Back when Bush and Blair were planning to go to war
I went on lots of the big marches round London Village.

The one organised for Bush's visit was the most effective as they both sat down and decided not to bomb the shit out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Go protesters!
( Peej, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 15:02, Reply)

I'm protesting against work...
...by being drunk on the job.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
(universalpsykopath loves what you've done with your hair., Fri 12 Nov 2010, 15:00, Reply)

I protest against christmas!
Or rather my boyfriend and the fact that every single year he manages to buy or find out what I've got him as his present.

Two years ago he bought the exact same phone in the exact same colour and ended up with two as neither could be returned. Considering neither of us had mentioned phones or even seen it before I thought it a funny coincidence (after being a girl and having a strop).

Last year he very almost bought Age of Empires before I convinced him otherwise in certain hinting tones. Another coincidence? Maybe not, we'd been wanting to play it together for a while...

This year's surprise I thought was great. I'll not say what it is lest he finds this, but I'd heard him mention it a gooood few months ago and thought he'd like it. He's not loaded and having to buy christmas present himself. I did the usual warning about how he's not allowed to buy things now as it's coming to that time. He did it back to keep his ideas safe. No chance of coincidences this year. It had been so long since he'd mentioned it. Except...

Either I'm very good or he's some sort of mind reader accidentally intent on spoiling his own christmas surprises. He mentioned yesterday, out of the blue, how he was going to buy one on ebay as he really wanted one. Another dose of strong hinting on my part ("You can't afford it. " "Yes I can!" "No, listen. Do *not* buy it. That's not a suggestion." "Ah... okay.") and now he knows. At least, I kind of hope he does or he'll end up with two of those as well...

Just because it's yule-tide does not mean it's okay to start reading minds! I'm going to have to get him a tinfoil hat next year...
( vix0r was not Matthew on, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 14:42, 2 replies)

Can't Make Me
I was recently told, by my c*ntflap of a boss, that I am redundant and I will not be needed in the office much after the beginning of December.

So for the past 3 weeks I have thought sod it and have been coming in to work about half an hour late. Apparently, this is deemed outrageous in the eyes of Mr C*ntflap and I have been told that, although I'm being f*cked off in 3 weeks due to the apparent lack of work, the office will collapse if I'm not at my desk on time every morning until that time...

Therefore, brace yourself, on Wednesday I came to work - on time - but without brushing my hair. Yeah - take that mega-bonce, c*ntflap boss. You can make me be on time but you can't control my barnet. Ner ner ner ner ner. I amaze myself with my bravery sometimes*.

* could be a complete lie. I could hate myself every ounce of the working day as I continuously let myself be walked over like a doormat just so I get a half decent reference. Meh.
(Senora Veranos cannot and will not so ner..., Fri 12 Nov 2010, 14:33, 8 replies)

Trident
March 4th, 1992. The launch of HMS Vanguard, first of a fleet of unlimited range nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines. Five hundred feet long and fifteen thousands tonnes. A seriously awesome piece of engineering.

The student branch of CND were laying on coaches to Barrow to protest the launch. So of course quite a lot of students went. Were quite of lot of those students engineering students? Yes. Were they there because they held a deep, sincere ideological objection to the concept of nuclear war? Maybe. Were they mainly there because it was a chance to see one of these beauties up close, and be awestruck? You bet your ass. Let's just say not everyone was "protesting" as enthusiastically as some of the hippies were. The ones who actually CHEERED got some funny looks on the coach home...
(SonofRojBlake, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 13:47, 8 replies)

Manchester United fans (amongst which I count myself)...
Fed up with the club's billionaire owners and their ruthless corporate greed? Fancy some sort of gesture that would clearly demonstrate your anger and frustration at the fortunes of the pride of English football being solely reliant on the whims of the barely interested mega-rich? There are a couple of options:

1) You could break away, form your own club, call it FC United, take on the green & gold colours of the team's origins, run the the club as some sort of people's cooperative and re-enter the league at the 10th tier, otherwise known as the second division of the North West Counties league.

That, my friends, is a fucking protest.

