Common Ground
‘OF course the revolution will be televised.
| ”Done with the clowns!” |
As the Telegraph says, Britons spend up to 18 hours a week slumped in front of the telly – more than any other Europeans. If the revolution wasnt on the magic box, few of us would realise it was happening.
Thankfully, Live 8 is also being beamed into our homes, the Africa calling event for which tickets have been in hot demand.
Music fans had been prepared to offer impossible bids of £10 million for a ticket until the online auction site Ebay bowed to pressure and stopped such sales.
The Times says that Ebay has now banned big bidders from using the site again, accusing them of a deliberate attempt to disrupt an auction.
Less cynical types, like us, think this was an opportunity missed, and if anyone would like to offer us a few million pounds for a ticket to Live 8, well do our best to make sure they get one.
But not everything costs money. Sure you have to rent or buy the suits, but once youre a Womble, you are free to go where you like, whether that be to Wimbledon Common or Gleneagles in July for the G8 summit.
Its pretty safe to say that Wombles will not watch the revolution on the telly, and youll be more likely to find Uncle Bulgaria filming the event on his homemade, no-brand camcorder.
But there are more groups out to overthrow the State. And the Times profiles not only the Wombles (White Overall Movement Building Liberation through Effective Struggle) but other anarchists, too.
While the Wombles are meeting in a Grade II listed building in Londons Bloomsbury area, a group of anarchist clowns are touring the country hoping to recruit demonstrators.
The clowns are a nightmare, says a Womble. Half of them want to pour over the fences and the other half dont want to because the police have told them not to.
(A steel perimeter fence is to be erected around the Gleneagles hotel complex and secure the worlds most powerful leaders from the worst a Womble can throw at them.)
The report pretty much ends there, as the Times Madame Cholet is spotted as being something less than the genuine article and leaves.
But he dallies long enough to tell us of other groups we should look out for as we watch the Long Walk to Justice on Sky News.
As well as the Wombles and the clowns, theres the Peoples Golfing Association, hoping to prick the surreal bubble in which the elite have retreated.
The group plans to achieve its mission with golf clubs, which theyll use to break into the Gleneagles club and play a few holes.
And lastly theres the Black Bloc. Originating in Germany in the 1980s, its participants dress in black and often resort to violence.
This sounds by far the most intimidating group, inviting unfavourable comparisons with a politicised German outfit of old which also had a fondness for black clothes and thuggery.
But dont worry, because for most of us these people only exist in the media. They are no more threatening and real than Victoria Beckham, Saddam Hussein or Anthea Turner…’
Posted: 16th, June 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
