And? Pretty much spot on descriptions.

Well, no, because you don’t know us, and thus draw conclusions from your own tiresome cascade of cliches. None of us, I think it’s fair to predict, live or behave in the manner that you detail. To take myself as an example (to my intense regret, I know myself better than I know anyone else on this thread):

Right, so I don’t have a cleaner, don’t have a car, can’t drink cappuccinos without hurling, have never bought a massage, don’t have children and go to an urban, multi-ethnic school….Apart from that, I’m startled by your accuracy; it’s bloody uncanny.

The problem is, Chavscum, that you don’t merely try your hand at pseudo-psychonalysis, you generalise your extrapolations to an entire bundle of philosophies, and start raining damnation over hordes of sickeningly liberal strawmen. It’d be better to just, y’know, tackle arguments n’ shit (maybe throwing in the odd ad hominem if it’s particularly funny).

Ben

I have rational hatred of the middle-class Left.

Ha…

Cheap cleaners, someone to wash your car for a fiver, someone to drive you home after you’ve been to the latest ethnic restaurant in town, someone to serve you your cappuccino, the cheap plumber and builder to provide that architect designed extension and the 15yr old who’ll give you a nice massage on a Friday night. Plus, your uncle, the provincial farmer, who can use cheap migrants to work 60hrs/wk at £5/hr instead of paying decent wages to the locals who are left to rot on benefits or invest in new machinery.

Ha…

Not sure which embarrasses the Left most, being almost always white, middle-class or their hypocritical attitude to multiculturalism. Yeah, you may give your kids some life experience at the local nursery, but it’s a racing certainty you won’t be sending them to the local ethnic dominated community school. You’ll be hop footing it to the home counties, the countryside or buying into one of the white middle-class metropolitan oasis. I completely agree with putting your kids’ future first, but when you are preaching mass immigration and multiculturalism, you reek of hypocrisy. I might sound self-righteous, but that’s because I’m right.

Find me a post with evidence of bigotry and racism and I’ll bin my Queen Mum mug. Prejudice? Sure, I have rational hatred of the middle-class Left. Have you noticed? The Royals? I have no interest in them, but its amusing to tease the fanatical republicans!

“where else are people supposed to protest”

Like the rest of us, who have responsibilities, like work,families and hobbies; write letters and via the ballot box.

“… why do you keep harping on about the idea that the man might have had a drink? It’s almost as if you believe that had he smelt a bit of alcohol that would justify the police officer’s actions… the only reason I say ‘almost’ is that you also claim to think the assaulting officer should be disciplined.”

He was an alcoholic, which makes him more vulnerable than a student protester and partly explains how he inadvertantly came to be in their way. The Police should have used their nouse to see he was a harmless person and that’s why his attacker should be severely punished. If he had been a leftie agitator, deliberately winding up the Police, then I would be less sympathetic; just as you would had he been a football fan.

“Do you live in London?” Yes

“In my experience, and the experience of every protester I know, aggressive policing is typical at any protest they think they can get away with it at. I’ve seen lines of mounted cops charging into peaceful marches, I’ve seen people’s cameras being smashed while they had them up to their eye, thus necessitating major surgery to save their sight. The assaulting officer wore no number and there were no news outlets filming that protest, because it was a local Oxford one. You, sir, really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Be honest. You are exaggerating. I’ve no doubt the odd protest suffers from bad Police behaviour, but they weren’t pensioners marching for better care for the elderly, were they?

Its obvious that the attack on a vulnerable alcoholic

… why do you keep harping on about the idea that the man might have had a drink? It’s almost as if you believe that had he smelt a bit of alcohol that would justify the police officer’s actions… the only reason I say ‘almost’ is that you also claim to think the assaulting officer should be disciplined.

And @48:

There is a protest of some sort in London every fucking week. Aggressive policing of protests is rare

Hmm. Do you live in London? I do. Do you know many political activists? I do. And your mileage seems to vary massively from mine and from theirs.

