How to deal with No campaigners, Princes Street, Edinburgh

The plan today was to go shopping, but I ran into this bloke from Yorkshire at the junction of Princes Street and North Bridge, who told me that if Scotland can make it to freedom then Yorkshire is next. He went on to tell me that the large Yes team that had been leafleting in that spot had all gone off to the pub, leaving him with some leaflets to hold the fort.

Before leaving someone had climbed up to the top of the Duke of Wellington's statue to leave a Yes cone on the Iron Duke's head:

Aside from the  Duke and the Yorkshireman, that section of town was being held by the massed forces of reaction. Well, there were half a dozen No campaigners who were being given some serious grief by members of the public, most of whom wanted nothing to do with Tory stooges:

Pretty soon other people showed up, including one who had a handful of Yes leaflets so I grabbed a few and we started handing them out. Within a short while more members of the public had joined in and we quickly created an impromptu Yes campaign. People began to take our leaflets, with the result that we were quickly running out so someone volunteered to go and find some more.

While he was away, the Noes were joined by this Christian activist who wanted to talk about the evil that is homosexuality, but for some reason the Noes did not seem all that keen on mixing with him, so one of our rapidly increasing gang encouraged passers by to chat to the fellow, so that his No message would reach a wider audience:

What can I say? Being democrats we just think that it is important that the No message is heard as widely as possible.

By now the TV crews had arrived, so I was interviewed, in English, by Ukrainian television, and then in Spanish by a crew from Spain, While that was going on, someone galloped off to try and hunt down his mate who speaks Ukrainian, but we were able to handle the Polish crew who then showed up from our own rapidly increasing polyglot bunch. The Noes did not look very happy at the way things were going with our mini United Nations, but aside from the kid in the cheap suit who received the bollocking in the video, most looked more like grunters than speakers, so it was their own fault for being so monolingual and thick.

Finally, the cavalry arrived in the form of a gang of anti-Trident activists, quickly followed by a group from God knows where, but at least they had plenty of leaflets.

Then the No activists just fucked off and left the 50 or so of us who then occupied that section of Princes Street in command of the field.

Today was a good day!