January 2003

I never thought that it would happen but its happening.

Slowly and almost imperceptably people are begining to wake up to the fact that are being deceived: by a supposedly “free press” and politicians who serve powerful business interests, rather than the people who voted them in.

Today this writer saw another example of this growing awareness.

The country town of Marlborough, where this writer resides, could have easily come from a Thomas Hardy novel. Small and without any industry it sits amidst rolling green hills in a landscape dotted with Neolithic stone monuments and country churches. Yet even here things are changing. As I cycled into Marlborough’s market place today I was confronted by, of all things, a political demonstration. Placards and posters held by a crowd of country gentry and ordinary folk conveyed a message that was a thousand miles away from a sleepy English country town.

“Hands off Iraq” proclaimed one poster and “No To War” read another.

People are indeed beginning to wake up.

A few hours later I came across yet another example. Riding back on a bus from a nearby town I could not help overhearing a conversation. Apart from this writer there were only three schoolgirls sitting on the small bus with me and, as one might expect, their conversation centred on friends, make-up and boys they considered good looking.

And then one of them mentioned “Iraq”. At which point all three erupted into a chorus of condemnation.

“Did you see George Bush on TV last night? He looked so stupid!” “And do you know where his brains are?” Asked another in response. “Yes in his arse”, responded another.

Of course their comments in themselves mean nothing but they do indicate a strong anti war sentiment along with a growing awareness that something is amiss. Even among ordinary country folk and schoolgirls the sense that something is ‘wrong’ is growing.

How Bush and Blair respond to this is anyone’s guess. More bluster or another faked “terrorist attack”? It’s anyones guess but from hereon in the stakes are much higher: a fact that most people, in there own way, are now begining to instinctively recognise.