The Make Poverty History campaign has set up a website for booking travel, accommodation and tours of the area for its supporters who will be attending their G8 summit demonstration march and rally in Edinburgh on Saturday July 2nd.
See:
http://www.makepovertyhistorytravel.org
See:
http://www.makepovertyhistorytravel.org
The website services link with Travel ScotWorld and Hotelpedia. However the majority of the accommodation is only available through the evening of Saturday 2nd and the travel offers only provide departues from Edinburgh until Monday 4th - two days before the actual G8 Summit starts (although people wishing to stay longer are encouraged to contact Travel ScotWorld). The website will also carry information on drop off and pick up points for people booking their own coach transport.
The initiative to provide tourist packags to "middle class protesters" has recieved a fair amount of media coverage and is part of a wider debate in Scotland over the potential tourist benefits versus the media fixation on riot doom-mongering around the G8 Summit, which will be held at Gleneagles Hotel in July. While Edinburgh and Lothians Tourist Board has been taking a positive view of the potential influx of hundreds of thousands of people to the area, the local authorities and police are being less than helpful with the requests from other protest groups to set up "convergence spaces" or rural campsites to house protestors over several days, and to agree spaces for counter-conferece events.
Recent Media Coverage:
G8 summit is gift horse, not the bogeyman
Scotsman, UK - 22 Feb 2005
Leave the troublemakers to the police - let's concentrate on the tourists...
Travel Scot World is offering packages for "middle-class protesters" which include a visit to a distillery and a walking tour of Edinburgh. But there is no link to the G8 summit on the VisitScotland website and Coldplay, who had been booked to give a concert in Loch Lomond to coincide with the march, have been forced to pull out by the police.
Tourist board bids to cash in on anti-G8 protesters
Scotsman, UK - 13 Feb 2005
PROTESTERS aiming to disrupt the G8 summit at Gleneagles are being offered specially tailored short-break packages by a Scottish tourist board.
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=168252005
Plan to cash in on G8 protesters
BBC News, UK - 14 Feb 2005
Tourism chiefs are aiming to cash in on the thousands of protesters expected to gather in Scotland for the G8 summit.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4265357.stm
The initiative to provide tourist packags to "middle class protesters" has recieved a fair amount of media coverage and is part of a wider debate in Scotland over the potential tourist benefits versus the media fixation on riot doom-mongering around the G8 Summit, which will be held at Gleneagles Hotel in July. While Edinburgh and Lothians Tourist Board has been taking a positive view of the potential influx of hundreds of thousands of people to the area, the local authorities and police are being less than helpful with the requests from other protest groups to set up "convergence spaces" or rural campsites to house protestors over several days, and to agree spaces for counter-conferece events.
Recent Media Coverage:
G8 summit is gift horse, not the bogeyman
Scotsman, UK - 22 Feb 2005
Leave the troublemakers to the police - let's concentrate on the tourists...
Travel Scot World is offering packages for "middle-class protesters" which include a visit to a distillery and a walking tour of Edinburgh. But there is no link to the G8 summit on the VisitScotland website and Coldplay, who had been booked to give a concert in Loch Lomond to coincide with the march, have been forced to pull out by the police.
Tourist board bids to cash in on anti-G8 protesters
Scotsman, UK - 13 Feb 2005
PROTESTERS aiming to disrupt the G8 summit at Gleneagles are being offered specially tailored short-break packages by a Scottish tourist board.
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=168252005 Plan to cash in on G8 protesters
BBC News, UK - 14 Feb 2005
Tourism chiefs are aiming to cash in on the thousands of protesters expected to gather in Scotland for the G8 summit.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4265357.stm 
Comments
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hmm
22.02.2005 18:25
DESTROY CAPITAL
a
SchNEWS take on this
22.02.2005 19:20
...and finally...
The capitalist Scottish tourist industry is cashing in on the anti-capitalist G8 protests planned for July. The Edinburgh and Lothian Tourist Board is hoping to entice protesters with short-break packages. In between building burning barricades and fighting running battles with the police, the anti-G8 protesters will be offered amongst other things a walking tour of Edinburgh (taking in, or bricking in, all McDonalds and banks perhaps?) and perhaps rather unwisely, a visit to a distillery – with free alcohol and plenty of bottles as available ammunition. It could well turn into your typical British riot, with pissed up punks chucking bottles from the back of the crowd at the end of a hot summer day, or maybe just another grey rainy day - it is Scotland after all.
But it isn’t the tabloid stereotype “anarchist” that the Tourist Board is trying to appeal to – spokesman Graham Birse said “…many of the people coming are much like you and I and your readers: they have mortgages and jobs and stuff.”
Other tourists in Scotland will include summit-hopping police from around the country, drafted in to cope with the estimated numbers of protestors. Halls of Residence at Stirling and Edinburgh Universities have been earmarked to cope with the influx of police (total security budget £150 million) – all paid for by the Foreign Office (in other words people with “mortgages, jobs and stuff”.)
SchNEWS wonders if in future there will be coach tours of the area, we look forward to our retirement where we can reminisce on the bad old days – “…that’s where we danced with the Samba band behind the barricade of upturned delegates vehicles.”, “…this is the spot from where I chucked the first brick.” Sorry, we’re not like that really – most of us have got mortgages and jobs and lots of stuff. (The right stuff , that is !)
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