2) You could wave a green and gold scarf about the place live on Sky TV while still attending matches using your season ticket, wearing an official 50 quid replica shirt (purchased from the Megastore), occasionally pausing to leaf through an official match program, before wandering off at half time to get a Buzby Burger and large Fergie Fries.

That, less so.
(Monkey Tennis isn't Spartacus, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 13:33, 12 replies)

Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
Not my protest but a protest by the British public.

Christmas last year, a Facebook campaign succeeded in making Killing In The Name by Rage Against the Machine the Christmas number 1 single in the UK in "protest" against Simon Cowell's X Factor winner always getting that honour.

Fuck you I won't do what you tell me, but I will do what YOU tell me. Besides, Cowell clearly made more money than he would have had this campaign not taken place. Silly X factor fans would have bought more copies of the Joe McElderry to try and counter the effort and I'm pretty sure Simon Cowell owns the rights to the Rage track as well.
(stewiegriffin, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 12:43, 18 replies)

I think these lyrics apply to this QOTW
Paranoia is in bloom,
The PR transmissions will resume,
They'll try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed down,
And hope that we will never see the truth around
(So come on)

Another promise, another scene,
Another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed,
And all the green belts wrapped around our minds,
And endless red tape to keep the truth confined
(So come on)

They will not force us,
They will stop degrading us,
They will not control us,
We will be victorious
(So come on)

Interchanging mind control,
Come let the revolution take it's toll,
If you could flick a switch and open your third eye,
You'd see that
We should never be afraid to die
(So come on)

Rise up and take the power back,
It's time the fat cats had a heart attack,
You know that their time's coming to an end,
We have to unify and watch our flag ascend

They will not force us,
They will stop degrading us,
They will not control us,
We will be victorious
So come on

They will not force us,
They will stop degrading us,
They will not control us,
We will be victorious
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 11:49, 19 replies)

elbows on the table
I grew up with constant nagging from my socially aspiring mother:

Don't eat with your elbows on the table.
Don't slurp your soup.
Don't take pieces of food out of your mouth, even if it's a golfball of gristle.
Don't lean down to your plate; bring the food to your mouth.
Don't dribble, smear or drip.
Don't enjoy your meal - consider it a test of etiquette.

Well now I'm free of her and I eat like an absolute pig. I break all the rules and I don't give a toss if the table looks like a party of monkeys have eaten there. And I don't say please or thankyou.

Eating is about pleasure.
(Brand name, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 11:48, 8 replies)

Broadband ????
Pah, fuck that. I still use dial-up and i find it just as fast as...


oh.
(nappy rash, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 11:31, 6 replies)

Protesting after you've won...?
Back when I was an undergraduate, there were cuts at York to portering services, porters being a combination of handyman/security/reception for the colleges, and a protest was organised against it to top off a week or two of campainging. As a member of the student telly station at the time, I said I'd film the "action". I turn up at the protest meeting, listen the plan, how they're going to chain themselves across a passage in the early morning when people are coming back form the pub anyway so they're less likely to get caught and so on. One enthusiastic lad suggests spraying shaving foam over a security camera to block it, until someone points out that a mysteriously blocked camera would likely draw more attention than students dicking around.

Then, the big whammy. Turns out the University had just backed down on the stuff the Student Union had been contesting for the past week or so. Most people would think "Oh. There's no reason for us to protest any more, We've won". This lot decided to do it anyway, because they'd already organised it and bought a chain and placards, and gosh, they weren't going to let them go to waste. So, they turn up several hours late the next morning, chain themselves to a place where students just walk around them, and get trolled by a guy who keeps jumping over their chain and calling them wankers. Then they leave early.

The actual campainging, petitioning and awareness-raising by our often crap but sometimes efficient union before? Useful. Half-arsed protest, not so much. It was however a great example of people who want to be "active" for the sake of it, rather than because it's necessary. Similar to the protesters who picketed a BAE recruitment talk with "cake not bombs", and then when the University offered them a chance to present a counterpoint afterwards, sat about eating cake rather than sieze the chance to do what a protest is aimed at, and get their message across. These people wind me up, they lessen the impact of genuine campaigning, stuff with an objective to alert, influence and communicate, not simply "be there".
( Labmonkey last thought about having another coffee on, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 11:09, Reply)

Idiotic school protests
How many people went to protest the Iraq war because they actually wanted to get out of the afternoon maths lesson? Apparently everyone apart from myself and the maths teacher, sitting awkwardly in the classroom. I considered the upcoming GCSE exam more important than going outside the school gates and fannying about chatting about how rebellious it all was. The braying ringleaders came back in talking about how brave they were, just in time to pick up their bags for the next lesson because they were scared of the stricter teacher for that subject.

