It's here! - the day we march against the chaos that is Brexit.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

A thread for those of us on the march today :)

Weather still looking good, (perhaps, possibly, even some sunshine?) temps around 12-14, a little gusty at times, cooling off in the evening, so bring an extra jumper if you haven't set off.

Travel safely and see you at the march!

I think full facts working does make sense. It certainly wasn't tightly packed walking. I also saw loads of the placards featured in the papers.

Why the dispute over numbers anyway

It's akin to arguing over the font a bill is printed in ...

@Cherrypi

It certainly wasn't tightly packed walking.

Then you must have been right at the very back or the very front! That's complete nonsense.

We joined the march at around 13.30, and it took an hour and a half to get to the bottom of Park Lane. It was absolutely jam packed.

You clearly weren't actually there at all.

I was near the back of the queue about 12.30 and didn't get to Hyde Park Corner until about 3.45. I have only seen one of the signs I saw near me in the press.

I was waiting in the West lane of Park Lane. I think they let the East side empty then the West, so anyone queueing on the East side may have seen a false "end" behind them

If you were at the front it was impossible to assess scale because the front moved quite fast and once inside parliament square you could leave because the police were controlling access and you couldn't get back. I'm not surprised that it took nearly four hours to move at the back; how far did you get by 4pm?

That should have said once in parliament square you couldn't leave (if you wanted to see the speeches)

I think full facts working does make sense. It certainly wasn't tightly packed walking. I also saw loads of the placards featured in the papers.

It was jammed where we were, it only got freeer by Haymarket because we were so n the middle

We left at 4pm, when we reached the Haymarket. So it took us 2.5 hours to get that far!

Cherrypi where Full Facts doesn't work (unless I'm misunderstanding it) is that it was moving and people were constantly joining, so, having been at the Oct march and not moving at all for 1.5 hours, we chose this time not to join until 2pm so that the march would actually be moving when we joined. From what I can see they've worked out how many people were in the march area at a given time, but as they moved that same space gets occupied by new people meaning multiples of their figures, no? I'm not the only one, in fact all the people I know who joined the march joined late as either I'd told them of our experience in Oct or they'd been there themselves and experienced the same thing. Obviously that's not scientific as I'm only talking about maybe 15 ppl that I directly know who did this, but I was among maybe 150 at the point where I joined in, who were also joining in at that point so it seems a reasonable assumption that there were a lot more than the people who were static at 1.30pm, in any case, as others have said, it was a lot of people, a lot, who actually bothered to get off their ase to gather together to protest at the sitshow that is Brexit, even Leavers have to admit it's a joke at the moment! Oh and there are also 10 times as many signatures on the Revoke A50 petition as on the Leave without a Deal one, so comparing like with like (march v march, petition v petition etc.) the remain side are making a louder noise right now.

Actually, I stand corrected - it was after 4.30 when we finally left. It was around 4pm that we began to plan our exit strategy, as we had to meet DS2 later and didn't want to get past an easy exit - so it took us 3 hours to get to that point

I think I have already said - we started walking from Marble Arch tube station at 1:15, reaching Trafalgar Square by 4:30. It did then speed up because the speeches were over, and people were leaving, so we got to Parliament Square by 4:45. At 5 pm we could see people still arriving but we left then. At Marble Arch there were still hundreds of people disgorging from the station behind us.

I saw one or two of the placards, but the vast majority I didn't see - because I was so far back.

Rufus
There were leave supporters in the march - I saw some,
their placard said "voted leave, will vote leave again"
people smiled at them and left them be

mistigri
I do not know what route you came into parliament square .... we went in from the Park and the police were not controlling the flow of people at all

I didn't see the Leave supporters - I saw some who said they were leave and had now changed their minds, and some Tories for Remain.

Peregrina
The Tories for remain bloke was great - shouting "sorry" to everybody

I just saw the three lads, but a friend of mine has a picture of a couple of Leavers in Trafalgar Square (which we never reached)

@Mistigri

From my msgs to DH who bailed at 3.30...

4.06 Passing Green Park
4.23 St James Palace, slowed down again
5.07 Leaving Parliament Square to go home

It was tightly packed enough at the start thatit was difficult to get my water bottle out of my bag without clonking someone. It's clear from the ariel footage that there were different densities along the route. We couldn't move through the crowd until we approached the end of Piccadilly.

Being alone, I was moving through the crowd rather than with it, so made faster progress than the body of the march

I think it was counted from the bbc aerial footage at 2:15. I don't know how they could count people who weren't there yet. Picking a time in the middle of the event and estimating density and area seems like a sensible way to do it to me. How else could you? Do we really want to discredit fullfact?

Having spent two hours in a side road to the Grosvenor Square to get in the women’s march (with a mere 100000 marchers) and never having reached Trafalgar Square on the first EU march on the second I went to Green Park and joined in near the front of the march. As we came down to Pall Mall they announced that there were 700000 and that was backed up by the fact that people were still setting off as we left Trafalgar Square at 4. This time they closed Green Park station so we ended up in a mini march from Victoria past Buckingham Palace with people joining the march from Green Park to Pall Mall. People were still setting off when we left at 5. This time there were so many more people in surrounding streets that any count of those on the route in one time will underestimate the number who were diverted from the route by tube closures, took diversions from the route because of crowding or wanting to hear the speeches or were simply waiting to start. It was too massive to get a proper count by any method I can think of.

Do we really want to discredit fullfact?

I’d be interested to see what would happen if someone contacted them and made the point about the numbers not being static. I’d like to think they’d remove or change the article rather than leave a misleading one up.

Cherrypi, no I don't want to discredit Fullfact and for all I know they could be right, but all I'm saying is taking one point in time won't allow for the moving nature of the march. I would have thought you've got to add at least 50% to that number to allow for people still joining at the back, as we know (just from people on this group) there were, as well as those on side streets etc. In any case as various people have said, it was huge, whether it was 1m or not, it was a massive statement and that's what's most important. The pulling down of the number is just a distraction IMHO

How else could you? Do we really want to discredit fullfact?

See my "getting in my car" party upthread as to why the Fullfacts article is simply wrong.

But if not, I'll try another way. Imagine you have a garden hose. Say it is 100cm long with a 2cm diameter. If my calculations are correct, the volume of water that can fit in the hose is 𝝿r2 x length, i.e. 314 cubic centimetres. At any given snapshot of time (like, say 2:15pm on Saturday 23 March) if you looked at the water inside the hose, you would be able to say that the hose contains at most 314 cubic centimetres of water. Now, if I turn my garden tap on and leave it running for 5 hours, can I ask - who here^ thinks that I've watered my entire garden using 314 cubic centimetres of water? And if somebody here can hand-on-heart assure me of this case, can they write to my water company for a rebate on my bill?

I understand what you're saying but how can they count people that aren't there? The march was at its peak at around 2:15 I would guess so that would be the best time to count how the maximum amount of people marching at once.

They can’t, so they need to explain why they can’t rather than try and give a number that is wrong. They’re supposed to be fact checking. It’s quite reasonable for them to put their hands up and say they can’t fact check this.

It's really very simple.

The question of "how many people marched during the whole event lasting 5 hours" is NOT the same question as "how many people were standing in a given area at a given time which may or may not be the peak"

So no, they can't bleeding well count people who weren't "there" "at the time" - whereby "there" is an arbitrary area, and "at the time" is a snapshot. Any more than you can count, by taking a photo of my garden hose, the water that has yet to enter it, or that has left it.

But they are not the same question.