Bloody protesters

[MiniMatt]

250 thousand protesters. Around 250 involved in "trouble". Or 0.1%.
13 arrests - or 0.0052%

Compare this to the number of MPs from the last parliament of 650 members who have not only been involved in wrongdoing, but arrested, charged, and given lengthy prison sentences for defrauding the country - three out of 650, or 0.45%.

In the middle of a crowd of grungy protesters, or in the middle of a crowd of "honourable members", you're statistically far far closer to criminal low life scum when surrounded by the latter.

As such, I move for kettling, water cannoning and a few good baton charges of this unruly mob. Perhaps Sgt Smellie (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8279001.stm) could lead the operation.

[timwilky]

but look what my brothers former next door neighbor (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8404081/Disgraced-Tory-MEP-faces-criminal-charges.html) has had to pay back to the eu. £345,000. That's proper fiddling

[MiniMatt]

but look what my brothers former next door neighbor (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8404081/Disgraced-Tory-MEP-faces-criminal-charges.html) has had to pay back to the eu. £345,000. That's proper fiddling

Ouch!

Do a bit of cash in hand work in addition to UB40 and you're benefit thieving scum; steal £345,000 and you're kicked out of the Conservative party and asked to pay it back.

[maviczap]

but look what my brothers former next door neighbor (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8404081/Disgraced-Tory-MEP-faces-criminal-charges.html) has had to pay back to the eu. £345,000. That's proper fiddling

Sure there's a typo in that MP's name doesn't it begin with a B and not D :smt112

[timwilky]

You would have thought so, he was always dodgy.


When my brother lived next door to his home in the constituancy, the woman living there was definately not his wife. Rand old sod

[maviczap]

Or maybe he flipped the other way and this money was for his toy boy. Which is more appropriate for Ben Dover

MEP's bunch of crooks, lots of money for little or no work

[Sally]

Ben Dover, fu(king genius haha

[maviczap]

Quite an appropriate name for a Tory MP or MEP :p

[The Idle Biker]

The Sunday Mail led with pictures of the vandalism after the March. Surprised? erm no.

[keithd]

oh, hang on sorry i missed the news reports that says rioting, damaging property and violence was ok. my bad

13 arrests? lol bit more than that. 149 i think is closer

[MiniMatt]

Yeah, was 13 arrests at the time of writing, still what we up to now - 201 - still less than 0.1% of those who participated, still less than a quarter of the percentage of serving MPs who were arrested, charged, found guilty and given prison sentences.

I'm not saying that rioting, damaging property and violence is ok, nothing of the sort. What I'm saying is that in any group you'll find wrongdoing - and unless the proportion is greatly skewed, it's not a news story, it's just life.

A small minority of bikers are dangerous scum. Therefore all biker arguments should be ignored, because they're dangerous scum. A small minority of black people / white people / immigrants / muslims / one legged-lesbians are criminal. I'm not going to listen to a damn word any white people say, even if quarter of a million of them march on the capital, because there's this little thieving git down the road who's also white - they can't be trusted you know :D

The media has to take some blame for sure, and society at large too because the media only really feeds us what we want, and bad news sells. But what I take real objection to is politicians writing the whole thing off as violent scum who shouldn't be given a platform when the proportion of criminal behaviour is significantly lower than the proportion found in the house of "honourable members".

Edit: Quick update, I notice that (at the time of writing) of the 149 people charged with an offence 138 of these are for aggravated trespass. Which basically (I am not a lawyer remember) amounts to not leaving when asked (eg. you go into a shop, such as Fortnum & Masons, which is private property like any shop, but you have an implied licence to enter because it's a shop and the doors are open - but the owner/operators ask you to leave and you don't). Not a lawyer, but it doesn't appear to me to carry any accusation of violence or criminal damage. Not that I'm suggesting that these things didn't happen, just stressing that it looks to have been an *extremely* tiny minority compared to those who protested at the weekend.

[Quedos]

the media will always portray the bad side especially when It attacks the people that pay handsomely to their pocketss.
No paper will print about the MP's because of the 'donations' recieved.

Politicans are trying to write the whole thing of because they want the attention diverted and its best to do that through media (the ones that they pay) - the finer details of the protest will be lost so that people don't realise how royally screwed they are going to be.

The ironic bit for me - is that, all the protestors have done is create more work for the poor B'stards that they were protesting for. After all who's left with the clean up and ultimately who pays for the clean up bill.

[appollo1]

it would be interesting to see how these sort of protests are policed in the future when the police are forced to make manning cutbacks.

[Biker Biggles]

Well I was there and I thought the news reporting on the telly was quite measured and pretty good.Even the top cop said the demo was well run and well behaved,and defended peoples right to march and protest.The point was made again and again that the trouble was caused by very few most of whom were nothing to do with the march.Having said that you cant expect the media not to concentrate on nice audience grabbing images of a good riot if they are available.

[STRAMASHER]

.. you cant expect the media not to concentrate on nice audience grabbing images of a good riot if they are available.

Absolutely.

Between that and the revolution in Libya, there ain't a better time to be an armchair anarchist.

"Power To The People!";)

[MiniMatt]

Interesting update re 138 of those charged with aggravated trespass at Fortnum & Masons.

Video at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/28/cuts-protest-uk-uncut-fortnum - has been edited so it's worth keeping that in mind but appears to show extremely sensible policing inside fortnum & masons, and well, slightly different outside.

I wouldn't be hugely suprised if a lot of those charges get dropped or fail to result in a conviction.

Note that I am not denying that violence or criminal damage occurred on the day, nor am I saying that those responsible for such acts shouldn't face justice, just continuing to point out that the incidents were small in number compared to the number protesting, and that the sit down protest inside Fortnum & Mason appears at this stage to have been a very peaceful one - quoting from the chief inspector in the video and also noting that massive majority of charges being for the non-violent, non-damaging offence of aggravated trespass.