Friday 29 August 2008

Carnival 2008

Why did I bother? The day was going well up until it came time to go home and the Po-po decided they were gonna barricade us in and treat us like criminals. People were throwing bottles so the Police decided they were going to cordone off the road and not let anyone go anywhere. Because surely this would calm them down right? Not at all. People got even more frustrated and began throwing even more bottles. People were sticking to the pavement and trying to get out of the way and not get hit by bottles. I kindly *in my nicest voice ever* asked an officer if we could just get through to a slip road and hide there because we didn’t want to get hit. His response? No. if he lets a few of us in everyone will want to go to the side road. Isn’t this a better option? Gradually let people go into the side road to avoid getting bottled. I made it obvious I would be claiming compensation if a bottle touched me. The crowd were trying to get through and out of harms way but the Police pushed everyone in the direction of the bottles. It was horrible. People screaming and clinging on to each other. Myself and my friend somehow managed to squeeze though and only made it to another row of Police officers, at this point we had to young girls tagging along with us. Poor things probably their first trip out alone and to be experiencing something that I myself- in my twenties- had never experienced. One of the girls rang her mum to let her know she was okay. Which I thought was sweet, you know how mothers worry.

In the middle of the roads there were still floats and buses. I asked one of the buses if they would let us on. No chivalry is obviously dead because they refused to let us on. Don’t worry about us, we’ll just get hit in the face with a bottle.

In the link below at the beginning there is one boy throwing the majority of the bottles- did he really think he was going to get away with it? The Police- who I thought would have just ran up to him and beat him- decided to use one of the floats as a decoy, they asked it to drive under the bridge in Grove and hid behind it and ran out on the boy. You know he got it at the station, cos the way they carried him off (all 15 of them) he was all crumpled up. We eventually got on to a side road and went the long way round and managed to get back on to the road we were on- this took forever and a day I thought we had walked to the other side of London at this point.

Yet again the Police trying to enforce their authority. Apparently they were picking on people and arrested them for no reason. I don’t mid stop and search- by al means do it especially in a vicinity where I know I am going but there is such thing as harassment. I read in one of those free papers that they were making racist comments too. Hmmmm. The officers were northerners and didn’t really know how to talk to Londoners, rather than show compassion to the ones that weren’t doing anything wrong- such as myself- they were rude, aggressive and hostile. The Police have gone down even further in my book.

Have a look at this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7581556.stm