The Make Poverty History campaign did not want speakers like George Monbiot, Rose Gentle and Trevor Ngwame (one of the few Africans in Edinburgh on the day) on the main stage because they said they didn’t want to turn it into a political event. Discussing the absurdity of poverty not being a political issue would require more time than I have here….

Another thing that wasn’t much of an event according to the papers was THE LARGEST POLITICAL MEETING IN SCOTTISH HISTORY. The G8 Alternatives summit was on Sunday, the day after the Demo. International speakers such as Scott Ritter the former UN weapons inspector, Ken Wiwa – son of murdered activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and Haidi Giuliani – mother of Carlo, who was shot by police at the G8 summit in Genoa, were speaking in Edinburgh. More than 5000 tickets were sold and well over a thousand were at the closing rally. Newsworthy you would think? Think again. Although something much smaller like the Scottish Liberal Party conference gets a fair amount of coverage this got barely anything. Both the Herald and the Scotsman only mentioned some comments George Galloway made at a press conference at the summit. George Monbiot was interviewed by BBC television but a clip of the interview was shown without any comment about where he was interviewed and why he was there (although you could see a steward with a G8 alternatives T-shirt on in the background). The Guardian had it on the website but not in the paper.

No, instead of covering this peaceful event that was enjoyed by many different groups of people properly, the Herald has a policeman with a huge gun on the front page and informs us that the police have ‘won round 1.’ Both of these papers are also continuing to talk up the threat posed by anonymous anarchist groups who apparently ‘don’t have any cause to protest about – they were simply there for a fight.’ Hmmm.

One feature of the summit was the constant attempts by all the speakers to come up with different themes on the Make Poverty History soundbite. We had Make Capitalism History, Make Blair History, Make Bush History, Make Bullsh*t History, Make War History and so on. One speaker (I can’t remember who) even tripped themselves and said ‘Make History History.’ I was trying to think of one to finish this but am content to say that as the largest protest march and the largest political meeting ever to occur in Scotland have happened this weekend, we have already made history.