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Playing The Red Flag for the BBC
Nov. 30th, 2011 08:58 pmWe were out this morning at the rally, defending our - and each other's - pensions. Since we are not public employees, neither of us was technically on strike, but ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler receives a public service pension (the terms of which the government is attempting to change so that increases are smaller than inflation), so he wanted to support his former colleagues; and since that pension allows us to run the business as we do, I tagged along with the boss.
Since the point of the exercise is to demonstrate that unity is a good thing, it's only right that it was a very sociable occasion; we had arranged to meetsamarcand and Candy (and Max) and do clever transport things with them, so perhaps that doesn't count, and Sue had been in touch to say she would be there, so perhaps that neither (though it was a pleasure to walk with her and chat, as we so often have on more recreational walks). But there were some complete surprises, some of them people we haven't seen for several years, and much promising to meet and talk properly later in the day (which of course didn't happen, we never met the same people again, but someone else instead).
Many of the unions had brought banners (though Prospect, to whom we attached ourselves, are only a small union, and could only manage placards); but there were also coloured flags, and people had clearly made an effort to colour co-ordinate their clothing:
This ought to have made it easy to find Candy at any time: just look for the blue of the NASUWT. But there so many of them. Their brass band (whom we had first heard at the Gala) were at the meeting place, playing Christmas carols. We joked about asking them to play O Tannenbaum - but we didn't need to, they played it anyway. As they finished, I heard a journalist saying how nice it was to hear some political music, and asking them to play it again "for the BBC". "It's called The Christmas Tree," said the band, but they played it again. Truth in journalism, it's slippery stuff...
What else? I still can't get used to seeing the Royal College of Nursing on demonstrations; I have never before been asked to march down an incline as steep as the Bottle Bank; it's good, once in a while, to be reminded that the point of view of the mainstream news media is not in fact universal.
durham_rambler receives a public service pension (the terms of which the government is attempting to change so that increases are smaller than inflation), so he wanted to support his former colleagues; and since that pension allows us to run the business as we do, I tagged along with the boss.Since the point of the exercise is to demonstrate that unity is a good thing, it's only right that it was a very sociable occasion; we had arranged to meet
samarcand and Candy (and Max) and do clever transport things with them, so perhaps that doesn't count, and Sue had been in touch to say she would be there, so perhaps that neither (though it was a pleasure to walk with her and chat, as we so often have on more recreational walks). But there were some complete surprises, some of them people we haven't seen for several years, and much promising to meet and talk properly later in the day (which of course didn't happen, we never met the same people again, but someone else instead).Many of the unions had brought banners (though Prospect, to whom we attached ourselves, are only a small union, and could only manage placards); but there were also coloured flags, and people had clearly made an effort to colour co-ordinate their clothing:
This ought to have made it easy to find Candy at any time: just look for the blue of the NASUWT. But there so many of them. Their brass band (whom we had first heard at the Gala) were at the meeting place, playing Christmas carols. We joked about asking them to play O Tannenbaum - but we didn't need to, they played it anyway. As they finished, I heard a journalist saying how nice it was to hear some political music, and asking them to play it again "for the BBC". "It's called The Christmas Tree," said the band, but they played it again. Truth in journalism, it's slippery stuff...
What else? I still can't get used to seeing the Royal College of Nursing on demonstrations; I have never before been asked to march down an incline as steep as the Bottle Bank; it's good, once in a while, to be reminded that the point of view of the mainstream news media is not in fact universal.
