A former soldier has described how he dragged a police officer away from a mob of Rangers fans in Manchester.
Tom Bardsley said he feared that Pc Mick Regan was not going to get away from the group acting like a "pack of wolves who had not been fed for days".
Mr Bardsley, 23, dragged the officer along the street before throwing him in a police van around the corner.
The violent scenes marred the Uefa Cup final between the Glasgow team and Zenit St Petersburg.
Pc Regan's ordeal was captured by CCTV following the violence which started after Rangers lost the game.
He was pursued down the street in Manchester city centre by a mob of about 20 Rangers fans before being tripped and set upon.
On Saturday, Mr Bardsley described how he pushed a youth away before grabbing Pc Regan and pulling him down the street.
The father-of-one, from Openshaw, Greater Manchester had just left an internet cafe in Newton Street when the violence broke out.
He said he saw a man running towards Pc Regan "aiming a kick" and jumped into action.
Mr Bardsley, who served in the 26 Engineer Regiment at Bulworth Garrison, said he had served in a number of war zones but had witnessed nothing like the scenes in Manchester.
"I would describe it as wolves who had not been fed for days. I did not think of any danger to me just the safety of others and making sure everyone was getting out okay," he said.
"I knew that if no-one was going to get him (the officer) he wasn't going to make it. I thought 'sod it' I did not care that bottles and bricks were being thrown at me. The adrenaline just kicked in."
But Mr Bardsley did not end his heroics there - a short time later he helped a water rescue team pull a Rangers fan from a canal.
And later, he pulled an unconscious man from the mass of rubbish left across the city, threw him over his shoulder and sprinted 150m to a nearby ambulance.
Finally, he chased away two men in Rangers shirts who were looting a police van.
Mr Bardsley said he did not think anything of his actions until the CCTV coverage of Pc Regan was splashed across news bulletins.
"The next day the city centre looked like a scene from Basra - like a bomb had hit it. I was angry that the Rangers fans had done this."
He went to Longsight Police Station, where Pc Regan was based, to check on his condition and was thanked by a police superintendent, but is yet to meet the officer again in person.
"My ambition is to work in either the ambulance service or the police force. The superintendent told me if I have ever applied in his area he would give me a job straight away," he said.
Wednesday's trouble first flared in Piccadilly Gardens after a technical fault with a big screen left up to 20,000 fans frustrated.
Riot police were sent in as violent clashes broke out along nearby Market Street, Oldham Street and Newton Street.
Manchester United's planned homecoming parade after next week's Champions League final has been cancelled, partly in response to the scenes of disorder.
#1
How come these drunken Brit louts who are so seemingly ready to fight at the drop of a hat can't seem to find the balls to stand up to the Muzz in their own damned country?
What the hell is wrong with Britain?
Posted by: Thaimble Scourge of the Pixies4707 ||
05/17/2008 19:14 Comments ||
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But if everyone who participated in Earth Hour had left their lights on and instead switched to mundane, high-efficiency compact fluorescent bulbs, simple calculations show, it might have saved 1,368 times as much energy, because the bulbs would have saved energy all year. And the mercury dumped into the environment when the bulbs are trashed?
Such tension between substance and symbolism runs through the modern environmental movement. After years of conflict with climate-change deniers and a White House that has resisted mandatory efforts to address global warming which no self-respecting journalist could omit, the movement has become a crusade that is partly moral statement and partly fashion statement. Earth Hour, Earth Day and the Miss Earth beauty pageant -- "saving the planet, one pageant at a time" -- generate lots of publicity, but they also tend to prompt people and companies to choose what looks good over what works. How Democratic!
"There is a real problem in teaching people not to do something that appears to work, but that actually works," said Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California's Energy Institute, which studies ways to save energy and address climate change. Borenstein said it is hard to persuade people to do things that yield the biggest energy savings, and not necessarily the biggest returns in self-satisfaction. Turning off the water in the shower whilst soaping up comes to mind.
"It is very difficult to get people to invest in home insulation and energy efficiency, which are much more effective than putting solar panels on your roof," he said. "Solar panels are popular because you can see you are doing something -- and your neighbors can see it, too." Henry! The Joneses have new solar panels! When are we gonna get some bigger ones?
