Drummerboy’s review of Parliament Square in London

What a total dump Parliament Square has become now. You can't even get onto the green anymore because they've surrounded it with big wire fences to stop the protesters getting in. Or perhaps they are trying to let the grass to grow back or something, I don't know, but barracading the place behind a metal fence just looks daft.
I had a walk around the middle to take some photographs and there's about twenty tents set up like cub camp. You can see their dirty plates and cutlery and rubbish bins all over the place.
I know it's supposed to be a forum for free speech and public protest, but they don't even know what they're protesting about, half of them. They have placards and banners up about wars which we're not even fighting. They're still banging on about Iraq which we left years ago. Stuff about Burma which has nothing to do with us. Two tents seemed to be upset about the fact that Brian Haws had died. There's not much the government can do about that now, unless they've got Jesus on speed dial.

One tent couldn't make up his mind what he was against, so he just lumped all of the world's ills onto the same sign -- Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Once those problems have been solved he will just replace them with something else -- a perpetual protest. Another one said "Latino America says no to US UK France NATO criminal imperialist wars". One guy was demanding that "North Korea border open NOW!". Does anyone know if these protests have ever done any good? It's like those blokes who walk up and down Oxford Street telling everyone that God is coming to punish us. Nobody pays any attention because they all think they're mad.
And while I'm on my soapbox, why has Abraham Lincoln got the biggest statue in Parliament Square? He's an American. Take it down and stick it in Grosvenor Square instead, along with all the other American statues. Somewhere where we don't have to go and look at it. Nelson Mandela has got one in the square too, just half a mile from his other one on Southbank. I don't mind him so much, but why do we have to have him taking up space in Parliament Square?

Parliament Square is full of metal fences, tents and trash, and statues of other country's heroes.