There is one surefire way to guarantee getting a song to number one. Get banned. Or get your video banned. Or have a deejay refuse to play your track.

Well... It used to work in the days before pre-programmed pop.

Anyway, it seems that the Metropolitan police force took this theory on-board recently, handing out leaflets at a previous Critical Mass rally essentially explaining that such future events would be illegal. Without going into the logistical hows of banging up a few hundred cyclists and impounding all their bikes in the course of one evening, they declared that groups of cyclists that intended to ride through London would have to register with the police beforehand and let them know their route.

Critical Mass, being an organisation without leader, and without route, would find it impossible to inform the police in the first place, and comply with the necessities of instruction in the second. Doom for Critical Mass!

Or not.

The first Mass after the threat from the police attracted the largest turnout for years, with roughly 1200 riders taking to the streets, and while there was an obvious police presence it actually helped to usher the Mass along and stop cars infiltrating. One has to wonder what the whole point of the leaflets was in the first place.

Whatever your viewpoint on CM (personally I think in a lot of respects with the general public such demonstrations can be counter-productive) you've got to be impressed by such a large and fervent turnout, and as a statement against the overbearing control-freakery exuding from the government currently, this was something which Joe Public might actually be able to latch onto. In this instance the Mass may have done some good not only for its own cause, but for the building of a general public consensus.

Whatever the aim, whatever te result, it could still do with being a little faster...