The Day After The Revolution

There was a protest in London yesterday. As tends to be the case with these things, what it was protesting against was nebulous and contradictory (ISTR the ‘Countryside March’ included groups both for and against access to footpaths). And, as tends to be the case, most of the protesting was done by people who don’t have to work for a living (when did I become so right-wing?)

I mean, I’m a socialist, but what’s more annoying – having a gibbering idiot argue against you, or having a gibbering idiot argue on your behalf?

Anyway, what struck me was this. Two photos of half-a-dozen oafs attacking the windows of the Royal Bank of Scotland (because, you know, man, it’s the windows that are the problem).





Look at how few protestors there are. And how many journalists are filming and photographing them.

You don’t get that many journalists in one place by accident. Either they were tipped off, or the hooligans outside the RBS waited until enough cameras had gathered before mounting their attack. In other words, it was staged. Entirely for the benefit of the media.

Would those oafs have attacked those windows without the coverage? No. The journalists were complicit in the vandalism. They were encouraging it, because every one of them had been instructed by their editors to get a photo of a fight. They could have stepped in to prevent this act of vandalism but chose not to. One hopes they would’ve stepped in if those thugs had been assaulting a human being. But maybe not.

I don’t know what makes me more angry. The oafs, the journalists, or the way these ‘look what these morons did to get on the news’ pictures are reproduced unquestioningly by the media, by the BBC, and others who should know better.