G20

Been in Marrakesh for a bit, but here are a few thoughts on G20:

Have been watching - even admiring - the G20 protests, but found it hard to shake the feeling that the whole exercise has missed the point entirely.

The protests might as well be taking place on a set for all that the people at work find them relevant. They glance occasionally at the telly we've got in the staff canteen, watching the coppers, the new and old media, and protestors falling into each others' hands as they chase each other round the square mile.

Everybody at work is worried about their jobs and their finances, but I've yet to hear even one person observe that they believe the G20 protests will protect them and end their mortgage worries, etc. There's not a lot in the protests that suggests the security that not-so-radical people are after.

Pity that the state, the media and the more strident members of rent a mob have singularly failed to bring the passion, commitment, and resources of their various G20 displays to the local protests that have really mattered in the past few years.

What a gala decade we local activists would have had if the mainstream media, professional protestors and even the police had joined us outside town halls round the nation to protest about the loss of council housing to ALMOs, and nursery school and welfare rights unit closures, and voluntary sector funding cuts, and so on.

How helpful it'd be if students, anarchists and the usual SWP suspects found the fight to save Barnet council's public services from elimination as romantic as going for glory at an overchoreographed irrelevance like G20.

At a town hall or local issue protest, you get to talk to everyday working people who can't absorb another pay cut or service loss, have never considered revolution, and spend most of their time on the picket line desperately - if misguidedly - hoping a person of press or political influence will notice and take up their cause and win it. At the likes of the G20 protests, you get to talk to coppers, cameras, and each other. Go figure.

Good stuff from Sunny on the heavy handed police action.