G20 Meeting Starts on Fossil Fools Day….

So tomorrow is Fossil Fools day – and as it is the start of the G20 meeting in London, there will be lots of protests happening against the current economic meltdown, with people demanding radical action from the G20 leaders.

First off will be four simultaneous marches, led by effigies of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.  Each Horseman will be against an issue of concern.

The Green Horse will be Climate Chaos, the Red Horse will be War, the Silver Horse Job/savings/pensions losses and the Black Horse will be home repossessions.

As the website says: “Capitalism has been heating up our world for years, melting the icecaps, burning up the rainforests, pushing the planet to tipping point. Now we’re going to put the heat on them. At the London Summit , the G20 ministers are trying to get away with the biggest April Fools trick of all time. Their tax-dodging, bonus-guzzling, pension-pinching, unregulated free market world’s in meltdown, and those fools think we’re going to bail them out. They’ve gotta be joking!

The marchers will leave Moorgate, Liverpool Street, Cannon Street and London Bridge, converging on the Bank of England. At 12.00 there will be a Banquet at the Bank with music, theatre and “a convergence of communities”.

Also tomorrow, with a delicious sense of irony, the organisation Parli-Training will be holding a seminar on “Inside the Bank of England,” specifically designed at corporate spin doctors and to show them how the Bank works. “This is an ideal course for all professionals, regardless of their background or prior knowledge, who simply need to understand the full extent of present-day UK economic policy. The course achieves this, by offering extremely detailed guidance plus professional insight into how the Bank of England is structured internally and how it currently works closely with the FSA, officials within the Treasury and Number 10 Downing, to formulate fiscal and regulatory policies.”

So the spin doctors get to understand how the Bank works, on the same days as protestors protest about how close the Bank is to big business.You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Meanwhile, 1,500 people plan to bring tents and erect a climate camp in the City outside the European Climate Exchange at Bishopsgate at lunchtime.  As the website says: “By creating a brain-bending system of carbon pollution licenses, fossil fuel companies and trading firms have found a way to keep on churning out global warming gases and to reap huge windfall profits at the same time …. They are handing control of our climate over to the same people and systems that caused the financial collapse. All the workable and fair alternatives aren’t getting a look-in. We need to stop this foolishness.” For more information go here.

With another great sense of irony, BP had decided to chose chosen Fossil FoolsDay  – April 1st 2009 – to celebrate its corporate centenary. The event had been planned to take place at the British Museum, but as word leaked out that ther was going to be a demonstration by Art Not Oil and Rising Tide, BP cancelled the event.

There will be other demonstrations too: the Stop the War coalition will march from the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square to Trafalgar Square in the afternoon. On Thursday, the official day of the summit, protestswill centre on the Excel centre in Canning Town.

Obama maybe in London for the first time as President, but, as the old English saying goes, the peasants will be revolting!!