Power of protest.
We'll talk about that in iPM tomorrow (back at 17.30). Several PM/iPM listeners got in touch and will feature in the show. There's a BBC News piece about protest here.
Also in the programme tomorrow, my co-host Jennifer explores what it's like for women who've had anorexia...and then have children. I've heard the interview and it's riveting listening. Like everything else in iPM, it started with a listener getting in touch. The iPM stuff is here.
Listen to PM
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It's easy to poopoo the power of protest, but if we look at major issues over the decades, we can see that it has had immense influence in issues as important and diverse as the Poll Tax, votes for women, black rights, the end of Imperialism, nuclear disarmament, action against poverty ..... Need I go on?
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A PS to my No. 1 - I was tickled to hear today about the folk in the Buckinghamshire village who registered their protest at being targetted by Google Streetview by effectively immobilising the Google camera! :)
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Big Sis (2) I'm not concerned about the G**gle street view cameras. I've had a little look around my old haunts that have been photo'd for it, and there's so little there that could help any potential burglar, etc. You can't (as has been suggested) zoom through peoples' windows and look inside their front rooms (as far as I've tested). The few people who are visible aren't recogniseable (unless you happen to know them already), it's not ( as some people seem to think) a live stream. The photos were taken some time ago, and aren't updated. In fact, in most places, it highlights how dull and drab life in some cities has become.
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@Big Sister you are right, many huge social changes have happened as a result of protest. I've recently become interested in the power of different types of protest though... having taken part in WWF Earth Hour which attracted the participation of "hundreds of millions of people across the planet" and was billed as *THE* largest environmental protest ever, I was very disappointed in the coverage that the event attracted in the press. The low profile of this story when compared to the high profile of Wednesday's violent protests by a small group of protesters in the run up to the G20 summit beg the question - is it necessary to be more sensational to guarantee high profile coverage in the media?!
I have always resisted the idea of violent direct action because I like to believe that we can achieve things through peaceful protest. But I've recently come to realise that neary all of the major socio-political changes that have taken place in our history have been accompanied by an element of more aggressive protest - from the suffragetes to the civil rights movement, the end of colonial rule in India to the overthrow of apartheid in SA.
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i want to protest about the new PM home page
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CairnTerrier (6) Eeek! I hadn't looked at the main PM page for a while. I think you're right. It's a bit to post-modern for my tastes. Plus, where's Eddies' "biography" gone?
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BS 1, Is that pronounced po-opoo, poop-oo, po-op-oo, or what?
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Eddie. I left this one alone, thanks. The power of protest.
Two years and more and I think "they" have just agreed my name just might be "steelpulse" but they are getting back to me onnit.
A single iPM programme I suggest wouldn't cover it but someone might tell one day why it seems (and maybe the title too is apt) a mini series the size of The Wire is now needed for just a name to be confirmed.
A Briton born and bred national.
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Re: Street View.
Apparently the residents think that having a 360° panorama of their street every 100 yards or so (which won't be published for another 6 months or so) will increase the chances of them getting burgled...
...and blabbing to the media about their experiences and their village's crime rate (which will be published immediately) won't...
Especially as I won't be surprised if there's a temporary surge in tourism to their village :)
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sp 9, I heard that The Wire is the best TV program ever made. I watched five minutes and heard more foul language than I usually hear in a year's worth of TV. Is that now what makes for a great TV program? I turned it off.
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The power of protest never had any effect on my ex missus.
DMCN (11) Ooooo....get Mary Whitehouse.
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1.
Got my probs. with this one.
Is it supposed to be a defence of peaceful v. violent protest?
If so, what about the 60s riots in Chicago etc, the French Resistance (waving banners just wasn't enough) Mandela's Armed Struggle, liberation movements in Africa, Cyprus, Malaya, etc.
All successful, all violent.
What about the Iraq war protest here, the protest against Israel's barbarity in Gaza, to name two - peaceful protests that got nowhere.
Similarly CND etc.
If it is supposed to be in support of the view that protest works. I ask c.f. what?
'45 and '79, Attlee and Thatcher ushered in the biggest changes of all in Britain. Both through the ballot box.
If your argument is that these changes, too, were born of protest (surely highly doubtful) then your argument seems to reduce to saying you can't get change unless at leat one person, somewhere, disagrees with what is going down.
A proposition which doesn't seem to me to shed much light. Though true, unless social processes are beyond any action of ours. In which case, whither protest?
This post contains no economic theory and is safe to read even for those who hate feeling uncomfortably wrong about economics.
TRW.
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TRW @ 13 --congratulations!
You see? You can do it if you really try.
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13. Got my probs with this one. Has misread my 1.
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15
Is it that Eyeless on Gaza position of yours that stops you taking 13 on board properly?
'Cos the other day you were saying marches, banners and slogans are good, violence bad. Which I took to be 1.'s antecedents.
Is it really a climb down? Peaceful protest does some good, sometimes not?
What, then, about violent protest?
Wouldn't SOME sort of protest have helped a bit in Gaza. Reducing the odd war atrocity, a few civilian murders, some child deaths?
That one, the invasion, I can see as being affected by protest AT THE TIME, to the good. Can't you?
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Shall I? Shan't I? -
Nah, not worth it.
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Why can MPs claim fro a second home?
If I were to take a job away from home would I be able to claim a second home allowance from the tax payer?
I think not!!
I realise that MPs do need to be in their constituencies for surgeries etc but why can't they use B&B accomodation at their own expense ( as any normal person would have to)?
Or the government could but a house/flat in every constituency & MPs could use these.
Also why do they have to travel first class instead of cattle class?
I the did travel "standard" class perhaps this might bring about a must needed improvment to rail travel.
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if MP's are claiming things as a legitimate expense as part of their job, which means the taxpayer has effectively paid for it, surely the tax payer owns it and if they want it for themselves they should pay for it or go to jail for theft as that's what they're effectively doing embezzling the tax payers.
where can we see these rules?
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