Wednesday
We seem to be having quite a lot of referendums at the moment in the UK and Europe. As we might note with a sort of grim amusement, the largest recent ones - on the EU Constitution - were airily ignored with customary insouciance by the EU political elites, and therefore fill many people will understandable cynicism. Over at the EU Referendum blog there is a long item about protest movements, violence, referendums and political change. I may have more to say when I have the time to study it. It looks a good piece, and I recommend it.
Talking of protests, here is a nice collection of photos of recent "rally against debt" held in central London a few days ago, as taken by our own Brian Micklethwait.
All these protests- there oughta be a law against it! how can governments be expected to function if they are being interrupted by complainers all the time? at least lobbyists try to compensate busy politicians for the interruption to their precious time! People should confine their protests to a protest vote- or else!
Posted by 'Nuke' Gray at May 19, 2011 02:43 AM
Numbers JP - numbers.
The rally against debt got about 500 people.
The rally against (largely mythical) government spending cuts - got hundreds of thousands of people.
And the vast increase in tax money going to the E.U. and to bailouts (an increse much greater than any supposed overall cuts in government spending)........
That attracted hardly any protest at all.
Certainly the media (and academia - and the rest of the elite) are biased - wildly biased (I am the last person to ignore that).
But if we could get hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of London, well then even they might not ignore us.
Although that being said........
Hundreds of thousands (indeed, counting all the protests) MILLIONS of Americans came out on the streets in 2009 to protest against the Obama "stimulus" spending and against Obamacare.
Yet, to judge by Time magazine's "The Year in Pictures" issue for 2009, no protests happened.
But then the American "mainstream" media is, I think, more corrupt than ours is.
Posted by Paul Marks at May 20, 2011 09:24 AM
500 people is a start. You build camaraderie, people meet and network and find out that others believe as they do. If the ideas are exciting or important, the network grows.
When the means of communication attempt to channel people into 'Right Think', you need to use every possible opportunity to bypass the mainstream and to build your own consensus. It takes time but it is the only way.
The fact that our publication has the number of readers it does shows there is a liberty network in the UK and it is small but alive and may thus be nurtured.
Posted by Dale Amon at May 26, 2011 04:54 PM
