Rob was a predictably tedious anarchist, with tediously predictable views. Standing beneath a hanged effigy of Sir Fred Goodwin, he explained how the police work. “They aren’t here for us, they’re here for the bankers,” he told me. “But mainly, they are here for a fight.”
Having just watched protesters smash up the Royal Bank of Scotland, I was not in the mood. Not only was Rob wrong, I told him, he was the worst kind of wrong — a clichéd wrong. Seven hours later — seven hours of detention without food or water — I had come to believe that I was the one who had been naive.
...FULL STORY from The TIMES HERE...
G20 protests: The view from the street
Thu Apr 02 09:41AMIt's a strange thing to be told by police that you can't leave an area.
'But I need the loo', you think. 'And something to eat.' And you do feel, rather vaguely, that your human rights are being mildly violated.
I spoke to a man named Andy. Andy is over 50, an IT worker, and, in his words, "can't find work for love nor money". He came to complain about how, in his view, Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling had mismanaged the economy. With a beaming smile on his face and a placard with a cheeky joke about Britain's economic police, I warmed to him instantly. As we spoke, I noticed a policeman filing him with a video camera.
Did this man deserve to be filmed by police as if he was a terrorist, and then kept in an area for hours on end, without access to toilet facilities or food or water, simply because he wanted to protest against British economic policy? Surely not.
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FULL STORY from Ian Dunt HERE...
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