There's nothing quite like singing "Wonderwall" in a packed subway car.
Effective June 1, the city of London banned all alcohol on public transportation. We might be surprised that boozing in the Underground was legal in the first place, but the step was moderately controversial. More importantly, it meant: Tube Party. Nobody is quite sure how many people turned out to give liquored transport a proper sendoff (most newspaper reports simply refer to the "thousands of revelers"), but we do know that 17 people were arrested and six stations were shut down. A shame, too - everyone should have the chance to sing Oasis in a subway next to a dude in a Chewbacca suit.
On Sunday, about two weeks later, President George W. Bush arrived in London as part of his European "Good Riddance" tour. Early news reports have the number of protesters pegged at around 2,000 and the number of arrests at a mere 13. Last time Bush was in town (in 2003), the protesters numbered in the tens of thousands.
That's quite an embarrassing contrast. A few thousand people, in a city of more than seven million, mean nothing. We have a generational problem on our hands: protests are the domain of the young, but the young haven't shown much interest in taking to the streets.
