Reports from protest against the Co$, Poole, June UK, 6th 1998

Report by Roland R-B.

After that we had a break and then, instead of catching the students as they came back from lunch (because there weren't any) we went down to the main body-routing area to give out leaflets.

We weren't at our usual strength so we only gave out about 500 leaflets. Most of them were Tonja Burden affidavits. They were well received.

At about 15:30 my feet were conveniently tired enough such that I needed to watch the Derby. I found a betting shop (yes, they are legal in this country) and studied the form. There were many good horses in the race. However, I wanted to pick out THE Derby winner. Since the Derby is 1 mile 4 furlongs then I discounted any horse that had ever raced below 1 mile in its life. This cut it down. Also its sire had to have an average winning distance of 10.5 furlongs to 12 furlongs, since if not it would (to me) obviously not be capable of winning over the distance of 1 mile 4 furlongs. This cut it down more.

Also, the horse should have had only 1 race in lowly company (and won) and thereafter been in Listed company and won thereafter, stepping up in distance all the time.

On top of that the horse would have to have had an excellent jockey booked for the ride with the trainer definitely in form.

That only left one horse. It was called "High Rise", trained by Henry Cecil and ridden by Olivier Peslier. It was 20-1 odds against it winning. I stuck £2 each way on it (each way means half your money is on the horse to win and half on the horse only to get in the first three).

I watched the race... High Rise was kept near the back of the field.. very worrying.. but then, if it really was a Derby type and could do the distance then that would be a good place to keep it.. the fanal three furlongs came.. it is then that the horse would be asked a serious question.. the horse responded, overtaking horse after horse that was tiring and dropping back for the simple reason that they were not bred for the distance and there was no way they would win.. the horse was then accelerating like a locomotive, overtaking horse after horse.. would it keep going though?.. it got up near the leaders.. it was still overtaking.. it got up to the leader and got in front of it.. it dropped back to second place.. the horse in front tired.. High Rise came back.. and with only a feet feet to go to the winning line, came with a final surge and beat the other horse by about 6 inches on the line.

£4 plus tax out (£4.36). Winning at 20-1, that was £54 back.

Exchange in abundance!

Report by Dave B.

At noon, we emerged in front of the Org with Jens constumed as XEMU and the infamous boombox. There was moderate foot traffic this time opposite the Org, which is at the southern end of the High Street past the end of pedestrianisation. We kicked off but, at noon, no students emerged. There was one person reading something at a table next to the upstairs window. We dropped a few taunts about "the doors of the Org being always open" (they were shut), and the scared being who "had to hide, hide, hide."

At about ten past, we were ready to pack in when this jobsworth police sergeant turns up, "if I've had one complaint I can tell you to turn it off and ask you to move on." Twat. I pointed out that one bogus complaint from the people we were protesting against was hardly reasonable grounds. A passing pedestrian turned up and said "hey, don't I count, I want them to keep it on." Several of us were at the point of saying the hell with it, arrest us then, and then suing that he had acted unreasonably. But, as we were going in before he arrived, we went in. "But we will be back at the other site, and we will have the sound on there." "What other site?" (Sheesh, doesn't the operations manager tell the control room anything??) "The one we told Acting Chief Inspector Croft we were going to next, opposite Woolworths." Hmm.

Pause for lunch break, then we went over the pedestrian crossing and about 50 or 100 yards north to "ambush alley". We didn't have a helium cylinder, but we had half a dozen white "Xemu loves you" helium balloons tied to the dog's lead and to shopping bags. A couple flew home to planet Coltice accidentally, and the rest got given away to various happy kids during the afternoon. I wanted to set up a couple of "aces" to be in the best possible position to tell Sergeant Jobsworth to "arrest us and be damned", but couldn't contact a person needed so plan B was to put the sound on gently later in the demo and see how it went. "LS" has already asked all the shops nicely about having sound on. I gave about 40 or 50 minutes of basic schpiel with short rants abour Richard Collins, Lisa MacPherson, Duke the Dog, etcetera. After that we had a Hubbard tape playing and I as shouting stuff like "The man on the cross there is no Christ, LRon Hubbard says" and "Vrrrrooooom! you tell'em Ron!!".

Roland did a lot of shouting, Jens sort of wandered up and down as a walking advert, "BigFellah" and "LT" has a lot of long friendly chats with passing public. I know we spoke with a couple of star-treckers who were really into the LRon HubBorg tee-shirts. A small blond woman from the cafe brought us a box of free cups of tea in styrofoam cups with covers, which was very gratefully received. Two clam body routers appeared in the much poorer site down by the Org, and Jens went to have a look at them. Stuart, the ethics officer, turned up and sneaked around for a bit. He seemed a bit put off when I shouted that "We were doing free OT3, and the Scientologists were doing free photographs just come and stand by an SP to be snapped." As he sneaked off after a few minutes, I observed that he has an out-ethics cat who hadn't done much to handle us.

My only regret is that we didn't get more people for the picket --- politics seems to be a spring and autumn activity, they go to sleep for three months of hot summer and of cold winter --- so we only shifted 500 or 600 leaflets. Roland dropped out near the end to find a betting shop since it was grand national day, and (as he relates elsewhere) was very chuffed to win UK#54 from a small bet on High Rise. All in all, it was a grand day out.......