PHOTOS Look what that Egyptian reporter started.

[Jackeens]

Hundreds of shoes are seen in the road along Whitehall, as police guard the entrance to Downing Street in London, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2009. Several thousand people, many carrying Palestinian flags, marched past British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Downing Street residence to a rally in Trafalgar Square, London. Outside Downing Street, hundreds of protesters stopped and threw shoes at the tall iron gates blocking entry to the narrow road.

[underpants]

1. Does a horse really need reflective gear to be properly seen?

:shrug:

[MADem]

3. Yes, on a dull grey day, or in the darkness before dawn or in the evening.

Just as a policeman needs it as well.

[Hugin]

5. It also has on tear gas goggles.

Show me a horse in riot gear and I'll show you a horse which would rather be somewhere
else.

:eyes:

[MADem]

9. Those aren't tear gas goggles. It's eye protection.

The concern is that some asshole in the crowd will try to poke the poor horse in the eye to up-end the rider.

What good would "goggles" do, without a tear gas mask?

They're trying to prevent damage to the animal's eye.

Close up of the sort of gear used:

[Hugin]

10. Well excuse me....

I was always under the impression Pepper-spray was to be sprayed at the eyes.

There's all of that money I spent on self defense courses gone to waste. :eyes:

[MADem]

12. Look at the device around the horse's head. Note the "bumper" on the nose.

That, as well as the plastic is designed to deflect stones, bricks, and sticks and other objects wielded by people in a riot situation who are trying to get the animal to buck off the rider.

Anyone who is observed with a can of mace wouldn't get close enough for long enough--they'd be shot with a bean bag gun, see? But someone could lob a rock at a horse from some distance away.

You're awfully shirty for no good reason, aren't you?

[Hugin]

16. I've seen 50 foot pepper streams.

But, since you're the expert. No use discussing it.

Damn... All those wasted years in training. I should've gone into plastics like Mom wanted.

[MADem]

18. Yes, and those streams would be mitigated by the eye protection.

Not eliminated, but mitigated. And that stream wouldn't last long, either, now, would it?

I don't understand why you're being such a prickly ass on a DISCUSSION board. The idea is to DISCUSS issues, not whine at comments that others make. Feel free to weigh in, and try to do it without insulting people or making snide remarks--maybe you'll get a better reaction.

What, you don't want to discuss this? You want to pout about Mom and plastics? Then DON'T discuss it--no skin off my nose.

For someone who has "all those wasted years in training" you're certainly not sharing any of your swell knowledge with us, are you? You're just whining, and pissing in everyone's Cheerios because you somehow feel you aren't getting your Propers.

That's your issue, not mine.

I'm quite sorry you're having such a lousy start to your New Year. It doesn't bode well for you to be so unhappy this early on.

[underpants]

13. WHERE is the reflective gear???

Where is the orange filter lens??

[MADem]

15. It's not on that picture--only on the first shots, with the yellow-green rain gear. NT

[Jackeens]

7. ROFL.....

[liberal N proud]

2. Miami, London. Are there others?

Will there be more?

[PearliePoo2]

4. I would love to see.......

thousands of shoes hurled at ClueLessInChief every fucking time he has the nerve to appear in public.
:thumbsup:

[MADem]

6. Wasn't he an Egyptian reporter? I think he was.

Terrible mess, that. And not to harsh the glee, who knows how "big" a protest it really is?

Fifty people could go round to a bunch of thrift shops and round up a shitload of shoes and scatter them around. To equate each pair to an annoyed person is a bridge too far for me, particularly since I'm not seeing any photos of people flinging the shoes into the street. And I didn't see any in Miami, either. For all we know, this could be the work of one very industrious person with a friend who has a pick up truck.

Heck of a mess for someone to clean up. It would have been nice if they'd tied the shoes together, so they could be given to the homeless or something....

[Jackeens]

8. Apologies, you're right - corrected!

[Jackeens]

11. I saw it on the BBC news earlier..

...for what it's worth the shoes were thrown by, I'd guess, dozens of the protestors, so it wasn't the work of one or two.

And look at the third photo - that guy actually broke from the crowd, ran towards the police, and threw the shoe over the iron gates to Downing Street....it seemed staggering to me that he was allowed do this without the police making a move. And I speak as someone whose sympathies were with the protestors - still, it struck me as amazingly lax security.

[MADem]

17. Fascinating! As to the security, it could be that they do what is a not-uncommon

protocol, and that is "Protect the Principal, not the Real Estate."

It could be that Brown wasn't home, so they weren't sweating it too much. And odds are, everyone that was in that "center ring" of security had probably been passively vetted and didn't even know it.

It could also be that they have sniffer technology to detect explosives deployed, their famous camera system that was busy zooming in on everyone working overtime and taking picture after picture and video after video for posterity, and anti-protestors seeded throughout the crowd, to keep an eye on things and get a good look at people who may have been trying to hide their faces.

They DO do Big Brother way better than we do in the US. They also make it appear that there's not much "push back" when in actual fact, they're gathering more biometric information on protestors than you could shake a stick at.

Washington DC has a ways to go to get to be like London. London is locked up tight.

[AtomicKitten]

14. I'd like to see that in front of the current White House.

K&R

[phusion]

19. Heard about this in Miami too:

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/01/mystery-who-dum.html

[Mira]

20. You will never know how happy you made me with this post ! K&R