Leslie Aun, vice president for public relations at the World Wildlife Fund and the person with overall responsibility for running Earth Hour in the United States, agreed that getting people to turn off their lights for an hour has no discernible effect on the climate. What the event does, she said, is give neighbors an opportunity to share candlelit dinners, encourage churches to hold services about the environment and spur schoolchildren to start family conversations about what they have learned about climate change. You just can't possibly make this stuff up.
Photos of darkened cities raise the visibility of environmental issues and make people feel empowered, Aun said. Campaigns that raise awareness through symbolic acts of personal sacrifice, she added, are not at odds with programs that produce tangible savings.
"You are not going to get people to change what people do by engaging their heads; you have to engage their hearts," she said. "You need symbols to spur action. You are not going to get people to take action unless you get them to care about the issue. You are not going to do that by pulling out the U.N. report on blah, blah, blah." More blah, blah, blah at link; I couldn't get past this point.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/17/2008 06:39 ||
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#1
Turning out the lights when you leave a room would probably result in a bigger energy saving than any Earth Hour activities. As for a candlelit dinner, did they thing about the CO2 and smog problems that entails?
#2
The best contribution the Chicken Littles fanatics could do is slit their own throats* so as not to consume anything more or bother the rest of us with their faux lemming morality.
* Don't do the car in the garage routine cause, you know, that'll just dump more pollutants into the atmosphere.
#3
"It is very difficult to get people to invest in home insulation and energy efficiency, which are much more effective than putting solar panels on your roof,"
#4
"spur schoolchildren to start family conversations about what they have learned about climate change"
Children would NOT want to start that conversation with me, lest they find out how badly their teachers have lied to them.
Hmmmm. On second thought....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/17/2008 8:51 Comments ||
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#5
Mr. Bobby - the linky's bad
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/17/2008 9:43 Comments ||
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#6
There's the problem - its INDOCTRINATION, not EDUCATION.
The whole mindless AGW crowd is pushing totalinarianism in a green mask, dmanding faith and allegience, and ignoring the REAL inconveinient trueth: Anthropogenic Global Warming DOES NOT EXIST. It has not been proven, and there isn't even a consensus amongst scientists, there never was unless you cherrypicked.
Politically aware young lady Sandra Angelia scores a crushing victory for East Java in Miss Indonesia 2008.
At the Jakarta Convention Center on the night of 13th May Sandra Angelia from East Java became Miss Indonesia 2008, chosen by a seven panel jury which included our hyper-nationalist politician friend from Golkar Yudhi Chrisnandi. Sandra was also chosen as Miss Favorit by the SMS voting masses.
Kartika Indah Pelapory from Maluku was Runner Up I while Priscilla Yvonne Supit from North Sulawesi was Runner Up II, but enough about them.
Sandra is the happy result of a union between Christian pastor Yusak Hadisiswantoro and Asti Tanuseputra. Her uncle, Abraham Alex Tanuseputra, is the founder of the Bethany Successful Families Church. Sandra says she is not at all used to wearing skimpy, revealing clothing, and she is very aware that as a preachers daughter she has to be careful in this area.
On the vitally important bikini issue (see past Indonesian beauty pageant winners problems with this - Nadine Chandrawinata) Sandra was asked by journalists - would she be willing to wear a bikini at Miss World 2008 in the Ukraine? Sandra says I have to wear a swimsuit in the competition, thats no problem. But if it can be negotiated I will stick to eastern values, that is I will wear a one-piece swimsuit.
Sandra is an educated girl and after fleeing Indonesia at the age of 13 in the wake of the May 1998 riots she eventually studied architecture at the University of Western Australia in Perth. This may or may not have helped her face the final key question put by the judges, this being Indonesia is a country rich in natural wealth but so many of its people are very poor and it is a largely agrarian economy. Which economic sector would you prioritise if you were leader?
Sandra took the crowd by surprise, and won the admiration of the judges, by going off on a tangent that the most important thing was to ensure that the law was upheld and applied properly in Indonesia, and that other things would follow from this.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
But if everyone who participated in Earth Hour had left their lights on and instead switched to mundane, high-efficiency compact fluorescent bulbs, simple calculations show, it might have saved 1,368 times as much energy, because the bulbs would have saved energy all year.
