I suspect that was largely because, like me, they were too incredibly lazy and/or frightened of crowds to bother...
It's like all complaints and feedback procedures, the vast majority of everyone will always default to 'not doing anything' so you have to scale up any response you get to account for the other people who were thinking the same thing but didn't actually have the energy / resources / enthusiasm / confidence to actually speak up.
True... but you also have the people who a) support the cuts and b) are not directly reliant on the state, and who are therefore extraordinarily unlikely to march while cuts appear to be occurring. There are far more important things to be doing on a Saturday afternoon...
Arguably, the football and the Boat Race were anti-protest protests... and got a higher turnout ;)
I had a quick look at football attendance figures and couldn't find any above 200,000, even as 'record World Cup attendance figures'; given protest estimates are in the 250,000 - 500,000 region that isn't a higher turnout.
There appear to be no figures available for Boat Race turnout at all (although I admit my attempts to find out were only 'cursory googling').
If you mean TV-watching figures, they aren't really comparable as they don't entail the same amount of actually getting out of bed in the morning...
There were at least 200k people on the banks of the Thames yesterday, according to the BBC coverage, and a capacity (75k) crowd at the Millennium Stadium, so at least 275k people present. TV coverage is many millions, but a different matter.
The claims for the protest were originally 100-200k, later revised to 100-250k, and then claimed today by the TUC (without any corroboration or justification) to have been 250-500k. Since organisers of marches routinely (and falsely) inflate their figures after the event, I'm still taking 250k as the estimate.
It'd be a bit Father Ted, though, wouldn't it - a march to agree with what the government is doing? "More of this sort of thing!" "Careful now!" "Keep up the good work!"
I wish there were more people protesting that we should actually reduce government expenditure in this country. Fact is, government expenditure last year was £669billion and after five years of these mythical 'cuts', it is forecast to be £764billion.
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It's like all complaints and feedback procedures, the vast majority of everyone will always default to 'not doing anything' so you have to scale up any response you get to account for the other people who were thinking the same thing but didn't actually have the energy / resources / enthusiasm / confidence to actually speak up.
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Arguably, the football and the Boat Race were anti-protest protests... and got a higher turnout ;)
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There appear to be no figures available for Boat Race turnout at all (although I admit my attempts to find out were only 'cursory googling').
If you mean TV-watching figures, they aren't really comparable as they don't entail the same amount of actually getting out of bed in the morning...
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The claims for the protest were originally 100-200k, later revised to 100-250k, and then claimed today by the TUC (without any corroboration or justification) to have been 250-500k. Since organisers of marches routinely (and falsely) inflate their figures after the event, I'm still taking 250k as the estimate.
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It'd be a bit Father Ted, though, wouldn't it - a march to agree with what the government is doing? "More of this sort of thing!" "Careful now!" "Keep up the good work!"
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