"YOU PEOPLE ARE ALL ALIKE. YOU MARCH IN HERE, TRY AND TOUCH THE LOCAL THINGS, I SUPPOSE NEXT YOU�LL BE SPRAYING ME WITH ONE OF THOSE CANS OF PAINT. SMEARING POOR TUBBS HERE WITH EXCREMENT� Yesterday I was in a good mood but today I�m pissed off. I took a couple of hours off work to attend the Stop the War march yesterday and apart from the start being something of a shambles the whole thing was a success. The start was a little chaotic because (despite some of the reports in the press today) more people than expected turned up to march. This meant that the Embankment tube station was closed forcing people to get off the trains early and walk towards the beginning of the march. If Embankment had remained open then people could have joined the protestors in a more orderly fashion from the rear rather than having to meet the procession head on and squeeze around the side. This bottleneck took a little time to clear. The police seemed to find this situation amusing and only had one officer with a loudspeaker trying to organise the crowd. So the march started a little later than planned and with a few stops and starts but throughout the atmosphere was fun and friendly despite how angry a lot of the people there were. I read this article in today�s Observer on page three. The front page was given over to Blair�s response to more weighty issues such as �public service reform� and a photograph of ex-Prime Minister John Major and his alleged lover Edwina Currie. Oh and an article about a nasal spray that has been developed to arouse women. When you finally get through the chaff and read about the demo you get the usual arguments about numbers. The police finally raised their initial �count� of 40,000 to 150,00 while the event�s organisers raised it to around the 400,000 mark. The arguments about the turn out will probably run for a while but whatever way you look at it a lot of people were pissed off enough to march. What really annoyed me was this article printed right along side in The Observer. Written by the Editor of Country Life it�s hardly a well rounded and independent piece of journalism but more annoying than that its mostly utter bollocks. In his piece Clive Aslet begins by gleefully pointing out that less people turned out for this march than the one held previously by the bloodthirsty mob of country dwellers � you know, the people who are campaigning for their continued right to kill and maim anything that moves in the name of �tradition�. He points out that he had his son with him on the previous rally but not on this one. Obviously his twisted sense of priorities makes it more important for his son to have the chance to kill anything with fur rather than free to grow up in a world not intent on blowing the shit out of itself. He claims to see no sign of marchers at noon and yet an hour or so later is packed into a �street filled with people, in a dense, whistle-blowing throng who backed up to Cleopatra's Needle�. He seems to believe this less of a �valid� march because many of those out on the streets had protested previously, unlike his fellow Countryside Alliance mob who he recognises had probably never taken to the streets before. I would suggest that there is a simple reason for this: while others were protesting against nuclear weapons, the closure of pits or the bombings of Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, his inbred friends were simply not that bothered. As long as they get to chase animals over fields and cheer as dogs tear them to bits in the confines of their own estates what does it matter what�s going on in the rest of the world. This is exactly what makes the Countryside Alliance a big joke and their march through London so pathetic. It�s only when they themselves are threatened that they get off their communal fat arses and try to do something about it. The people marching yesterday were not concerned with their own welfare or job security or rights to butcher animals. They were marching for peace and an end to the Imperialism of the USA, UK and Israel. Aslet sniggers that yesterday�s protesters ate from Pret A Manger and paid ridiculous London prices while his own kind had brought packed lunches to the Countryside march. In fact everyone I saw eating on the march yesterday (and they were few because so many people were busy chanting instead) were all eating from their own packed lunches or sharing home made cakes amongst strangers. Yes there was a distinct lack of leather waistcoats but then again I�d hazard a lot of the protesters yesterday were probably vegetarian and preferred to feed animals rather than hunt, kill and wear them. The funniest part of his article comes when he claims that people from the countryside �liked to know what they were eating�. CJD and foot and mouth sprang up in Trafalgar Square then did they? I don�t seem to recall us uncivilised city dwellers having to create animal fuelled bonfires a little while ago either. He goes on to point out that there were �less regional accents�. By this I�m guessing he means rural accents as I was in the midst of a throng of people from Birmingham, Liverpool, Scotland, Wales, well all over the country really and that�s without counting all the accents from around the world that were quite happy to sing out �Tony Blair! Terrorist!� But then again people like Mr Aslet probably steer clear from foreigners in case they try and blow something up. He also says that like in yesterdays crowd, marching for a number of diverse causes there were also �specialists causes� marching under the Countryside banner and he offers 'No more wind turbines in Wales' and 'Reinstate target pistol shooting now' as examples. If only people would pay attention to this kind of diversity then perhaps we could have more nuclear powerstations tucked away in the Welsh valleys rather than those unsightly windmills and think how more effective the next Dunblane style massacre will be if we let the nutters have their target shooting back. Yes there were a variety of causes being supported yesterday but the real difference was that rather than worrying on a short sighted, short-term local scale the people on yesterday�s march were more concerned with global matters. Aslet again: �There was a similar sense of community, but the community was different. A woman in a beret captured the mood with an olive branch, from which dangled a plastic dove of peace� I�m guessing the �other� community would rather have had a dead fox hanging from the mouth of a bloated country squire and thank fuck then that our communities are different. The irony is that there will always be marches for peace as there will always be a need for them thanks to the war hungry governments we keep foolishly electing. With a little luck and common sense we won�t require anymore �Countryside� marches simply because that barbaric way of life that so few hold so dear is finally coming to end. It amused me no end to read last week of one outraged country dweller warning that if fox hunting gets banned then "what next? Shooting and fishing?" Well yes, I sincerely hope so. Mike is blogging to: John Zorn