Mass Gathering

I can't help wondering who is behind the 'Mass Gatherings' planned for all over the UK today. The posters said it was the UK Freedom Movement but the UK Freedom Movement website said it wasn't them. Anarchists? Libertarians? Anti-vaxxers? The 5G band? Covidiots? Someone else wanting to cull the covidiots?

One of the gatherings was called for the little park close to where I live so an hour after it was due to start I took some daily exercise in that direction to see, from a very safe distance, what was happening. 11 people were chatting peaceably on the grass; seven police officers (some out of shot) stood monitoring. 

I was interested, having over the years been involved in very much bigger protests that have struggled to get any media coverage at all, to see that lots of these gatherings were reported in the relevant local press this evening. All the reports said they were sparsely attended: a dozen people in Bristol, 10 in Inverness, possibly four in Leeds, 100 in London, 40 in Nottingham, a mere handful in Plymouth. 

But I award the Oxford Mail a double prize for standard media Under-estimating Crowd Numbers and for Most Boring News Item: this evening's gripping top headline is 'Empty Park' accompanied by three photos of the bits of the park where the gathering wasn't happening.