Thought for the Day.

[blahflowers]

Estimates say there were 10,000 people who felt strongly enough to get to Central London to march against the Pope's visit to the UK yesterday.

There were apparently 80,000 people with their little yellow bags inside Hyde Park to see the Pope's set yesterday.

So let's have no more of the Christians trying to portray themselves as the poor downtrodden minority being menaced by the big bad secularists again all right? Even with all the Vatican City spin about how they weren't shifting the tickets for this they proved people will always come out to see a man in a dress.

Comments

[nanaya]

*snerk* at the idea that Christians are a downtrodden minority. That said, I suspect there are plenty of people who have nothing good to say about the Pope (like me) but didn't want to protest. Presumably there were also Catholics who wanted to go see him but didn't. I suspect that the number of people in this country who do care about what the Pope has to say is still smaller than the number which doesn't, overall. And that's probably a good thing.

[katieastrophe]

Call out on our radios yesterday at about 13:25: "$policeCallSign to St John LD, $policeCallSign to St John LD. Estimated 12,000 gathered around Hyde Park Corner with intent to walk to Whitehall. FIT stand by, this could get messy. Over and out."

We all had a good giggle at that one :)

[blahflowers]

Hmmm, so FIT now monitor ALL demonstrations, regardless of what they are for? That's interesting...

[katieastrophe]

On Saturday, we had first aiders, advanced first aiders, nurses, paramedics in ambulances and on bikes, and a FIT team. The FIT team were there to get from one side of Hyde/Green Park to the other quickly, but the police wanted them on guard when the numbers at the protest grew so much, as they are typically much faster than foot patrol FAs and AFAs like myself, and bikes/ambulances can't weave through crowds quite so easily as the FIT guys.

[blahflowers]

Hang on, are we both talking about the Forward Intelligence Team here or do you mean someone else?

[katieastrophe]

Yes, that's what I'm talking about.