There were some big protests in London today. Depending on how left-leaning your coverage was, there were quite a lot of people there; according to Sky News, "tens of thousands", the BBC reckon a quarter million, and Channel Four News say half a million. We're all just waiting on Socialist Worker piping up that there were seven million people on the streets of London and the Spectator denying anything happened at all - but that it was an outrage nonetheless - and we've covered the full spectrum.
So it was one of those days when the rolling news crews go out and hang around the fringes of a nice peaceful protest, and offer up lavish prayers to the twisted god of trash journalism for a riot. As it was things went off relatively peacefully, so there wasn't really any news. I mean, "widespread discontent with swingeing government cuts" isn't exactly news, is it? Although the networks did do their best to kick something off - Sky News, for example, followed a bunch of anarchists into a branch of HBOS with a full camera crew, because that wouldn't have inflamed matters in the slightest. It turned out that one of them wanted a printout of his ISA portfolio, or something equally cripplingly mundane, and the news crew shuffled back outside to throw stones at police horses and heckle MPs.
Ed Balls got a bit of a heckling, actually, but it was just in that traditional, idiotic protest style; a rather dishevelled looking skinhead shouted a bit at him about child pornography or abuse or something - his tone made it quite difficult to tell - and although everything he said was phrased as a question, in the "what are you going to do" mold, he never actually stopped chanting to listen for an answer. He just kept bawling his question, leaving Ed looking a bit bewildered, struggling to get a word in edge-ways - presumably along the lines of "well, you know, I'm not in government, and I'm not entirely sure that they're legalised child-porn anyway" - before wandering off, right into the maw of a passing goat-fuck.
Sorry, for clarification, a "goat-fuck" is the technical term for that broiling mass of reporters that seems to try to hone in on a news item in an altogether too confined environment. You know those shots on the TV, when you see one rather claustrophobic-looking MP or serial killer with a forest of microphones under his nose, with the occasional dropped camera or trapped pedestrian hoving through the shot? If you turned the camera around so you see what the MP/serial killer is seeing, you'd see a goat-fuck. It's a kind of whirlwind of human bodies and high-tech recording and broadcasting equipment, around twenty people trying to occupy a space that could comfortably fit two. They pile up somewhat at the back to try to get a better view, and lob their mics in the vague direction of News. 80% of them won't get anything usable out of it, and probably spoil everyone else's shot in the mean-time - but it's traditional much in the way that photographers outside courts always try to take pictures through police van windows, which literally never come out. It's just what you do.
Anyway, poor old Ed turned away from the shouty man and stumbled face-first into a sizable goat-fuck. Not Charlie-Sheen-exiting-rehab size, but around the best a man named after parts of his own anatomy could expect on an average Saturday. The reporters smelled a story, and piled up a little higher. "Oooh, that got a bit aggressive, didn't it?" they asked, implying that the shouty man had actually caved Ed's head in and started feasting on the goo inside. The man in question made a desultory attempt to shout some more, then wandered off to be replaced by what must have been Ed's entourage, because they were all waving LABOUR flags. Ed just gave a rather composed interview which actually did answer the man's question after all, not that he'd stuck around to hear it - honestly, I don't think he really wanted an answer anyway - and once again the press wandered off disappointed. The goat-fuck dissolved into a merely seething mass of hacks, who stalked off looking for the next sign of trouble.
What a rubbish protest, eh?
