Things to protest about!

When we went into Manchester at the weekend we saw a mass of tents behind the town hall. This was apparently a protest against homelessness, with numbers of homeless in Greater Manchester on the rise. Someone had set up a public address system and at the end of the evening, as we waited for a tram to take us home, we were regaled by singers of various and dubious quality. But at least they were trying, I suppose. 

Then today I came across information about something called "Not Just Soup". A restaurant owner called Franco Sotgiu found that homeless people often came to the back door of his restaurant in Manchester's Northern Quarter asking if they had any leftover food they could have. Staff would give them sandwiches and all agreed that they would like to do more. And so for about the last three months his restaurant has provided free soup and other hot food for the homeless one day a week in Piccadilly Gardens. And other restaurants have been joining in. It's good to see people who do well in the city giving something back. 

Down in London, David Cameron has endorsed the proposal to raise lots of money to set up the Margaret Thatcher Library, to be based in or close to Westminster. It will run training courses and exchange programmes for overseas students. Assuming, that is, that overseas students are still made to feel welcome. But then, perhaps they will be expected to pay to participate. It will also house artifacts from her time in power, possibly including her suits and handbags. Do people really want to see such things? And will public money be spent on this project? Will there be protests against this? 

Now, in Spain I hear that on July 1st a new law comes into force, the "ley de seguridad ciudadana". This "citizens' safety law", nicknamed the "ley mordanza" (the gag law), restricts the right to protest, with fines of up to €30,000 for taking photos of the police, among other things. I need to be careful as I go around with my camera. You might think that this is just Spain but it turns out that more and more countries are introducing similar laws. In Canada they passed a law making unofficial gatherings of more than 50 people illegal, with fines of $50,000 for individuals and $125,000 for organisations who transgressed. And many other countries are making protest marches impossibly difficult to organise. It's a funny old world! 

Meanwhile our neighbours have been discussing transport problems around here. Our bus service is limited, to say the least. And now the evening service has been put out to tender and Transport for Greater Manchester has given the franchise to a different company from the one which runs the daytime buses. This means that saver tickets bought during the daytime (day savers, week savers, monthly savers or even year savers) are not actually valid on the buses that run after six o'clock in the evening. I'm okay because my old biddy's bus pass works anywhere in the country - at the moment anyway. I politely asked a driver one evening that the situation is, for example, of our granddaughter who often has to return home by bus in the mid to late evening. Would her year-long saver ticket be accepted? Officially no, but it's all at the discretion of the driver apparently. The chap I spoke to suggested that it would be a churlish driver who declined a teenager's year pass. But there are churlish bus drivers around so he recommended that she should always have a fiver with her just in case!!! This is what my neighbours, all with teenagers on the same situations are complaining about. 

Time to start a pressure group, I think!