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December 12, 2007
Bad timing
A basic rule of stand up comedy is to know your audience. A rule I forgot this Saturday whilst standing in the middle of Whitehall with the pouring rain being forced down my back by the freezing wind. My one liner of "I hope global warming comes soon because I'm freezing" crashed spectacularly. Mind you I was in the middle of an anti climate change march and my unintended audience were the Workers Revolutionary Party Against Climate Change, the shock troops of the movement. Whenever their part of the march passed the police lining the route or protecting possible targets they twitched visibly as if expecting something to happen.
At Trafalgar Square I discreetly left the march for a while and went off to Stanford's book shop near Covent Garden to plan a walking trip in Eastern Europe. Although the walking would leave a minimal carbon footprint the same could not be said for the flight there and back. I began to realise that for some reason my heart did not seem to be in it. By the time I rejoined the march in Grosvenor Square for the speeches and the hoped for attack on the American Embassy I realised I was not alone as a number of other protesters seemed to have melted away as well. Perhaps it was the weather or just the lack of any united international action from the world leaders but this seemed to be one of the least cohesive climate change marches I've been on. The agenda of the protesters seemed to be more individual political point scoring and less concern for what is happening to the planet.
(No McDs were hurt in the making of this demonstration).
Posted by Andy Mason at December 12, 2007 12:44 PM