From: Dave Bird <dave@xemu.demon.co.uk>
Subject: REPORT OF PICKET at scientology org in Birmingham(UK), 2003/july/26---saturday
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 20:17:32 +0100
Message-ID: <+az9TBBMPtI$Ewzs@xemu.demon.co.uk>

In article <dfOlCuKnXav+Ew6A@xemu.demon.co.uk>, Dave Bird writes:

> PICKET REPORT, Birmingham(UK), 2003/may/10---saturday
> =====================================================

PICKET REPORT, Birmingham(UK), 2003/july/26---saturday
=====================================================

> We did another picket of the Scientology cult's offices which are
> in Churchill House on the floor above Pizza Hut in New St (library end)
> Map, see http://www.xemu.demon.co.uk/clam#brumorgmap
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

At 5pm on Friday, my phone rang in from a Birmingham number.

"Hello, I'm Marie <somebody>, the director of special affairs at the Church of Scientology in Birmingham. I just thought I'd let you know the police have told us you will be demonstrating outside our church tomorrow." (Which is not a normal thing, I will talk to the police about it on Monday).

"OK, I'll see you tomorrow then." Hang-up.

I suppose she thought I would drop to the floor in stunned surprise and wonder how she had got my phone number, like, from the Birmingham residential phone-book or a directory enquiries service.

So, around 11:30 today, being a bit lame and slow walking, I got a taxi to the pub. There I found John Ritson, Jens Tingleff, Hartley P, and Neil Clarke, plus we were joined later by Diane and her friend outside the GST(#).

We had been a bit plagued by absolute last minute absences but, as the UKSPs group has actually expanded recently, that meant 6 of a possible 10 rather than 2 of a possible 6.

I mentioned that I'd read Joanne Rowling's 5th Harry Potter book, a sort of cross between britain's Billy Bunter the Fat Owl of the Remove and america's Buffy The Vampire Slayer...

perhaps not quite fair as, while both are for children of all ages from seven to seventy, Buffy aims a a core audience aged around 17 and Harry at a core audience aged around 12.

[(#) Grimy Storefront Temple].

The party shop delivered the gas cylinder there for us:

I asked if they did a one-and-a-half fill (15 litres) from Air Products, but apparently their next up is a double volume cylinder (20 litres) from British Oxygen Company. The staff saw it come and reminded us that compressed gas cylinders are not allowed in people areas of pubs but must go in the cylinder store or, in our case, chained to a railing outside the door.

We had some slightly larger and better transparent helium balloons as well as the older transparent ones. The former I had valved and pre-coated with long-float coating.

We had a nice pub lunch and leaflet-folding / balloon-valving session, plus we pre-weighted the ribbons on a load later.

We arrived in New St, set up the cylinder on the sound system...

Jens on cylinder and John on sound system throughout, the rest deployed with leaflets (Cult of Greed and Power) and placards. A police van was there waiting. One of the police talked to Jens then, as I rolled up, transferred to me. "What I've told your colleague is that the scientologists object to your picket, but we don't have a problem with it: however we ask you not to get face to face or start taunting particular individuals." The van left about forty minutes later.

I don't know what the clams did --- had their own dog and pony show about 300 metres away the other side of library island, AFAIK. And best of luck to them.

Marie was rather anti-social and never came over to introduce herself. She was clearly visible, a tall thin woman in a black suit with medium length straight blond hair. She sat on a seat on the other side of the road with her head down, sneaking occasional glances at us and talking constantly into a mobile phone.

Apparently she was using her OT powers to render herself inconspicuous, with no great success.

And, as I say, she never came over and addressed me face to face rather than by phone.

Flunk for Non-Confront. Begin again: START!

Late on in the demo a tall mediumbuilt guy in blue-jeans and a grey sweatshirt turned up and said "well, I am glad you are doing something against the scientologists, they are an absolute menace."

He clearly knew me but I couldn't place him.

"So you are...?" "You know who I am, I'm Doctor [name redacted]".

It was the young consultant psychiatrist who was giving a second opinion on my depression. Well, I had only met him once before, in his business suit, and in a hospital context -- I simply didn't have my hospital head on(##) in the middle of a demo.

He said we were doing a good job, and scientologists were a pain for telling people not to seek properly qualified help when they were ill. [(##) UKTV cartoon about Worzel Gummidge the Scarecrow who puts on a thinking head, talking head, sleeping head, etc, as circumstances demand].

Total leaflets issued five hundred, total helium balloons issued 240 between three variants of "xemu loves you"; as I thought, this consumed three quarters of the cylinder we had, so we bled the remaining gas for safety before lugging it around again.

We had a nice apres-picket session at the pub: scientologists will no doubt report that I had a telltale smell of cafe-latte and diet pepsi on my breath. The we headed home via our various trains. I called a taxi to a pick-up point near-by.

One fly in the ointment was that they kept me waiting rather a long time. However, fortuitously, we arrived just as the party shop itself was open (rather than just their family's other shop a few doors up), and they were just unloading the van after an afternoon doing party deco in south Birmingham.

And so to home, where I could unwind for the evening, there's a nice WW2 film about sub-chasing on BBC2. Yes, all in all we had another GRAND DAY OUT.

From: Jens Tingleff <jens_tingleff@yahoo.com>
Subject: Demo report, Birmingham, UK, 26th July 2003. [XEMU]
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 20:33:00 +0100
Organization: ARSCC (tinarscc)
Message-ID: <bfukit02ntm@enews1.newsguy.com>

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Hi There!

Six of us had a very nice and productive afternoon out protesting in front of the body-routing grounds of the Birmingham, UK, shop of the criminal organisation known as the "church" <spit> of $cientology.

Dave, John, Hartley, Neil and myself started off spomewhat apprehensive. The clams had somehow gotten wind of our plans to protest, so we didn't know what was waiting for us. It turned out that what was waiting for us was a police van with three friendly police-persons in it. They wanted us to be nice and would expect the clams to be nice. It also turned out that no clams came out to play, so we had a clear run (sorry!) to do out thing.

Dave had new balloons (larger, clear, single two-toned image) and a lot of balloon gas. I was basically busy for one and 3.4 hours handing out ballons and ended up giving away everything we brought - roughly 250 balloons festooned with Xemu's friendly face and the message "$cientology Sucks!"

We were joined later by a local parent and a friend of the parent, brining our total number to a very healthy seven.

The leafletters managed to pretty much give away all the five hundred leaflets we'd taken along.

I only had one longer conversation with a bystander, so I didn't get a feel for the reception of the protest. All the teenagers who passed by wanted a balloon, though, so the good word got out to the target audience.

All in all a very nice demo and a grand day out.

Regards

Jens
- --
Key ID 0x09723C12, j.tingleff@ieee.org/jens_tingleff@yahoo.com
Analogue filtering / 5GHz RLAN / Mdk Linux / odds and ends
http://www.imaginet.fr/~jensting/ +44 1223 211 585
"You see, I missed her terribly" "Next time, aim between the eyes"
'Cerebus'
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