The same girls also protested not being able to watch the World Cup and skive off lessons, having shown no interest in football at all up until that week, and none at all after the World Cup final either.
(Mrs Ballunatic counting calories, not votes., Fri 12 Nov 2010, 10:45, 2 replies)

Rough Injustice
Ok, so this wasn’t a political protest (with a capital ‘P’), but it was my attempt to rail at a power I perceived at the time to be greater than mine.

After school one day, I was coming out of the shop in the precinct having bought some Space Raiders when I noticed a kid in my year having a set-to with a group of bigger and older girls from another school. This kid (male, I should add) wasn’t in my actually class, but I kind of knew him through other people. I think this all took place in third year – he’d transferred in that year from another school around the way. In fact, the young ladies that were giving him aggro were in fact from the school he used to attend, and must have recognised him.
Now, our school was like Grange Hill, but this other school was the kind where everybody’s older sibling was a vender of chemical substances, if you follow my drift. Our school was a bit rough, but this place was like the wild fucking west.
So anyway, I’m hanging back, waiting to see what happens. He’s getting pushed around a bit, I think one of them smacks him, but he walks off. At this point, I’m like ‘phew’, but then, one of them runs up behind him and flying kicks him in the small of the back, and of course he goes down like a sack of shit.
Now, picture me, all good intentions and incensed naivety. Unable to contain my indignation at such injustice any longer, I rush over to intervene in the style of a Victorian gentlemen. Next thing, predictably, it’s me that’s on the receiving end of their ire, and the other kid, the ungrateful little worm, is nowhere to be seen.
So what do you do in that situation? I don’t know. I think I just did that ‘covering the face up’ thing that boxers do, and took a bit of a twatting. The embarrassing culmination of this was that after a couple of minutes, who should turn up but this bloody awful woman from my mother’s church. Church, for fuck’s sake. Anyway, she waded in using the simple fact that she was an adult to break it up. By break it up, I mean drag me away in tears with a pulsating ear.
I wouldn’t mind but I’d been openly rude to this woman in the past. I felt like a titanic penis.

Then I noticed the other kid still hanging around, who then came up to me, right as rain, laughing, asking me if I was alright. Little fucker.
So, what I learned that day is: as much as we would all love to be superheroes in the face of injustice, invariably, if you repeatedly attempt such chivalry, all you will achieve is dented pride and a cauliflower arse. And the derision of those you attempt to assist.

I hang my head and shudder whenever I think about that incident.
(DeathOnRedBull, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 10:44, 3 replies)

Pandas etc
I'm always getting emails from well meaning colleagues telling me that there are only 12 pandas left in the world or that the spotted sand crake in Mongolia is in danger of extinction. Accordingly, I should send a letter to the Chinese government - which will no doubt be read with great interest by the totalitarian regime that allows hundreds of thousands of its own people to die each year.

Pandas deserve to die. Look at the evidence:

1) Natural camouflage? Yup - stark black and white is great for bamboo forests.
2) Procreational activity? Yup - but only if a team of scientists spends years squeezing out a drop of panda jizz and inserting it with a turkey baster and incubating the young once they're immediately miscarried.
3) Easily accessible diet? Yup - provided they can get hold of fifty tonnes of bamboo shoots every single day in forests depleted by their own ravenous appetites.
4) Natural predators? - Yup - unless you count four billion Chinese who prize panda gonads for fertility pills.
5) Evolutionary suitability? Yup - the perfect morphology for a tree-climbing mammal is a fucking great fat bear.

Pandas are an evolutionary joke. Let 'em die.
(Brand name, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 10:38, 28 replies)

The Geneva situation...
The Geneva Demo - aka I thought the Swiss were peaceful!?

