Last week the leaders of the G8, the world's seven richest nations plus Russia, met at Gleneagles, a posh golf club outside Edinburgh. I live Edinburgh.
The G8 is supposed to be here for just shy of a week, so they're still around.
The schedule of events is roughly as follows:
1. Friday was "White Band Day" where everyone is supposed to show their solidarity for ending poverty by wearing a white band. You could buy the bands for £1, or you could get them free with a copy of The List, Edinburgh & Glasgow's entertainment magazine.
2. Saturday was the Make Poverty History march. The police expected 100,000 but 220,000 showed up. Some of my favorite shops on Princes Street were shut. I wanted to shop for a present for Ange, whose birthday is the 5th of July, so this was irritating. (Happy Birthday, Ange!) There was also this thing in London, a concert or something.
3. Sunday had two alternative summits, one entitled G8 Corporate Dream...Global Nightmare, obviously titled after consultation with Clive Cussler, and another entitled G8 Alternative alternative summit, from the Department of Redundancy Department.
4. Today, trailer parks across the UK have emptied and vomitted their genetically disadvantaged detritus at The Carnival for Full Enjoyment, organized by the same assholes who brought us May Day riots and got people killed at Genoa.
The Carnival for Full Enjoyment is ongoing. The reports right now are that they've tried to set fire to a gas station on Lothian Road and have managed to make their way into a Standard Life building.
For those of you who visited me in 2001, this protest is on my old street, right in front of my old flat.
I've got a couple of people who are there and feeding me information, so I'll keep you posted. If things go well I'll have some pictures for you in the next couple hours.
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Okay, a bit of commentary. Edinburgh's a gorgeous Georgian town that made a conscious decision to preserve itself - inside fifteenth century hand-hewn stone buildings are up to the minute clubs, spacious flats, modern offices, etc. It's beautiful and functional at the same time.
Edinburgh's population quintuples every August for the Festival, which lasts an entire month. We're used to being swamped.
But Dissent and the Wombles are unwelcome. Napoleon's not popular here - but once, he was Aide de Camp to Paul-François-Jean-Nicolas Barras, who knew exactly how to handle situations of this sort.
Brits are fond of saying that Americans have neither a sense of irony nor history - but the selfsame nation that had the bottle to battle Bonaparte now subsidizes rabble-rousers and encourages anarchy on the streets. How the mighty have fallen.
Watching this happen is like watching an episode of T.J. Hooker: William Shatner used to have a starship, for Christ's sakes. Britain used to have an Empire. Now they have a Klinefelter's epidemic, judging by the folks rioting at the West End.
- Nathan
