March with a noisy protest

This being the first of April, a traditional time of japes and jokes, I guess it’s fitting that the G-20 economic summit is fixing to kick off in London.

It being London, protestors have already begun demonstrating. Eleven of the japers and jokesters have been arrested after being stopped in an APC, wearing police uniforms. I kind of admire that—shades of Otto Skorzeny’s operations in the Ardennes in 1944.

Still—they got caught.

I’ve been having a look at British coverage of the events. The Beeb (suffering from a severe shortage of punctuation) reports that some City (i.e., the Wall Street of London) workers wore their own camouflage: they dressed in casual clothes to look like, well, the scruffocracy instead of the masters of the universe. Apparently banks and their ilk were warned they might be targeted by the protests.

Well, duh...

The BBC have also helpfully supplied a listing and a map of the “expected protests”, so if you get lost you can join up with your green-anarcho-anti-greed buddies. With these helpful tools you’ll know where to meet up with the Financial Fools’ Day protest for the Bank of England, and not get mixed up with the Stop the War Coalition at the US Embassy or the general-for-the-hell-of-it Protest on Mall outside Bucks House.

The Telegraph (also punctuationally challenged) got some interesting words on the streets. One protester, “an administration worker from Birmingham” spent the night traveling to London with four buds. He explained, “I am not a member of any of the groups represented today but I felt compelled to come down. We are going to march with a noisy protest in the middle of the City to show the people that are benefiting most from this system that we are not going to put up with it.”

Bravely said. I’d like a definition of “not going to put up with it,” though. Long-term, you understand. For after all the rubbish has been picked up on Threadneedle Street.

The Daily Mail squeezed in space for the protest coverage alongside stories the severed head found dumped in a field and a “drink-binge girl, 17, found dead by friends at house party”. They also refer to Obama “gushing” about the US-UK “special ‘affinity and kinship’” And thus “mak[ing] up for Washington snub” of PM Gordon Brown last month.

So, something good has come from this whole megilla.

I looked hard, but still found no mention of “road chaos” in any of the UK coverage. But I’m sure that’s coming. No major event is really fully reported there without chaos entering into it, and these protests are a natural.