Boat Race Man.

Once year for the last 158 years a team of rowers from Oxford University race a team of rowers from Cambridge University. With the exception of Steve Redgrave in the Olympics this is the only occasion when the British public express something even vaguely resembling an interest in competitive rowing.

This years event held yesterday (7/4/12) was disrupted when a man swam towards the boats in protest against elitism in British society. The race was stopped and he was arrested and charged under Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that this was a set up designed to test and promote discussion about the security for the 2012 Olympics especially the open water based events like rowing and wild swimming. What was more interesting though was the swimmers manifesto. Although reflecting cultural and educational changes since then it reads a lot like manifestos written by a British Anarchist organisation of the early 1980's known as "Class War." They routinely used to disrupt so-called upper class events like the Henley Regatta. Given all the talk of the "Pasty Tax" following the Budget this sort of rhetoric should feed into and encourage a series of protests against the Olympics planned by the people who brought you Occupylsx. This movement should be further fuelled by the acquittal of the swimmer because disrupting a boat race is certainly testing the definition of "causing harassment, alarm or distress."

Also yesterday Britain launched a cyber-attack against it's own Home Office website under the "Anonymous" flag. In part this was to enquire a about a similarly "Anonymous" flagged US cyber-attack on Chinese computers and to put pressure on the US over US/UK extradition treaties. In the interests of balance I should point out that on the issue of cyber-attacks China's hands are far from clean.