So that's what a million people looks like

View down Picadilly

Wow the anti-war marches were absolutely amazing. Melbourne had 250,000 people, Sydney had 200,000 or more, even Terrigal had a small turnout. London was amazing with at least a million. It's hard to fathom that sort of crowd from the ground because all it looks like from there is people stretching as far as the eye can see in either direction.

One good guage of the number of people is the time it took us. To get from Temple to Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park took us five hours! That includes about half an hour stopping for lunch at Trafalgar square but most of that was spent shuffling along Embankment until we got to Big Ben, when things sped up a bit. A very good natured crowd with some notable funny placards.

We were marching (shuffling is a better term) under our Australian Greens banner, which got some supportive comments, though the lack of much pointing out the "Australian" bit probably confused people. The Greens over here are a lot more hippy-dippy feral than serious political force, and I have to say I don't agree with some of their more loony policies, like banning fluoridated water.

Make Tea Not War

All in all, a fantastic day out and an amazing turn-out. The government probably won't change their mind but they're certainly going to have to step up the credibility of their propaganda and peace could well turn out to be a major issue in the next election. Certainly if this war goes pear shaped, the people really can say "told you so" to the elected idiots.

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