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Stop the War – Troops Out – 2008

Stop the War – Troops Out: The protest organised by Stop the War, CND and British Muslim Initiative on Saturday 15th March, 2008 was an impressive one, with around 50,000 marchers calling for the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, no attack on Iran and a free Palestine, as well as many other groups drawing attention to other issues around the world including the genocide in Somalia.

It began with a rally in Trafalgar Square where speakers included Tony Benn and Bruce Kent and then took a roundabout route across Westminster Bridge and then back over the Thames on Lambeth Bridge and up Millbank to Parliament Square. Those at the rear of the march were still passing the corner of the square when those at the front arrived back there.

It was an event that included many issues still relevant now, particularly over Iran and Palestine, but also on direct action, with a reminder of the then upcoming trial of the Raytheon 9, anti-war activists who had entered the Raytheon factory in Derry in August 2006 after learning that Raytheon missiles were being used by Israel in their 2006 invasion of Lebanon.

Occupying the offices for eight hours before they were arrested they destroyed computers and documents, and six were tried for criminal damage and affray in May 2008. One man was found guilty of stealing two computer disks but they were all acquitted on all other charges.

The police took a great deal of interest in the protest, with FIT teams who photograph protesters (and journalists, particularly photographers) took an unusual interest in anarchist protesters from Class War, the Anarchist Federation and FITwatch who use their banner to try to prevent the police taking photographs and video.

I missed seeing four of the FITwatch protesters arrested, apparently for intimidating the police. As I commented, “Since a couple of weeks ago one of their photographers and his minder had been seen taking flight and seeking refuge up the steps of the National Gallery when pursued by a polite and always well behaved woman with a shopping trolley and free cakes – much to the amusement of other police present – intimidating the FIT doesn’t seem too difficult.“

But this – like the many large pro-Palestine protests since ‘September 7th’ – was an entirely peaceful protest, calling for peace in many areas around the world and for an end to UK involvement in wars and oppression.

It was a lively protest, with samba band, sound systes, street theatre and dancing. People laid flowers at Nelson Mandela’s statue and Brian Haw – still permanently camped in Parliament Square despite the attempts to remove him by passing SOCPA – joined the protest.

And like all of these marches it also included many Jewish marchers including the Neturei Karta ultra-orthodox anti-Zionists.

You can see many more pictures which also cover other aspects of the march on My London Diary at Stop the War/CND/BMI – Troops out.

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Stop Trident, Troops out of Iraq – 2007

Stop Trident, Troops out of Iraq: On Saturday 24th February 2007 I photographed the march and rally organised by Stop The War, The Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament and The British Muslim Initiative to call for British troops to be brought back from Iraq and for an end to the deployment of Trident nuclear missiles and their proposed expensive replacement.

The marchers met in Hyde Park around Speakers’ Corner and marched to a rally in Trafalgar Square.

I wrote a slightly long text to go with the pictures which I’ll repeat in a more normal form below with normal capitalisation. It includes an explanation of how I arrived at an rough estimate for the numbers taking part for this and other protests – often very significantly greater than that then given by the police to the press and usually rather less than that of the organisers.

Stop Trident, Troops out of Iraq – Stop the War/CND/BMI Demo

I’ve for many years been opposed to the so-called independent British nuclear weapons. Even at the height of the Cold War they were never credible as an independent deterrent. If they have ever had any justification it was that they made the USA feel less guilty, although American guilt at its huge nuclear arsenal and at being the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons has always been an incredibly stunted growth.

I was also firmly against the invasion of Iraq. It was always clear to those who didn’t want to be deluded that the so-called ‘intelligence’ on weapons of mass destruction was laughable.

*A cheaper alternative to Trident, and at least as effective. The bicycle & trailer costs rather less than a nuclear sub too.*

Blair was either a liar or a fool as he misled a minority of the British people and a majority of their MPs. Or most probably both. (Saddam may also have been deluded and certainly was an evil dictator, but we had long failed those who tried to oppose him.) The invasion was criminal, but the lack of planning for the occupation that inevitably followed even more so.

So Saturday’s march, organised by Stop The War, The Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament and The British Muslim Initiative against both of these had my whole-hearted support (although i would have photographed it anyway.)

It is hard to be sure of numbers on events such as this, but the police estimate is laughable (the first figure they gave to the press, of 4000, was totally ludicrous.)

It took around 90 minutes for the march to pass me in Park Lane, and although there were a few short gaps, there were plenty of times when the wide street was too crowded to really take pictures. My estimate of the average number of people passing me per minute is 200-600, giving a total of 18,000-50,000 marchers from Hyde Park.

You can add to these figures perhaps another 10-20% who for various reasons go direct to the rally or join the march closer to Trafalgar Square, giving a total that could be between 20,000 and 60,000.

After photographing the marchers, I took the tube to get to the rally in time to hear some of the speeches (marchers were still arriving almost up to the end of the rally.) As I arrived, there were many people already leaving, and the square was filled, with people spilling out at both the northeast and northwest corners.

