The passing of wood through glass is a remarkable feat. There are those who believe that royalty can perform miracles – there is a well developed cult around the vain and vicious Charles I, for example. It now appears that the presence of the future Charles III also has the ability to suspend the laws of physics.
The police have now issued extensive CCTV footage of the attack on the vehicle of Charles and Camilla on the fringes of the anti-tuition fee demonstrations, and the media have been replete with more nonsense about Camilla being poked with a stick. Yet of all the CCTV footage and numerous photographs, there is no evidence at all of this attack and all the images show the car windows to be closed – as they would be. One gets cracked but not holed.
There is in fact no evidence at all of any intent to harm the persons of the expensive royal layabouts, as opposed to discomfiting them and damaging their vehicle. It is fascinating that the media continually repeats the “Camilla attacked with a stick” line when it is so blatantly untrue. There appears to be a closing of ranks by the whole Establishment to perpetuate the myth – both the Home Office and St James Palace have deliberately fostered the myth by refusing to confirm or deny.
Personally I would not touch Camilla with a bargepole. I dislike violence at demonstrations. Demonstrations, good, riots, bad is my basic mantra. Attacks on people in a civil demonstration are always wrong, including attacks on the police unless in self defence. I did not join in the outrage at the prosecutions of violent demonstrators after the big Lebanon demonstration in London, because I personally witnessed the group hurling dangerous missiles at police who were neither attacking, threatening nor kettling them. That is absolutely unacceptable.
But a policy as appalling as the withdrawal of state funding from university teaching, carried out by Nick Clegg by one of the most blatant political breaches of fatih with the public in history, , is bound to provoke huge anger. The government reaps what it sows. Demonstrators should not set out to hurt people. But all the evidence shows they had no intention of hurting Charles and Camilla.
I have personally worked closely with the royal family’s close protection officers in organising two state visits abroad, and plainly they too could see there was no intent to injure – that is why weapons were not drawn. They deserve commendation rather than the crap spouted out by Sky News, who seem to think they should have gunned down the odd student.
All of which serves to take the focus off vicious police attacks on students and the use of kettling to detain people who were seeking peacefully to express their views. Kettling people in extreme cold and with no access to toilet facilities raises questions on illegal detention which genuine liberals in government would wish to address. What is it? Is it a form of arrest? What is the status of the fenced pens into which people are herded? Should they not be formalised as places of police detention, and individuals booked in and given access to lawyers? If that is not possible, this detention – which can be for many hours – is not lawful.
Richard: Not sure I agree. Steve hasn’t been talking with us, he’s doing the usual police thug bit of telling us what’s what, and getting very annoyed that his authority isn’t meekly accepted. That’s just what they do in the real world too, only here he hasn’t got the power to arrest or beat us up (with a bunch of his mates helping, of course).
@somebody – come back! 🙂
@steve – it’s good to have your input, but please avoid being abusive. It may just be that there are some irreconcilable differences of opinion between some posters – we should all be able to live with that.
BACK ON TOPIC
I was on Regent St when Charles and Camilla turned up. I shot this footage that has been syndicated widely. You can clearly see the window is up as the car approaches, then, from about 32 seconds it comes down and goes back up again. I know some of the people in the clip so studied the higher quality version (that I haven’t released yet) as I was concerned to see if any ‘contact’ was made as Teresa May asserts. There is none. Following this incident the car sped off, we didn’t catch it up again. Unless Camilla needed some fresh air and lowered the window again further up Regent St there was no other opportunity for any ‘contact’. The Home Secretary is inflaming this situation.
As the car approached Camilla looked me in the eye and gave me the thumbs up, you can just about see this at 7 seconds in, she also gives the thumbs up again at 1:01. I have the screen grabs to prove this. There was some strong language and some patting of the car, but to portray this as an ‘attack’ is misleading. To the contrary, this was a provocative act by the driver of the car and the Royal Protection Squad, I was standing in the middle of the road, the car drove straight at me, had I not moved no doubt I would have been injured. Had I been injured I think I would have had a good case against the driver and perhaps Charles himself if we are to believe the stories that suggest the Regent St route was his idea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klSGiFqTv4Q
RTDR
Haven’t gone away Jon. Wrong sex and age group to be called that name btw. I went on many of the PSC/STWC protests and marches last year and my eyes were opened. Whilst in Trafalgar Sq. the G20 kettling was taking place in the City and Mr Tomlinson was no more. Will his inquest bring his family justice? Probably not if the Jean Charles de Menezes travesty is repeated.
Anyway I just wanted to say to Clark that I put his comment about Lockheed Martin and the census on to an article in the Independent. Today Jody McIntyre (the disabled activist yanked out of his wheelchair and tackled to the ground) has written this in the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/13/ghetts-census-guantanamo-bay-lockheed-martin
Steve, I agree with Richard: I think you were putting forward your point of view reasonably & interestingly, until you lost your temper (understandably, I think). Why can’t everybody just deal with Steve’s experience/perception of events? Sticking up links to newspaper reports isn’t quite giving the level of attention it deserves, I feel. Has anyone got anything which directly disproves his individual account? It’s quite true that relatively untrained policemen have been stuck on the front line recently at the start of protests – it happened on the second student march, the one where the van was trashed. Then, they bring out the big guns.
