nmg | Blogs need Best Before dates (Reply)

The last few weeks have been hectic, workwise. For the best part of a month, I've been working stupidly long days (twelve to fourteen hours), so haven't had the opportunity to gather my thoughts and make anything resembling a coherent post about any of the the things that have pleased me, irked me or otherwise passed me by. The ones I can still remember:

ias and I went on the demo that followed the outbreak of war in the Gulf. We made our own placard ("THE END DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS", with possibly too flippant small print reading "Wooly Liberals Against Bad Things"), rather than be faced with a scramble to get a placard representing an organisation that we wholeheartedly support (CND, the Stop the War Coalition) as opposed to one from a group who brought their other agendas to the demo as well as the core don't-attack-iraq message. For example, MAB ("Don't Attack Iraq", and "Free Palestine"), the Socialist Workers ("Don't Attack Iraq" and "Smash the State"), the Greens ("Don't Attack Iraq" and "Solar Power Not Oil"). I'm not saying that we don't agree with some of the messages - we do with MAB and at least in part with the Greens - but those weren't the reason we were marching.

(besides which, having your own unique placard makes it easier to spot yourself in the news - you can see our placard on page 5 of the media section of The Guardian on 31st March).

Also on the march with us were a motley group of Potterphiles of ias's acquaintance, all of whom were jolly good sorts, even if they were all lightweights and didn't get as far as the speeches. Tch, youngsters. Tried to keep a count of the number of different socialist organisations, but lost count somewhere above a dozen.
Various comments about the war, most of which have been said elsewhere by persons far more eloquent than myself. My personal favourite was William Gibson's comment about the AWOL US Navy minesweeping dolphin. Life imitates art?