You won't fool the children of the Revolution

One good thing about being a protester for the day is that you don't have to bother trying to make your hair look tidy, because that simply isn't part of the image you're trying to convey. Which is just as well, since mine is covered in purple hairspray and consequently has merged itself into one huge knot that laughs in the face of a hairbrush.

I spent the weekend in Edinburgh supposedly saving the world but in reality not really doing very much at all. In fact I spent a vast proportion of it (about three hours) standing in a queue actively NOT marching and getting high on other people's dope smoke. The whole event was decked out like the free entry day of Glastonbury (which used to be Sunday, where you could wander in for free if you lived in the area and hadn't already had the common sense to wander over the barriers for free on the Friday) - far more people than could really fit there crammed into a field talking about politics and eating Vietnamese noodles and Texas playing on stage, and badly-organised security. The plan was for the march to be staggered in three stages so that there would be a perpetual ring of people round the city. This was achieved early on and sustained due to the fact that they simply stood there not sure what to do next, because nobody told them, and there wasn't room to move in either direction. I hate to say it, but it made the NUS look organised. Where the NUS is always just that bit too optimistic about the potential number of people who might crawl out of bed of a Saturday morning in order to gridlock London and as such has a steward every hundred yeards or so, the self-effacing charity volunteers couldn't possibly imagine that anyone but themselves might show up to Edinburgh and when 200,000 or so did, well, it was nice, but from an organisational point of view, bugger.

It's actually quite impressive to be able to say I was part of a mass of people so huge that I didn't even get to march, but what I really couldn't be arsed with (maybe it was the four hour train journey the day before then the getting up at six o'clock) was not marching while listening to people bitching about Live 8. It does seem somewhat ironic that we were all claiming to be united in the desire to end poverty and then, smug in our own do-goodedness (I think that's a neologism, but i like it) feel we have the right to say stuff like, huh, that Geldof just wants all the attention for himself, that Geldof has taken the limelight off us. Bastard! Er...and why exactly should the limelight be on a bunch of middle-class self-defining philanthropists anyway, whether they're in Hyde Park or Edinburgh? Then the best comment of all: "they don't care about poverty, they just want a free rock concert." Yep, I entered the Live 8 Text Lottery, because I wanted to see REM and The Who. I'd be lying if I pretended otherwise. At the same time, though, it was all being done in the name of Africa, and big names are going to make the news in a way that us lot and our fair trade banners couldn't, and i don't have a problem with that (I admit I was a bit miffed at the thought of it while standing in a queue getting sunburned, but I soon got over it.) So, in answer to your criticisms:
1. If Geldof just wanted publicity, there are probably easier ways of doing it than staging 9 huge rock concerts to take place simultaneously across the world.
2. Since the G8 is taking place in Edinburgh there were no other events planned in London (or indeed the rest of the world). Most people can't spare the time or money to go to Edinburgh (and there wouldn't have been room for them anyway), others would simply not be interested in going. Live 8 meant more people took part, and that's surely a good thing.
3. Where Live 8 took the prime share of the TV coverage, people tuned in to watch a rock concert who wouldn't have tuned in to watch people meandering round Edinburgh. By default they would then have been exposed to images of our march - my mum says the coverage was pretty much 50.50 throughout.
4. Having an event that took place on a world stage is better for raising awareness than a single march in Edinburgh.
5. The First Live Aid was so powerful. People remember it, so their ears are going to prick up when they hear it again. Demos are good, but they happen all the time. I've been on student demos, anti-war demos and feminist demos and I'm not even a hardened anarchist!
6. We can enjoy that smug feeling that we had the more authentic experience, complete with a nutbar feminist speaker who spoke (extremely slowly. I'm amazed she ever gets anything done) explaining to 40,000 or so of us why she wear red, and a coffee stall that claimed to be genuinely Italian but was actually run by a bunch of Glasweigans who all seemed to be called Graeme, those previously unsung stalwarts of Italian sophistication.
7. If you do want to see the media coverage, there are some pretty good pictures here as well as coverage of the standstill - sorry, March - itself.

So really, in the grand sceme of things, bickering about who got there first and who was more worthy and who should've got the most media coverage is immaterial. Now, regardless of whether we were in Hyde Park, Edinburgh or at home watching the TV, we just need to sit with bated breath and hope that beyond all our expectations that somewhere within Gleneagles Hotel there's a shread of humanity struggling to get out. That said, having read Bush's statements in the news this morning, I suspect that is unlikely.