Handling The Handover

I'm afraid postings been a bit patchy over the last few days. Obviously been busier than I realised. Anyway, I'll try and rectify that situation. Normal service will resume presently, so you can expect the usual waffling rantage and general anger. To get me started a brief report about an event held in Nottingham on June 30 to mark the sham "handover", originally planned for that day.

Unusually for a Nottingham Stop the War event it didn't take place in the Old Market Square. Instead we held it on the roundabout outside the BBC's East Midlands centre. The roundabout typically appears behind the news presenters on the local news programme and we had hoped that our protest might get onto TV. I don't know whether we actually did, but the change of venue shows a tactical flexibility which I think is a positive step.

The basis of the protest was that we were declaring the roundabout "Free Nottingham", which seemed to involve covering it in banners, stickers and balloons. An interesting idea, if perhaps a little cheesy. In addition we tried to distribute leaflets to motorists detailing some of the truth about the "handover", which I didn't enjoy much.

The general consensus on the event attended by 20-30 people was that it was fairly successful. The decision of the US/UK to bring the date of the "handover" forward did rather weaken the relevance of the protest, but only slightly. I doubt we got on the BBC and I was unable to give them a copy of the leaflet. (Apparently the BBC doesn't require a reception you can access of a letter-box, so much for public service broadcasting). Nonetheless we gave out a fair few leaflets which should provide an antidote, where read to the propaganda of the "coalition".