Whilst I endorse their right to do it, I really don't see how 250,000 or whatever people turning up to protest about what the likes of the TUC and Ed Balls like to claim is such catastrophic economic policy is some sort of major watershed. It doesn't even represent a majority of public sector or union members, let alone the rest of us.
---------- Post added at 13:28 ---------- Previous post was at 13:11 ----------
In respect of the police handling of these events, where are all the usual suspects who're always banging on that police brutality is somehow systemic and endemic? So far as I can see, the vast majority of the police were entirely peacefully engaged dealing with the vast majority of protesters - no police violence, no police intimidation, no police overreaction, no police incitement, no police harrassment! Having frequently heard it said that the police always set out to cause trouble, leave empty vans lying about to incite mayhem and get off on dragging 'disabled students' out of their wheelchairs and assaulting them, I'm surprised there wasn't any trouble affecting the main protest. How could that be I wonder? Did the police brutality department have a bad day?
Or could it just be that the vast majority of people weren't breaking the law by attacking police, intimidating others, destroying public property etc. and were treated accordingly? From what I've seen it was only those who were committing serious breaches of the law who came into conflict with the police and quite rightly so!