Saturday, October 28/2023

 A major demonstration in central London today in support of the civilians of Gaza, half of whom are children. We can’t join it for the afternoon but do stop outside Westminster underground station where the thousands of marchers are turning to cross Westminster Bridge to the south side of the river. Memories of the second demonstration against the Iraq invasion which we took part in, with over 750,000 people in the streets of London in March of 2003. A month after the initial protest with a million and a half marchers. 

There were rumours that those carrying Palestinian flags and signs supporting Palestine would be arrested but clearly the police aren’t interested in pursuing that sort of thing. Although in Germany arrests have been made for waving flags. Rather distressing, as one could presumably carry the flags of Russia, China or North Korea without anyone’s objecting.

There are mounted police as well as a helicopter circling overhead, but they appear to be keeping watch with no intention of interfering unnecessarily. At the end of the day the official announcement is that there have been two arrests - one for assaulting a police officer and one for shouting racist insults. None for expressing humanitarian or even political positions.  

How many were there? Not surprisingly there is a discrepancy  between the estimates of the march organisers and the police, with the former claiming half a million and the latter 100,000. Entirely probable that both figures have been influenced by political considerations.

Friday, May 5/2023

 

Have no intention of heading to the city centre in order to photograph royalist fans camped out to secure a place to watch the coronation procession, but fortunately a BBC cameraman - amongst others - has done this for me. Apparently Sharon Osbourne (as in Ozzie) is there as well as many others, some of whom arrived days ago. 

Unlike many - in part down to age, of course - I remember watching the last coronation nearly seventy years ago. Not in London but in Canada at my uncle’s house. (He had a tv and we didn’t). It was quite a feat for the infant CBC television network. As CBC recalls:

“CBC Television had been on the air for less than nine months in Montreal and Toronto when the coronation took place, and covering it was the network’s greatest challenge to date…the CBC made recordings of the BBC broadcast, processed the film using an accelerated method and put them on RAF bombers to Goose Bay. The films were then flown by RCAF jets to Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, which had started that very day”

Point of national pride being that Canadian tv was able to show the ceremony half an hour before the American networks.

And tomorrow? Visiting friends. TV large screen and in colour this time.

Sunday, February 9/2014

Sunday brunch with the English Cypriot paper. And for the first time an op-ed by a Greek Cypriot, Loucas Charalambous, suggesting that the hostilities between Greek and Turkish  Cypriots were historically at least as much the fault of the Greeks as the Turks and that it is wrong to distort the facts. Very brave indeed of him - people have been killed for less.