The G20 Protest Schedule Is In.

Between April 1st and April 3rd London plays host to an emergency summit of G20 leaders. This is hardly a proper G8 summit so most people on the protest circuit were probably too busy pissing themselves laughing at the fact Gordon Brown managed to get 19 other countries to turn up to be bothered to, you know, plan anything. However it is globalised summit so the anti-globalisation mob have decided to deploy wing attack plan G;

Saturday March 28th; Put People First march assembling at 11AM on Victoria Embankment. This will be a sedate Stop the War style A-B march. The idea is to get all the Trade Unionists, Facebookers and Silver Surfers who are upset about the recession and take them on a really long, orderly walk until until they get all the anger and mistrust of the government out of their system.

Wednesday April 1st; The Snakes on a Train Spectacular. For this less well organised protest demonstrators are being asked to assemble at 11AM at separate railway stations where they will be assigned one of the four horsemen of the economic meltdown;

• Moorgate station for the Red Horse against war,
• Liverpool Street station for the Green Horse against climate chaos,
• London Bridge station for the Silver Horse against financial crimes,
• Cannon Street station for the Black Horse against homelessness.

People who are familiar with the more lively form of protest will be well aware that the colours of these horses designate the different tactics that these groups will deploy and the groups will move off at a pre-arrange signal. Then, in theory, the groups will snake through the streets of London before converging outside the Bank of England for a Reclaim the Streets style party. What will really happen though depends on how many people will turn up. If less then 1000 people demonstrators turn up at each of the four locations then the police will move quickly to form a bubble around the group before escorting them within a moving cordon to a local park or such where they will be dispersed. If more then 1000 people turn up at the starting points then the police will play a game known as Urban Pinball. In this game the police strategically cordon off certain streets and then use helicopters and vans with lights and sirens to create a culture of movement to bounce protesters off the cordons and into wherever the police want them to go.

Thursday April 2nd; The summit itself. On this day protesters are asked to form so called affinity groups and try to storm the Excel Conference Centre where the summit is being held. I don't expect that plan to be that successful because Docklands is hard enough ground when it's only the Defence Systems International Exhibition. With 20 national armies defending the venue even a Mumbai style commando raid on the place is as unlikely as it would be counterproductive.

Climate Camp; This year Climate Camp have decided that they are going to hold their event outside the European Climate Exchange in Bishopsgate from April 1st. The only thing I can think of saying about this is that if they thought camping in a field in Essex was stressful lord knows what they're going to make of pitching a tent inside of London's ring of steel while the leaders of 20 nations are in town. I can only apologise for them in advance, they're new and they just saw the bulls-eye painted on the side of the G20 summit and flew straight into it.