Mark Thomas at the MAC

Sorry, that should be "Mark Thomas at mac" according to the PR person from the mac who claims it should be written lower case with no "the" (MAC stands for Midland's Arts Centre and is an arts venue next to Canon Hill Park in Birmingham and very nice it is too, but honestly...it's "the" mac, it's always been "the" mac and it always will be!)

Anyway, that's really not the point...Thanks to the marvelous forward planning and organisational skills of Bob, she, myself, Dave andPhill got to go and see political activist and comedian Mark Thomas at the MAC. It was an incredible show. In the first half he told a few stories of himself and fellow activists on the campaign trail, culminating with the story of how he managed to get arrested whilst protesting outside an arms fair in London's Docklands. Always sharp and always funny the material was very strong and seemed to go down really well with the crowd.

The second half was considerably more serious - he spoke mostly about the Coca-Cola company and the world wide boycott which people are trying to arrange due to the apparent complicity of coca-cola in Columbia with the murder of trade union leaders by para-milatary organisations. It was strong stuff, strong enough to get me seriously thinking.

As I've said before on the blog at some length, I'm not really one for direct action, and I passionately believe that the world's ills need addressing in many varied ways, especially through the changing of our own attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. But product boycotts of the products of specific international multi-nationals because of a specific issue have been at least partially effective in the past (Nestle for example) and, hey, who's gonna lose out by not drinking coke?