In my experience, and the experience of every protester I know, aggressive policing is typical at any protest they think they can get away with it at. I’ve seen lines of mounted cops charging into peaceful marches, I’ve seen people’s cameras being smashed while they had them up to their eye, thus necessitating major surgery to save their sight. The assaulting officer wore no number and there were no news outlets filming that protest, because it was a local Oxford one. You, sir, really don’t know what you’re talking about.

TimF @50:

I’ve been on protests where the number of people from the FIT team is greater than the number of protesters

I saw one of those in 2007 at Piccadilly; I counted. 27 protesters had showed up to shout about the minimum wage. 47 police officers were present, including four members of SO19. I thought that was slightly excessive.

There is a protest of some sort in London every fucking week

Last time I looked, London was the capital of the UK – as the capital it is the seat of government, where else are people supposed to protest – Upper Hopton?

I can testify that it isn’t rare. I’ve been on protests where the number of people from the FIT team is greater than the number of protesters(!) and they’ve still seen the need to police them agressively (surely they should be able to control things peacefully with those kinds of numbers).

And the sad death of Ian Tomlinson is clearly not a separate issue – even the police are not claiming it is. Investigations are currently underway to determine how the overall policing instructions contributed to the death. I’d suggest they contributed at the very least by creating an atmosphere of confrontation, causing cops and protesters to dehumanise each other.

What is this obsession with students and student bars? You sound like someone with a chip on his shoulder because you got turned down for college. Think about Chav. With your prejudices, bigotry and racism – and love of our fuckwit Royal Family – they might just have made the right decision. And if you had scraped in your chance of a degree would have been close to zero. Grow up.

The death of the poor fella is separate issue, relating to the behaviour of individual policeman and should be eradicated from the force. It’s a problem they need to deal with. As is the issue of speeding pandas that have killed far too many innocent people. There’s no discussion on this is there?

Stop playing the fucking victim and get down the Student bar to drown your sorrows.

Creates jobs as well then does it? Interesting!

You’ll find most of us are unsympathetic to protestors that decide to take direct action and get in confrontations with police. However there is enough video footage of G20 protesters being charged while sitting down, of innocent people being attacked (Tomlinson) and being detained, inhumanely, for hours on end. For as much as I also hate “Lefties” that hijack this death as a reason to have completely unrestricted protests, I also hate “Righties” and those like you that don’t seize the opportunity to make a great push for reform in how our police are allowed to act when we operate our democratic and human rights.

It just stinks of the same kind of tribal hypocrisy that I had to endure from lefties when they chose to abandon highly public 42 day campaigns because of David Davis’ involvement.

The amusing part, is of course, the irony and the hypocrisy of people like you chavscum that will ignore perfectly comparable human actions, if we’re breaking it down to a cost scale (either against people, economically, or environmentally…whatever) as long as you agree with people doing them.

It wasn’t very funny then and it is less so now.

The City protest footage shows missiles thrown at Police, burglary, vandalism and drunkenness. Just what are doing to stop the significant minority from causing problems at your protests?

Personally, I’d ban any white person with dreadlocks or a middle-class accent. Would there be anyone left?

If I was a police officer following someone that was clearly not a part of any trouble I’d have walked around them and let them be and moved towards those that actually were actively threatening to breach the peace with violence and destruction. Perhaps this shows the difference of perspective we all have.

As a demonstrator, (who was at the peaceful demonstration in Trafalgar Square, which has been rewarded with zero coverage) I would have moved, as you say. I would have been in the mood of the moment. But Ian was not a demonstrator, he was a Millwall supporter and worker trying to get home from work, and It is reasonable to imagine that he would have been fairly forthright and assertive about his right to walk the pavements of London.

The blame should not stop with the officer who attacked Ian. It should go up to whoever it was that ordered kettling, and who wound up the police with phrases like “we are up for it”.

Remember that this violent attack by police was not isolated. At the Climate Camp, officers waded in striking out at peaceful demonstrators with their arms in the air chanting “Peace not Violence”.

