do my work experience as it was probably the most exciting news week of the year, as well as being across April fools day. One of the best things that i managed to do with myself during the week was to go to the financial fools protests in front of the bank of England. This was less of a protest than a shindig, despite how the press and the police want to justify the excessive restrictions put forth by the police.
When i arrived i walked out of Monument station and found that i was at the front of the protest, surrounded by odd smells, greasy hair and thousands of roll up cigarettes. This was quite fun, i saw somebody in a wheelchair being wheeled around blaring out Rage Against The Machine, and obvious child from the 90's. As i like this music i decided that i would walk next to them and not only enjoy the good music, but also have a little chuckle at the intense looking police force, who looked like they wanted to start a fight. They had donned riot gear for a bunch of hippies and students. I maintain that the reason for the lack of violence later was because the meeting time for the protest was 11, and as the majority of the people there were jobless, this was well before their normal waking time.
As i walked further i met up with my friend Oz, who was zipping around taking hundreds of photographs of generic dreadlocked hippies looking angry. He was one among thousands. When we eventually managed to get to the bank of England we climbed into the fenced off area in the middle of the square, as not only did this offer some respite from the pushing, but also, we thought that this would give us a better view from which we could take photos. Wrong. I couldnt even see the protesters as the photographers and reporters were totally surrounding the entire elevated area. I can honestly say that there were more photographers than protesters. My point in proven when you watch the RBS windows being smashed, nobody knew what was going to happen there, it was spontaneous, yet hundreds of photographers were around it, with seemingly only two protesters.
By this point however i had left, as i had to be back in the office, and i knew that the police would be shutting down the streets within minutes. So i walked back to the street that i had walked up, only to be confronted with several burly police officers. 'Sorry, you can't come through here' when i asked them why, and how this would stop the protests i got a generic 'move along sir'. I even pointed out that i was dressed smartly, smart shoes, chinos, shirt-i looked anything but a protestor. I even showed my pass for The Times House, to show that i was working there, not trying to bring down the establishment. I could understand not letting more people in, but people attempting to get out were stopped, how could i become more involved in a protest if i was walking away from it? If i wanted to cause havoc elsewhere in London, inconveniencing my passage would not stop me in the long run. I had to try five different roads until one police man said 'Mate, if you are working for The Times then you want to stay here, it will kick off'. Now this statement was wrong on so many levels, so i decided to point out the most obvious one 'Well Sir, as you probably understand, one condition of working somewhere is that you are in attendance at that place in order to perform the tasks to which you are assigned. If i am stuck in a crowd of smelly hippies, that means i am not at my desk, not doing my assigned work, and therefore am more likely to lose this oppurtunity'. He seemed to understand this and eventually, after multiple showings of my ID, my pass and several questions about why i was here, he let me through. Now i shall go onto the second reasont that this statement was wrong. If the forces which are assigned to the protest have a preconceived notion that things will 'kick off' then surely this shows a degree of paranoia. This was shown later on when the police reaction to what appeared to be minor scuffles was way over the top, and simply added to the problem.
So to be frank, this post is less about hippies protesting (fruitlessly) about bankers but more about a paranoid policing policy creating violence, where before none would have even been contemplated.
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