No News

Unless something goes dramatically wrong tomorrow or Monday - say, as my friend Ms Mauritia suggested, the London Marathon runners find their way through the capital impeded by people glued to the pavement - you won't see much in the news about the latest Extinction Rebellion events in Westminster, which have been specifically designed as big-tent traditional demonstrations rather than direct-action stunts designed to cause disruption: nobody's much bothered by even tens of thousands of people doing legal things. They were the focus of the last day of my break yesterday. I arrived in the rain to listen to someone from XR Cornwall talking about their experience of getting the Council there to work alongside citizens' panels: he struggled boldly against the lack of a working microphone and the better-amplified efforts of other attractions against the railings of the Palace of Westminster along Abingdon Road. For no very good reason I'd decided I would join the picket outside the Department of Transport, and found a crowd being led by a gentleman from Greenpeace in the cry 'We're from South Yorkshire and we want better buses!', while across the road a similar mass blockaded DEFRA (though not so much the staff couldn't get in or out, obviously). After about 45 minutes in which my most active contribution was helping someone get her cardboard placard pinned to her backpack, I decided to go and seek lunch, and found that someone I knew from London Gothic and who I last met at a birthday gathering had been standing right behind me. All the protests in all the world ...

A visit to the Astral Café as recommended by Comrade Tankengine (all the clientele, including me, being grumpy old chaps until a couple of schoolgirls came in seeking chips and broke the uniformity) and a call at Westminster Cathedral later, I found myself again at the Citizens' Assembly Hub outside Parliament. this time the speaker was a fellow from Reboot Democracy who described the group's plan to refashion our political system by replacing parliaments and councils with randomly-chosen Agenda Groups and Consultative Assemblies, although I was sceptical how this could cope with the short-term crises which are the lot of government most of the time. 'We aim to put up candidates in every council seat and every parliamentary constituency, who will have no policy but to introduce this system', he said. 'Unfortunately when a friend of mine did this in a local council seat, her intervention let the Conservative candidate in, so we have to work out how to avoid that'.

As always, it's XR's commitment to imagining, and in so far as possible, enacting, an alternative vision of society that impresses most (especially on the day when the UN stated that, effectively, saving the world's glaciers is no longer feasible). If only that vision didn't involve so much drumming.