G20 protests

I regret not taking the last couple of days off work and getting onvolved in the G20 demos. I didn;t feel confident that I could bring anything to them. I felt old, out of touch, superseded.

I realise now I was wrong. the arguments are just the same as they were as the world has just sat on its hands for the 15 years since I was an activist. If anything - the urgency is greater, and the arguments are stronger, backed up with better evidence. But we weren't wrong.

I nipped down to the City and watched the protesters on Wednesday afternoon - the police still being nasty fuckers taking some sort of personal violent revenge on people who are more intelligent, braver and will be remembered by history as heroes who only tried to make the world a better place. The police however are scared, intellectually dull violent emotional retards who believe the state's propaganda and have nothing but contempt for anyone who tries to make a change for the good.

And that is it - they are scared. For them that's enough to justify wading in to a crowd of good humoured unharmed people and start knocking seven shades of shit out of them.

They also don;t realise that this just makes the protesters stronger. And that they outmoded relics from the past, while we are the future.

The protesters were saying the same thing I said 15 years ago, especially about the police. And some were answering back - not very professional - cynical and nasty, seemingly intent on provoking hatred and violence. But they didn;t get what they wanted. Even the Express struggled to make Wednesday's protests look violent, using a shot of a protester being punched in the face by a senior officer exclaimed "the ugly face of protest". Actually the photo showed the ugly face of the law as far as I could tell.

Jeremy Paxman seemed sympathetic calling the protests good humoured and witty.

Anyway I've decided - I'll be there next time, and with the current crisis that might be sooner than we think.