About 2002 I was having a short break in Geneva, it was cold and frosty and out for a walk one morning I noticed there was a lot more activity on the streets than previous days....

As I walked along every few minutes another police van would pull up and a dozen police officers jump out and put on their riot gear. I began to get that sinking feeling that trouble was brewing and I was inclined to try and avoid it.

Slowly I noticed more and more people walking along with me, now in the road as well as the pavement, they were all going in the same direction as me. So I nipped down a side street thinking I'll get away from this lot. That's when I noticed the tank.

Yep, a f*cking tank! The Swiss police choose to deal with protestors by using a tank! Ok, so it didn't fire projectile weapons, evidently it had one of those water cannon things instead, but none the less a tank! I was face to face with it. I just stopped in awe and looked at it, the fella sat on the top looked up from whatever pre-fight checks he was making and looked at me. It was an awkward exchange as we summed oneanother up. I chose to wave and made a hasty exit.

One street over and I looked to my left to see the road blocked by a wall of police with riot shields... to my right, the protestors were a sea of people 50m up the road. I crossed the street and carried on, street after street the same was seen and I realised I was stuck in the hinterland between the police and the protestors. Eventually I ran out of roads when I reached a T-junction instead of a cross roads.

I stood on the corner weighing up my options, the roar of the crowd was deafening... that's why I didn't hear the projectiles until the first near miss. A few stones began to rain down on the road in front of me, then a firework rocket flew past just inches from my face, hitting the wall a few feet away. Fuck this I thought!

I hastily walked toward the police line. My way was blocked, I said to the officers "I need to get through, my hotel is over there!" but their cold dead stare looked right through me. Starting to panic I had a sudden brainwave. I reached into my pocket and pulled out.... my passport. I waved the golden coat of arms in front of them gesturing wildly that I clearly wanted to get away from here. That's when a senior officer behind the riot line tapped the officers in front on the shoulder and like an automatic door they slid out of my way and smiled??? Free to walk through like nothing was wrong.

I went back to my hotel and turned on the news, there I could see the protestors going nuts smashing up shop windows and hurling things at the police. I could hear the roar outside the windows, nevermind on the tv! My mind flicked back to the tank and I wondered how bad it would have to get before they use it.

In many ways I've a lot of admiration for those police, standing their ground in the face of a huge angry crowd, but at the same time they're pretty scary and I have to wonder where the protestors got the balls to square up to them.

All I know is that it put me off the idea of protesting. Sure many will have the right idea for a peaceful demonstration of their views, but it only takes a small minority to turn it into a rampage...
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 10:19, 1 reply)

Back in the mid 80s
when I was about 12, I wrote to the government and told them that fox hunting is bad, cruel and should be banned. My protest worked because they banned it.

Power to the people!
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 10:03, 1 reply)

During my high school years
I boycotted sex.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 9:52, 2 replies)

It's just SO unfair!
I'm going to write a poem about it all.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 9:51, 7 replies)

I once read about a bloke...
...who changed his name by deed poll to Yorkshire Bank plc Are Fascist Bastards.

Now THAT'S a protest.
(Monkey Tennis isn't Spartacus, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 8:53, 4 replies)

Harveys "The Fu(ckwits)rniture store"
utter twunts!! utter fucking twunts!!!

after a nightmare episode involving 2 sofas my mrs demanded direct action against these fuckers!

quick background: our original sofas arrived covered in mold, 5 weeks later our replacements arrived and the delivery guys left us to fit the feet ourselves, at which point we realised that the screws weren't long enough and were too big for the holes drilled into the feet - cue 6 months of complaining via OFT/Trading Standards/legal action, resulting in full refund (and a free "leather care kit" that they never took back.... admittedly we kinda maybe told them that the driver took it with the first sofa)

Anyway.... me and the mrs went for a wander round the Middlebrook retail park (next to the Reebok, and it's FULL of sofa companies, including Harveys!) and I think it has a Boots too

We were childminding a baby for one of her friends for the afternoon, and sthe mrs thought we should pop in and joked that we should leave a used nappy stashed behind a sofa for their staff to find. I'd been bouncing the little sprog quite a bit making it laugh and needed a sit down. All of a sudden, the kid burps and out it comes! Not quite Linda Blair in the Exorcist, but enough to coat the side of the sofa with a nice covering of vomit. There was no staff in sight (thank God) but out comes the tissues to wipe the child's mouth, and off we head for the doors!

