ANARCHY DOESN'T RULE - WHITNEY AND MARIAH DO!

Today, anti G8 protestors brought the traffic in the city centre to a standstill. They all resembled Bob Geldof and although they weren't anarchists by any stretch, if I was one of the thousands of coppers on duty I would have cheerfully smacked the shit out of some of them who were determined to get a reaction from the authorities. I grabbed a quick milkshake from McD's as I walked home as the city has been roasting hot today, I was crossing the bridge to the South Side when a group of protestors were all on bikes and dresssed as clowns. Police were directing traffic and stopped the protestors to allow cars past. They started questioning the police and one smart ass pulled out a camera and stuck it in the face of an officer perhaps to rile him, I thought this was very rude and totally uncalled for - and on top of it all, her clown makeup was very poorly applied. So then this guy came up to me and said 'Did you know it's an important day today?' I replied that it was Friday so naturally important as it's the start of the weekend. He then said 'Well it's International Day of Climate Change' to which I blithely replied again 'Really?! You know I thought it was warmer today!' The poor guy wasn't expecting this so then pointed to my McDonald's milkshake and said 'Well it's actually International Day against MacDonald's' He was starting to grate on me a tad so I pulled an ear out of my iPod, interrupting Whitney and Mariah singing When You Believe and took a large suck of my straw and smiled 'That may be, but let me tell you, it tastes great!!!' Finally, the wannabe protestor shut his mouth and stood beside me silently until the police moved pedestrians on - victory was mine and it tasted as sweet as my milkshake.

Now as I continued walking home, I got to about 200 metres from my house when a batallion of police vans sped past and the road ws basically closed off. A wall of a few hundred policemen were ahead and one of them stopped me and asked where I was going so him and around 20 other boys in blue escorted me home. Now I wasn't really getting special treatment as other people who must stay near also got a police escort but I must say it was all terribly dramatic. Then when I got in all these police vans and mounted police parked near my apartment builsing and in the surrounding street and I'm not kidding when I counted over 20 vans and 15 horse mounted officers waiting for the protest march to head back into town. The residents were all agog as was I when I finally saw the amount of protestors march past, there were only around two or three hundred whereas there were more police than you could shake a stick at!

I'm all for fighting for a cause but I absolutely detest disruption to my life for something that really is kind of redundant. The whole G8 thing is interesting as people protest against capitalism etc but I get the feeling they're the first people to pick up their benefit cheque from the government and possibly sneak into Niketown or McDonald's with surprising regularity. I don't think these marches achieve anything except some nasty bastards who smash windows and are determined to wreak a bit of havoc - but today's drama will be forgotten tomorrow as something with more importance than people with matted hair and bad dress sense banging some drums in Glasgow. What is more tragic is that people are still missing from the London bombing yesterday, I can only imagine what they're families are going through - now that's far more significant.