This incident, if it is to have any positive meaning at all, must lead to a radical review of the police service as a whole, of police tactics in general, of the anti-terror legislation, and of the way in which Govenment responds, or does not respond, to the views and opinions of the people, who are the ultimate source of power in a democracy.

I would like to know what happened before this video as well as what happened afterwards. Personally speaking if I had a police dog snapping at my heels along with a number of uniformed officers following me I wouldn’t be ambling along with my hands in my pocket. I would move.

As I said before I wasn’t there at the time and neither where other people who have commented. If there is wrongdoing on the side of the officer he WILL be identified and dealt with. The IPCC is just that and does not employ anyone who has previous interests with the police, that is why they are independent.

It looks bad, may be bad but let’s see what really happened first.

Regards.

I await your criticism.

Sky – yes, Murdoch’s evil outlet – made it the lead very quickly.

Of course the BBC then had to folllow…

“Some people (i.e. Alix) seem awfully cautious about wanting to implicate the police in this – fair enough if that is your ideological position,”

I actually find that insulting. If you’d read what I’d written properly, or made the slightest effort to find out what my ideological position was (I’m a liberal) you wouldn’t have come to such a ridiculous conclusion. I was putting together pieces from this incident, raiding Twitter, blogs, official aaccounts and status updates, three hours after it happened. That led me to believe the police were talking bollocks, so I carried on collecting snippets, logically and critically. I’m not going to stop being logical and critical when a new snippet doesn’t chime with existing snippets just because it happens to support my existing view. That way madness lies.

Clarification. I don’t mean that the officer who pushed him didn’t have an option, of course. I mean that if individual officers don’t buy into the culture developed over the last few years, it comes down ultimately to “conform or leave”, as enforced e.g., by performance targets.

Duncan Campbell’s report is excellent, and there needs to be a proper holding to account based on a Judicial Investigation.

For policing culture in general, and the laws / structures / policies / regulation that have created it, we should be in Royal Commission territory.

My take on where this will – I hope – have an impact.

1 – This should bury Section 76 (photographing police to be an offence), as it shows that *all* photographic evidence is essential.

2 – A big concern is the shallowness of the “chattering classes” conversation. Coverage on e.g., Newsnight Review focussed on the “this is not a real protest, it is trustafarians who want to make trouble” type of nonsense. They completely missed the policing questions.

3 – There is a really series discontinuity between Ministerial declarations, ACPO advice, force policy, and what actually happens. See my piece:
http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/2009/04/02/photographs-of-policemen-section-76-and-the-g20-demos-ministers-have-their-heads-in-the-clouds/
That is a possible line to force change, and a lot of people have missed this angle – esp the Commons Debate that same day.

4 – Major existing questions over the “hard policing” culture (I’m wondering about starting to call it “paramilitary”) are emphasised. This ties in with all the “terrorism” stuff / photog harrassment (both amateurs and at demos e.g. Mark Vallee and the policing of the Kent demo ). Also the way Cautions have become more serious and all the other issues that we are all working on parts of.

5 – Wrong policing tactics at demos are being used in the wrong place and wrong time (e.g., kettling the Climate Camp). Serious questions. Reform needed.

6 – I’m not willing to do a blanket condemnation of the police from top to bottom. There is a *major* problem, yes – but the main target needs to be the culture and policies. Individual officers don’t have an option.

7 – I think there are three sets of views that concern me. Firstly the hair-trigger anti-demonstrator reactions. As Alix says – loons. Second, the few who did go along to be violent; more loons. Third, the commenterati (see 2) who’s level of discussion has been better suited to asides on the News Quiz.

I think that bloggers – and especially Lib Con since so many associated were there – can do a lot of good work in making sure that all the reports (esp Twitter) are put into a coherent timeline and put to the enquiry.

Absolutely right.

JB86UK – Thanks for the link. Great work by Paul Lewis of the Guardian. In fact great work by the whole guardian since the protests began. Most of the media have behaved pretty despicably in my view.