Speakers corner .....
Speakers Corner Has A Long History In The UK ..... |
..... is a place in Hyde Park London where traditionally open-air public speaking, debate, and discussion are allowed.
Nowadays these discussions are circumscribed by laws such as race laws and slander laws and is probably under some threat. But for now that doesn't stop characters still discoursing and occasionally becoming well known.
Bob 'Doom' Rogers Was A Regular Speaker For Decades |
One such was Bob Rogers, who had started standing on a box at speakers corner in 1963 ... he believed in championing our diminishing civil liberties and lack of services. He would campaign for better public toilet facilities because he had a sympathy for the homeless, and would often travel on the London all night bus services with his homeless friend Norman Schlund.
Partly this was to escape personal problems, by leaving the conventional world, and entering into the semi hidden world of the homeless users of the all night bus service. He also campaigned for the elimination of graffiti, and against the spread of the surveillance cameras that he believed would ensure life could only get worse.
This world view of him he reinforced, by wearing a placard made up of headline from a 1991 news-stand baring the Newspaper headline "IT'S GOING TO GET WORSE" .... and he became well known as 'Bob Doom,' for his continued claims that things were only going to get worse. Sadly for Bob it finally did, he died aged 75 in January 2021,
A sad loss to civil liberties in the UK .....
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