Tuesday 27 January 2009

We occupied the BBC on Portland place today in protest at the BBC's disgraceful decision to not show the DEC appeal....

A short clip on NEWSNIGHT! Go to minute 1.02 or so. I should be receiving more videos and photo's from the outside soon.

Found another short video so far. typically, it shows us at our smallest and quietest but hey, it's better than nothing. Does anyone know who to 'embed' it?

My exit

Article in Indymedia with loads of great photo's by Guy Smallmans.

Cops outside
The trouble with being a 'citizenjournalist' and wanting to involved in the action is that it's hard to record what you're doing when you have your arms locked to someone else's!

We received 2 texts within 3 or 4 minutes of being ejected by people who had seen us on BBC News 24 being kicked out.

More on this soon...

Called within just a few hours and hardly built at all, about 50 or 60 protesters turned up to BBC on Portland place to protest about the disgraceful decision not to air the DEC appeal.

We got there a bit early and decided to storm the entrance leaving the police behind. We immediately sat down, linked arms and started chanting. We had a lot of support from BBC staff entering the building (i hope they can pull of a strike over this) by sort-of sneaky thumbs up when no-one was looking. Loads of press turned up, AP, Morning star and loads of others-I'm just waiting for the reports to stream in!! Please let me know if you see any of them....a comment below is fine.

I was invited onto BBC World Service and had to deal with an idiot Zionist who tried, somehow, to tie in Iran and their supposed nuclear weapons!!



SOAS bannerBBC Windows


They, the BBC, said: (italics my own-there is a definite case of contradictory consciousness/reporting here)

Around 20 (i would say there was 12 of us inside!!) campaigners from the Stop the War Coalition (SOAS StW society) walked (actually we stormed) into the lobby of the central London building with a large banner proclaiming Hands off Gaza (the only banner we could find!).

They were removed by police before continuing a (fairly) noisy protest outside, during which some of them set fire to their television licences



But, it's the small things that i find interesting: Once we had finished and a few of us were waiting for my radio slot, a well dressed woman was absent mindedly walking past us, she tripped over the barriers and she shot us an angry look. I thought she was going to shout at us: BLOODY BBC she said and waved her fingers in a 'peace' sign and smiled. She clearly knew why we were there.

Another snippet that made me smile was at a Chinese/Singaporean cafe right opposite the Israeli Embassy. We asked the guy who served us if the protests were bad for business. Absolutely, he said, but it's for a very good cause. We made sure to go back there as often as we could. Serving some of the best food I have ever eaten (and, being in catering for many years I'm very fussy!) at only £4-5 or so a meal i encourage you all to go there and support this small friendly family place: they've had to endure weeks of angry protesters blocking the street outside his place. And the spicy Tiger prawns are to die for.

3 comments:

The_Decadent_Rogue said...

what is the name of the cafe? if you can tell us it would be much easier to find and support that nice little family run business :)

Solomon's Mindfield said...

Not sure, but you can't miss it-it is literally opposite the embassy, just down from TK Max. Tube: High St Kensington... :-)

J. Otto Pohl said...

Yes, you really should publicize the cafe's name. When I was doing my post-graduate studies at SOAS I found it difficult to find good and cheap Chinese food in London. Rather than hurt his business, the protesters should try and help it. Keep up the good work. I greatly enjoy keeping up with events at SOAS and in London on this blog.