Mass Lone Demonstration report

BBC report, Guardian report , Nosemonkey has screen grabs from BBC ( hi Mum!)

Click to watch us on BBC News and rejoice as Mark Thomas, comedian, campaigner, flummoxes a Tory plonker!

So, we girded our loins with moral indignation and hurried to Parliament Square. A raggle taggle of causes, from the serious to the eccentric to the simply silly. Warm evening sunshine, bemused tourists, Tim Bloggerheads ringing his bell, Kartina parping her horn, Brian Haw in full-throated fine fettle on his megaphone ( he needs a new one, one that can be powered by a car battery.)

I saw a dancing leopard, a jester's hat, a paper-bar-coded mask. Passion written on T-shirts, printed on balloons, scribbled on A4 limp paper , brandished aloft on card, worn as sandwich boards, waved on placards. We were over 100, not counting the press. It was good humoured and entirely British, eccentric, determined, totally legal. For now. Just.

Photos via Ham, via Gub-Gub, and Davide ( who has a full report) . So does Justin, with more piccies. UPDATE: D-Notice has some too! And so does John. And Chris. (Very impressive all round, blogging such early doors, especially after several pints last night. Well done everybody.)

Here's the Friday Thing write up from Chickyog Justin

Righteous Causes included:
Stop Inventing Crimes Admit Your Own ( to Blair)
Ban Onanism Save Thatcherism ( Every Time You Have A Wank A Tory Dies)
Defend Plutos Interplanetary Status. Pluto is Not A Dwarf
Stop Cluster Bombs in Lebanon.
Eco-cide!
Stop Animal Testing.
Better Transport Links in Rural Areas.
I am a Peach You Are A Hammer Drive Carefully ( Cyclist Rights)
Legalise Everything! Ban Everything! ( Take Back Your Spare Time) - Chicken Yoghurt
Give us Our 7/7 Inquiry
Bin Crap Laws ( me - other side - 7/7 Inquiry Now)
Tony Blair Owes Me £2000 ( Tim Bloggerheads)
Down With This Sort of Thing
Protesting for the Right To Protest
I'm Thinking Thought Crimes.
No2ID. No need. No right. No use.
More Public Bathing Facilities - Happiness= Wetness
Art in Public Spaces
Goth Pride( he was rather cheerful for a Goth, I thought)
Anti-Iraq war
Anti Vivisection
Give Me back My DNA
Racial Profiling = Racism
Free Chocolate For Students, Pensioners and the Unemployed
Repeal the No Protest Zone
Only Love can Overcome Hatred
Stop the Middle East Holocaust
Don't Exploit Dumb Animals - Sack Prescott
Millions Died for Freedom of Speech
Number of Pirates Vs. Average Global Temperature ( Spaghetti Monsterism)
Smelly Little Orthodoxies Are Contending for Our Souls ( Orwell)
Campaign to Highlight The Government's Responsibility for the Defeat at the Battle of Hastings
No Police State - Blair Stop Snooping On Us
Exile Robbie Williams for Crimes Against Music
Decriminalise Free Speech
Don't Shoot! ( on a tube roundel, re. Jean Charles de Menezes)
And finally, poignantly. Why Must I Ask Permission To Be Here?


Well, yes, quite There was nothing to be afraid of, after all.

New Labour wanted a Big Conversation, once. Engagement with Voters. Feedback. Dialogue between People and Government.

Well, if anyone of them, Blair's MPs, Blair's Cabinet, who were only a few hundred yards away, behind security guards and concrete bollards and bombproof glass had stepped outside, he or she could have had their dialogue, in the gentle evening sunshine, on as diverse an array of subjects as you could have desired. Cameras would have recorded it for posterity. Police would have protected them. They would have come to no harm, for we meant none.

And I'm sure there would even have been a pint for them at the Red Lion afterwards.