The 2013 March & Rally for Independence

I went to Edinburgh today with my wife, all five kids and my mother to take part in the March & Rally for Independence.

It was a great day. I met many old friends and made several new ones, and the rally featured lots of great music and many excellent speeches.

There were a lot of people there. I’ve no idea of the exact numbers, but the first marchers reached Calton Hill before the last ones had even started moving yet. There were definitely so many people that I completely failed to find several friends in spite of texting them repeatedly.

Here are a few suggestions for how to make next year’s march & rally even better:

1. Assemble on a wider area (such as the Meadows), which would make it easier to spot banners. We ended up marching with some people we didn’t know because it was too hard to find the ones we knew.
2. Failing this, make an official list of assembly points in advance and put this list on a poster so that people who just turn up can read it (e.g., “Yes East Renfrewshire to assemble at 219 High Street”).
3. Create assembly points in the rally area. For instance, put letters on sticks so that you can text your friends that you are at assembly point X. I got a lot of texts describing in vague terms where on Calton Hill people were.
4. Make sure that either the march route or the rally venue makes it possible to take a photo of everybody in one shot. Most of the photos of the rally I’ve seen have been taken from the stage and only show a small part of the rally.
5. Finally, the kids would have loved to get their faces painted before the march rather than after it!

Anyway, it was a wonderful day, and I’d like to thank the organisers and everybody who took part! I’m already looking forward to next year’s rally and the Yes vote shortly afterwards!