Apparently there was a protest against Trident yesterday in Trafalgar Square dubbed "Bin the Bomb". As with all protests the estimate figures always make for amusing reading. According to the Stop the War coalition, CND, the British Muslim Initiative, and Respect, there were 100,000 people at the protest. In comparison the Metropolitan Police estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 took part.
Now the Police and protest organisers always have wildly different views of how many people attend protests. The organisers big themselves up, whilst the Police play them down. The thing is, it's rare that the figures are so massively different. Of course, over counting your level of support is probably not difficult in Trafalgar Square on a Saturday.
It's likely that many tourists have suddenly found themselves counted as members of the extremist left/homophobic Islamist coalition.
9 comments:
Yikes ! I have put an immediate and mortified agreement with your remarks in.The focus group thing was only meant to be light hearted and I hate to appear so conceited.Abject apols
Yes the anti hunting Demo might as well not have happened for all the coverage it got though
Stop bloody apologising. You have nothing to apologise for.
What about the pigeons? How dare the police not count in our supporters from the avian population!
They might not have the vote (yet) but pigeon community leaders have made it clear that they are solidly behind us in our abhorrence of Bush's illegal war ...
S-E
I often want to go and look at these protests and take photos, but am afraid that I might get counted in the statistics as a fellow traveller...
I think the pigeons are with Blair.... who also shits on us.
There was far more than 2-3,000 but probably not 100,000. I'd estimate that the number was in the 10s of thousands, likely around 30000. Of course the organisers of "Stop The War" are going to over-estimate the attendance but why would the police be interested in under-estimating if they are there to serve the public interest. It only makes them untrustworthy.
(Extremist-left, traveller, pigeon type person)
Since when did wanting to get shot of Trident make a person an extremist lefty homophobic Islamist?
Since I looked at the pictrues and saw that far from it being about Trident it was actually mostly an anti-war rally with placards supporting Hezbollah, and other front organisations for the moprally bankrupt extreme left who have thrown their lot in with Islmaist fundamnetalists.
Based on my 60's weekend experiences i would say that, judging from the photos in the papers, there were about 15-20,000 there. Certainly not the claimed 100,000 which would have swamped the whole area around Trafalgar Square, but also not the police's 10,000.
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