An Olympic Dissapointment
The Bejing 2008 Torch relay just went through Tower Bridge, so we hustled down to watch it go through. Despite having a really good posse on a traffic island in the middle of the road, there was barely anything to see.
Loads of police vans and motorbikes, a bizzare parade of buses with people rocking out on them, then 20 mins later the torch came through, but the runner (no idea who he was!) was completely surrounded by about 10 rows of chinese security and Metropolatian police officers (who were shoving spectators off the road).
Pretty weird! Only saw a few people protesting, and they were pretty quiet.
This lady was having a rather animated discussion with a Chinese guy next to her, but nothing out of hand.
Look closely, and you might spot the torch in a huddle of police.
Loads of police vans and motorbikes, a bizzare parade of buses with people rocking out on them, then 20 mins later the torch came through, but the runner (no idea who he was!) was completely surrounded by about 10 rows of chinese security and Metropolatian police officers (who were shoving spectators off the road).
Pretty weird! Only saw a few people protesting, and they were pretty quiet.
This lady was having a rather animated discussion with a Chinese guy next to her, but nothing out of hand.
After watching the BBC news tonight, it seems there was a bit more trouble than we saw. And one of the pics I have is of the same event shown on TV with what looked like spectators with cameras getting 'rushed' by the police. Hard to tell what was going on really!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, sad they couldn't organise it a bit better so people actually got to see the torch and runners, rather than a huge bunch of London and Chinese police.