Someone’s got to say it, so on behalf of the various campaign groups concerned with ending the Chinese occupation of and brutality in Tibet (none of which I officially represent or am a member of), I’d like to thank Gordon Brown for a day of phenomenal free world-wide publicity, at the expense of the reputations of his government, the olympic committee, the Metropolitan police force and London as a whole.
I mean, he can’t POSSIBLY have thought that the protests weren’t going to happen can he? He must have known that the strength of feeling about the ongoing MASSIVE human rights violations being carried out by the Chinese government in, well, just about everywhere they can reach in a 3 hour plane ride, was going to spill out onto the streets, given that the nonsense that passed for a ‘procession’ was going to be tracked by every major news agency on the planet.
Someone in government handily arranged for a bunch of turquoise track-suited Chinese body guards to run stony-faced alongside the torch, like a phalanx of David Icke-obsessed ninjas, waiting to seriously kick some ass should any of the protestors step out of line. Except they needn’t have been there, because lovely accomodating Meester Brown had arranged for the Police to overreact to everything, bundling people to the ground in the full glare of the world’s media lens. So, sadly no Jackie Chan-style ninja-skills from the Icke-ettes, but still plenty of amazing photo-ops, including but not limited to:
***the dude you tried to wrestle the flame from Konnie Huq (who helpfully said afterwards that she was fine with that, given the reason)
***The genius who attacked the flame with a fire extinguisher – hurrah!
***The ignominy of the regal olympic flame being carried on a bus along Oxford Street by the Sugababes (stopping off for a ‘My olympic torch went to London and all I got was this lousy cigarette lighter’ zippo on the way)
***the other numerous heavy handed arrests of anyone jumping the barriers as assorted sport-monkeys and D-list celeb-lackeys ran past carrying that great symbol of, uhm, flameness.
Oh yes, ’twas a masterpiece of engineered publicity for the protestors, handed to them on a plate by the Government.
So thankyou, Mr Brown, thankyou. Good one Gordon, you’re a legend Gordon. All we need now is for you to admit that was the plan and for you to openly laugh at the idea that you’ll be attending the opening ceremony. For example, you could say ‘…hosted by that bunch of murdering fuck-heads? not likely!’
I’d be happy to write you a speech. For freebs.
(oh and big thanks to my local MP, Tessa Jowells, for not blowing the story early – she must’ve been bustin’ to say ‘but we planned it all along!’ all day…)