2021-05-30
Depending on your choice of news media, London was quietly uneventful yesterday Saturday 29th May or a few hundred demonstrators marched somehwere or other, or there was a violent confrontation in the Westfield Shopping Centre, or maybe some hundreds of thousands marched against Covid restrictions - nah, that wasn't on the Beeb so it was obviously fake news.
Except that even though it somehow didn't make most of the major news outlets, it did definitely happen - I was there, as were many non-main-stream news media.
The march started just after 1pm from Parliament Square, up Whitehall, past Trafalgar Square, up Charing Cross Road, along Oxford Street and out to White City, Shepherds Bush, Acton, and back to Shepherds Bush (where I sank gratefully into a Central Line seat for the trip back).
Everyone was good-natured, some were a bit noisy (there were times when I could have done without the deafening whistles), all were well-behaved as far as I could see, and although some of those who insisted on sticking their favourite stickers on sundry vehicles seemed to be courting the wrath of their drivers, nobody got what they may have deserved on that account.
Like / Dislike this video here.
Events at the Westfield Centre went less well. The main march walked straight on past, whilst some apparently tried to go into the shopping centre. I don't know what happened but it ended up with a confrontation between police and those demonstrators who were trying to gain entry:
Like / Dislike this video here.
So will it make a difference? It's hard to say how things will develop.
The temptation will be to up the stakes until the MSM do their job and report the news, but clearly the MSM (or their controllers) are determined not to give these protests the oxygen of publicity.
Nevertheless anybody can see the social media reports, and these gatherings do serve to show those who look that the movement isn't going to go away any time soon (although at some point it may take a breather).
The powers that be are going to have to do better than inventing fantastical mutant hybrid variants if they want to panic these Covid-deniers into compliance.