*So where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction? In the American arsenals of course.*

I wasn’t there in time to hear Ken Livingstone, MPs John Mcdonnell and John Trickett, MEPs Caroline Lucas and Jill Evans, playwright David Edgar, Paul Mackney of the University & College Union or some of the other speakers, but I did hear the co-chair of the US ‘United For Peace And Justice’ Judith Leblanc, Lindsey German, George Galloway, and Augusto Montiel, a Venezuelan MP, as well as several Muslim speakers, trade unionists and singers including Julie Felix. I didn’t catch all of their names.

For me the most moving speech was from Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon was killed in Iraq. Together with others from ‘military families against the war’ she is camping out over the weekend opposite Downing Street.

Six of her colleagues stood with her as a group while she addressed the crowd, lending their support. She was simple, direct, emotional.

The final speaker (I think) was Jeremy Corbyn, MP, and it started to rain again as he began speaking, so I headed for the Underground and home.

Many – too many – more pictures on My London Diary.

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Cycling and health

Every weekday for the past few months I’ve been having breakfast, washing and then getting on my bike for some exercise, riding around ten miles. I take a camera with me and sometimes stop a few times to take pictures which does slow me down a little. I don’t have Lycra and the roads around here are in pretty poor condition, and I sometimes ride on some rough paths, so my progress isn’t that fast, and the rides generally take me 40-50 minutes – an overall speed of 15-12 mph. The pictures here were taken on my rides in the first week of July.

At the start I of these rides was very short of breath, and thankful that this part of South-West Middlesex is extremely flat – one reason for siting Heathrow here. Even now, 4 months after I was ill in March, hills are still a problem if I ride across the river into neighbouring Surrey, though I’m now having to stop and rest fewer times on the way up. But I can now ride up the slopes to cross the motorways or railways without much difficulty.

At the start the empty roads (apart from the many potholes and cracks) were bliss, but I arrived home exhausted. Now traffic even on the relatively quiet roads I mainly ride is something of a pain but I’ve got fitter and while I’m a little tired when I get home I’m not on my last legs. Cycling has definitely improved my fitness, but I haven’t lost a single pound.

So while I’m pleased that the government is encouraging cycling, and I’m sure it will improve people’s fitness I don’t know that it will actually do much to reduce obesity. Nor am I sure that they are going about getting more people on their bikes in the right way with gimmicks like the repair vouchers and prescriptions. They need to divert much more of the money going into roads into making roads safer so more people feel able to ride on them. As well as providing separate cycle paths where possible this also needs special attention to the edges of roads, the roughly 2m in which cyclists normally ride and which currently are usually in even worse condition than the rest of the roads.

It also needs the kind of changes currently being proposed to the Highway Code, which prioritise the needs of the most vulnerable on our roads, pedestrians, then cyclists and then the various other categories of road users. You can contribute to the consultation on this until 11.59pm on 27th October 2020.

I don’t think cycling has a great deal to offer in combating obesity. Cycling is such an efficient process that it uses relatively little energy, and isn’t a very good way to lose weight. Jogging would be better though I find it far too boring.

Obesity is now of course not to do with actually being obese but defined by the WHO for adults as having a BMI of 30 or greater. BMI is a useful but very crude measure, which only takes body mass and height into consideration.

I think I am as fit or fitter than my wife, but in terms of BMI I come out slightly overweight and she appears slightly underweight, a difference of around 9 or 10 in BMI. We eat more or less the same diet and roughly similar quantities. I think the difference in BMI is at least partly if not largely accounted for by the width of our frames. This is reflected in the width across the shoulders – mine being roughly 1.3 times wider., much greater than the 1.09 difference in our heights.

The BMI formula, BMI = weight(kg)/height(m)^2 seemed conceptually wrong to the Belgian scientist Quetelet, who first put it forward around 1840, as mass is essentially a three-dimensional property, and so we might expect it to correspond to the third power of height, but that doesn’t give sensible results. The square was adopted for fully grown adults and in order to give roughly acceptable results for the population as a whole, but Quetelet actually pointed out it should not be applied to individuals.

Seven years ago Professor L N Trefethen FRS, Professor of Numerical Analysis, University of Oxford, proposed a revised BMI to make a “better approximation to the actual sizes and shapes of healthy bodies” and it does cut down the difference between Linda and me slightly, bringing her just into the normal range. The differences it makes are rather small, but given the blind reliance we sometimes see on BMI important. Trefethen suggested using instead of the square the power 2.5 of height and points out that Quetelet had found that “during development the squares of the weight at different ages are as the fifth powers of the height” while suggesting the use of the square for fully grown adults. At the time it was certainly much easier to calculate a square, though now calculators and computers make fractional powers easy to use.

Duke of Northumberland’s River and Heathrow

It probably doesn’t matter if we regard BMI as a very rough measure, but does when it comes to setting out charts and and applying them to individuals. If your BMI is 26, you may actually be normal, while if it is 25 you could be overweight whatever the chart says, but it would be too inconvenient to give, for example, a BMI of 26 +/- 3 which would probably be rather more accurate a reflection. It would be more useful for individuals if we could find a more sophisticated formula that gave a clearer indication.

There is of course another equally simplistic but probably more reliable measure that can be applied to individuals to determine obesity. It’s called a tape measure. If you are a man with a waist of over 40 inches (102cm) then you are almost certainly obese.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.