Not exactly the dirty protest that we'd joked about, although looking back, I could have ran to Boots for some laxatives if we were so inclined!!
(Anne Frank started to build a loft conversion on, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 8:46, 2 replies)

CND London - Mid 1980s
I was working at Selfridges (saturday job) and during my lunch break popped out to find a CND demo stopping the traffic in Oxford Street. Figuring I had time to help out for a bit I lay in front of a big red bus with the protesters. When the police dragged us away I naievely supposed that by promising to go back to work (I had my uniform on so it was obvious I wasn't lying) they would let me off on my way... But no.

So I missed the afternoon at work without reason, lost the job and began a decent into fecklessness that continues to this day.

Still, we did manage to get President Regan to take his nukes home and the world became a beautiful, peaceful, nuclear-free paradise didn't it!

...Ah right.
(seedybee68 not involved in any rioting since 31 March 1990, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 7:58, 1 reply)

My mate and I once turned up to a Reclaim The Streets demo...
...by taxi.
(Monkey Tennis isn't Spartacus, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 7:49, 2 replies)

Boycott shampoo!
Demand REAL poo.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 6:06, 10 replies)

Dyslexics of the world!
Untie!
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 5:02, 5 replies)

My balls are fair trade.
They're protestes.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 4:10, Reply)

When I was about 14...
...I was having a bit of an argument with my physics teacher. He was being (to my 14 year old mind) completely unreasonable and not letting me get a word in edgeways. So as a means of ending the argument, I simply shouted at the top of my voice "NO! DON'T PUSH ME!" and threw myself down a nearby flight of stairs. Quite a crowd gathered around to see him standing at the top of those stairs and me laying in a heap at the bottom as he protested that "He jumped! He! jumped!". He ended up nearly getting in an awful lot of trouble before I eventually owned up to what I'd done. I did get in a fair bit of trouble over it, but he never bothered me again!
(Angry Hoolio Acarrotisascloseasarabbitevergetstoadiamond, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 2:21, 6 replies)

"Not in my name" anti Iraq war demos in London in 2003
...or there about, my girlfriend and I went to see Startrek exhibition
in Hyde Pk Corner. We took some e's (in hope that they'll kick in by the time we get there) and walked along demonstrators from Bayswater to our destination. It was chockablock full of people. I picked up one of those sticks with the placard on it saying:"Not in my name" which was carelessly discarded by the side of the road. I totally agreed with the message it conveyed and carried it with gusto.
We finally arived at the bloody-cunting-piss poor blow up baloon starship Enterprise and arsehole at the door asked us to pay 20 quid each entry money.
I protested.
(HB, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 2:14, 2 replies)

I paid for one in Amsterdam years ago. She was a high class one too, clearly, as she gave me a nasty dose of lobsters.
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 2:04, 1 reply)

Raining rock on the racists
In 1988 a bunch of us skater dudes sneaked up on a Ku Klux Klan parade in upstate Maryland (yes, this sort of thing occasionally happened even in the 1980s), setting ourselves up behind a fence near a building along the marching route.

Picking up various mineral projectiles off the ground, we waited until we could see the pointy white hoods bobbing up and down in the distance beyond the fence, and -- on a count of three -- we lobbed the stones high in the air above the battalion of bigots, turned, and galloped away bounding over benches and parked cars like antelopes.

We didn't even wait to see if we'd hit anything, but I like to think my carefully aimed rock bonked some guy clean on his pointy head, altering his brain signals and changing him into a flower child or something. Okay, maybe not.
(The 2-Belo OH SHI--[Sound of impact][End of recording], Fri 12 Nov 2010, 0:01, 4 replies)

Not mine but it made me chuckle on my way to work t'other day.....
Probably should have been in the vandalism qotw also, but I have had no control over the creative talent in this instance

(tofer is sweating like a dyslexic on countdown......, Thu 11 Nov 2010, 23:56, Reply)