Nervousness abounded this afternoon as loads of police huckled a couple of hundred people all over town!
The "Carnival for Full Enjoyment" (don't you wish Anarchists would get a marketing bod to shimmy up snappier event names?!) began around midday today and i strolled along rubbernecking with a load of tourists and journalists. Who seemed to have formed a crowd as substantial as the autonomous groups who organised this little reclaim the streets kinda shindig. Nothing untoward seemed to be happening short of seeing a carload of people getting their bags & car searched in the city and the fact that the place was SWARMING with police. This news report pretty much sums up what I saw in the early part of the day.
"And then they'll EAT YOUR BRAINS!!"
Wage slave that I am, I had to cut this short and go off to work. Over the afternoon i heard a slew of hair-raising rumours which subsequently transpired to be guff. One told of staff cars being set on fire in a large financial institution! Another of garages being attacked and petrol pumps chained up!
Much ado about huffing
Nothing of the sort has actually happened. People were a bit freaked out, Princes Street was buzzing with security and shop staff all craning their necks out the front doors of the shops to see what was going to happen. They were all eventually told to close.
Ultimately, what did happen was that a small group of bampots threw a few bottles around in a Scottish city centre when everyone else was trying to go about their business. In short, just like Glasgow after a particularly fiery Rangers v. Celtic game.
Doing ma pan in
Mark Ballard from the Greens was on the radio complaining he'd got a wheech in the heid from the polis during the kerfuffle.
"Police seemed to be inflaming the situation by letting innocent bystanders wander into the areas of trouble, then not let them exit."
In another interview he said they should be more "chilled out"(!) like the police from the Faslane blockade across the country.
Yay! Hippies!
Earlier today saw much more heartening scenes at the Faslane naval base on the west coast. A big crowd went up and blockaded the submarine base where the UK's nuclear deterrant lives. No trouble, no fractiousness, just an anti-nukes demo with a couple of arrests. The Man with the Tan (Tommy Sheridan, former Scottish Socialist Party leader, new dad, himself arrested FIVE times at Faslane!) got on the telly to tout his cheerful, beatific socialist message against the arms industry and everyone went home happy.
Apart from Mr Ballard. Who went home to a whack on the napper!
Find out more:
