Gilets Jaunes/Motards en Colère Demo 17 Nov 2018

Starting point at the Zenith (my photo). The noise was incredible!

On a very unprepossessing day for a demo when enthusiasms could be easily be dampened by rain, drizzle, and dark heavy clouds, over 1000 bikers grouped together at the Zenith (concert hall) car park just outside Montpellier. There were local bikers, bikers from Béziers, Nimes, Lodève and Aveyron, and the noise was deafening! There were of course the hotheads who revved the engines of their sport bikes to create as much noise as possible, but even just the number of large engines all running at the same time made a low level rumbling that was quite incredible.

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The demo had been declared at the Préfecture so it was all legal and above board, and as a result, we were escorted by the gendarmes and police (who are themselves bikers and car owners) although of course, they could never show us any visible support...

On the A709 (my photo)

We crawled onto the A709 which was totally empty, the Gilets Jaunes having blocked all the entrances to the motorway. Half-way along our route, we met a number of cars crawling along in the other direction, with much tooting, honking and yelling support.

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I woz there! Wet but having a merry time.

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From the motorway, we came off at Montpellier Ouest, and made our way along Avenue de Toulouse and Gambetta towards the Place de la Comédie. The atmosphere was relaxed, everyone was smiling. The cortège was very impressive, and many young lads along the way were delighted to see it, nudging each other and pointing.

Avenue de Toulouse waiting for the police to clear the roads ahead (my photo)

Our destination was the Esplanade in the end rather than the Place de la Comédie which is like an ice-rink in the rain. We parked all the bikes on the Esplanade and walked up to the Préfecture. After some stirring words by the boss of the Motards en Colère de l'Hérault, a small contingent of 5 bikers was met by the Préfet's representative to have a nice cup of tea and chat (I expect...).

I had a rdv so had to bugger off at that point, but it was an amazing experience being among so many bikers on such a day of mobilisation.

What was it all about? Basically the people are being blamed and taxed for the mistakes of government policy over the last 20-30 years. We drive petrol/diesel cars because all the clean car patents were bought up and squashed by either the energy companies or car manufactures, and it's now our fault that we drive polluting cars.

The French government is incapable of self-analysis to discover areas for improvement, and takes no notice of the Cours des Comptes which regularly points out scandalous public spending wastage.

So everything comes back to inventing ever more taxes, a ruthless money-making scam campaign against road users, and punishing the retired because they are no longer 'productive' (except for looking after grand-kids, being active members of every single charitable association, caring for others, etc.), and the rise in petrol taxes was just the last straw.

The French are always being criticised for being 'des veaux', just accepting what is imposed on them, but there comes a point when they say 'enough is enough', and that point was reached and expressed during the demonstrations.

Here is a resumé by Midi Libre of the day's demos in the whole region here: RESUME.

Here is an analysis in French of the whole mess that France has become: HERE.

And a little video of our own motard demo with sound.

March Against Monsanto

Saturday May 23, 2015 was March Against Monsanto day. People from 35 towns in France, plus hundreds of others elsewhere in the world - spanning 48 countries - marched against this pharmaceutical multinational giant to promote awareness and interest in the World Health Organisation's declaration that glyphosate-containing herbicide Roundup, made by Monsanto, is a 'probable carcinogen' in the food supply. Glyphosate has been detected in groundwater supplies as well as rainwater collections suggesting mass pollution on a global scale.

Added to that their production and tyrannical selling of GMOs, their obstruction of measures to label products containing them, and hard core lobbying, Monsanto obviously puts profits before people, the environment and health, so we demonstrated to tell them and the Powers That Be that we don't want their poison, we want healthy food for all.

Our demo started off in the Peyrou gardens at 2pm. Not quite 2pm, obviously as this is the south of France and things never start on time. We eventually headed off half an hour or so later to the sound of drums, a flute, and chants of "Mon-san-to, A-ssass-in".

"With Monsanto, eat 5 poisoned fruit and veg per day"

From the Arc de Triomphe, down rue Foch

The numbers started building up as more and more people joined in. Ages ranged from students and teens, to parents with young children, and middle-aged and beyond.

View looking down rue Foch from Place du Marché aux Fleurs towards Arc de Triomphe

How many people do you reckon the photo above shows? The police declared us to number 300. Rue Foch is about 400m long, and it was packed with demonstrators. I respectfully suggest that the police numbers are rubbish. There was more like a thousand of us, if not more.

Ambiance guaranteed with the piper and drummers on rue Saint-Guilhem

This was the first time I've joined a demonstration. If my memory serves me right, which is not absolutely sure. It was great fun because there were no trouble-makers, and we all enjoyed making lots of noise and holding up the traffic.

We handed out leaflets to passers-by who were generally happy to take them and took lots of pictures of us too.

We held up the trams... oops

I just hope no one missed their train because we held up the trams...

Trams blocked on boulevard Jeu de Paume

Even though people were blocked in trams, they did not look nastily at us, but waved and smiled.

MacDo got a collective "BOOO" from demonstrators. 

We eventually arrived at the Place de la Comédie where we gathered round MacDonald's with the big yellow Greenpeace OGM banner, and yelled a collective 'Boo'. There were several people eating outside who took the 'entertainment' with good humour even though a woman was dancing around with a smoker and puffing smoke over them.

So did Quick. Most customers took it well...

We then moved on to Quick and did the same. Most customers took it well, but one group of a certain religion (I'll leave you to guess which) headed by a woman in a leopard print blouse didn't appreciate the smoke being blown over a podgy lad. He had been tucking into his burger and stopped, open-mouthed to stare at us when we arrived. The purpose of our demo didn't interest Ms Leopard-print in the slightest. She took umbrage, berated a nearby member of staff and got her little family together to flounce off, gesticulating like mad in her fury. I don't think we got our message across to her...

We didn't get our message across to the media either. No one from the tele was there, and there were just brief articles in the newspapers. All played down the numbers and therefore the importance of the issues, and the degree of feeling among the demonstrators. I think they lumped us into the loony-lefty-minority-Occupy box, as though everyone else is delighted at the idea of eating toxic food and drinking poisoned water.

Still, hundreds of people saw us demonstrate and got the message, and every person outraged at what Monsanto does is a victory. I expect Monsanto bosses eat 100% organic and wouldn't touch GMO corn if you paid them. Hypocrisy among big bosses and politicians is well established.