Steve, it sounds to me like these police men have been trained on football gangs. (something we hear very little about) Is this true? Would explain why they are prepared to be so confrontational – it must feel pretty bad to be suddenly faced with a teenage girl.
I also hope you’ll take on board that there’s a political point to making the word ‘anarchy’ synonymous with ‘violent criminal’. Anarchy means ‘without rulers’ ie the freedom to make your own choices. It is in an authoritarian society’s interests to demonise it, but as Vronsky pointed out before, anarchists are mainly peaceful people. Not the high profile ones, it seems.
glenn earlier, with the post ending about the army coming in, I couldn’t quite work out if you were just angry that the protest police were better equipped or adopting the pacifist moral high ground?
I’m linking to this picture yet again, because all is not quite as it seems on our demo’s:
http://www.killick1.plus.com/photo-op.jpg
Look at all those professional cameras. The photo’s they took appeared in the mainstream media. The photo’s showing all the photographers did not. This was no chance event. To get so much professional hardware in one place at one time requires organisation. Someone got paid, I’ll bet.
Ok Steve, what was it that mark kenbnedy has done with full suport and money by his handlersw/superiors?
If this conspiracy to pervert the cause of justice and the law of this country, tell me please what this is, no weasel words.
And if there are more undercover ‘eco terrorists’ on equally perverting courses to undermine NGPO’s, political parties and or civil societies, who knows, what do you call the silence of our chief constables?
Why are they stumm, is it because they are guilty.
Sir Hugh Orde should resign and ACPO’s undercover operations should be reigned in and publically investigated by someone who is not tainted by any past police connections and/or the judiciary.
Whatever next, create your own 7/7? 😉
It’s all very well us complaining about covert operations. Realistically, I don’t think we can expect them to stop (would we want that?). But it’s no good just having them as “secret”. There needs to be some kind of structure; defined objectives, time limits and eventual disclosure.
Can spying be made more ethical by enforcing disclosure as an objective?
Clark
Yes, it looks staged, just like the attack on the conveniently un-boarded-up RBS bank at the G20.
Interestingly, the guy throwing the computer monitor in the shot you link to has his face clearly visible.
Does anyone know if there has been a nationwide man-hunt to find him as there was for the infamous fire extinguisher-thrower?
Or is there no need because because he’s an agent provocateur?
The ‘steve’ posts are laughable, if only such things were funny.
Jon, I admire your patience in trying to maintain peace and civilised debate (or maybe I just wish I was the sort of person who admired it). Please remember Thurber’s warning about leaning over too far backwards.
Steve sounds to me like an unreconstructed, un-self-examining and unapologetic thug of a gloomily familiar type. He has his side of the story, as did the sonderkommando.
Ethical spying (Clark at 7:06pm)? Sounds like an oxymoron to me. To be a spy is to be MacBeth – betrayal gets easier, the more you do it. Very soon, it becomes a way of life, it becomes normality.
I’m reading a great book at the moment; its a novel about spying and it was written by the daughter of a spy. It focusses on the human:
https://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/corinne+souza/jasmine27s+tortoise/5969107/
look i may be naieve (I don’t think so, after the last march) but why is holding Steve somehow accountable for the actions of the Met any more fair than holding me to account for the actions of a set of criminal careworkers? Unless he actually was on the frontline smashing at people with batons, which it doesn’t sound as though he was. He has obviously heard from other police people that it was
a terrifying experience. The point is, if one accepts that it was a terrifying experience for most people on both sides, what the hell?
btw you can wear all the armour in the world and still feel terrified: fact.
Vronsky, I have to say disagree with you (7:20pm) about Steve’s input. I agree with technicolour on this. I sense Steve deeply troubled wrt certain aspects of the way the police forces are run and operate. I don’t get the sense of someone who’s trying to rubbish everyone else – which is what one gets with extremely polemical bloggers. Maybe I’m being naive. One may wish to disagree with parts, or all, of what he writes, of course. That’s what political blogs are about.
Somebody – glad you stayed, btw!!
Todays article written by Paul lewis, Rob Evans and Vikram Dood is already close, the comments went too far for the moderations, no doubt.
I pulled this out of the text. I perfectly describes the paranoia that is prevalent, when remorse is whats expected from our police. Selfcentred paranoia.
A police chief with detailed knowledge of the deployments of undercover officers in the protest movement said Kennedy’s breach of protocol could lead to the “relocation of a considerable number of people”.
“That included undercover officers currently involved in ongoing police investigations across the UK and their families. “This is serious stuff,” the police chief said. “Lots of people are at risk ?” their lives are at risk.”
Yes, police chief, and its you who has put these men and women at risk from kamikaze eco ninjas and green killers from hell.
The term eco terrorism, was coined by the police in their response to the Stanstead campaing and the climate change camps, they have termed their own activities.
European politicians are asking our police forces as to how far their spying reached. looking at the hectic and lack of accountability, there are more than ten and maybe over 100, all solely concerned with perverting the cause of justice and the law.
Can they not see that they will never be able to re-gain the trust of greens, never mind the population. Their hope of prosecuting ecological protesters is virtually nil.
@suhayl
I’m probably being unfair in attacking steve in particular (it’s brave of him to comment in a forum where his position could easily be predicted as unpopular) but I feel some anxiety about accepting any mitigation of police conduct when the situation is so very serious, and so very assymetrical. The poor troubled constable versus the screaming hordes of disorder? It’s the plot of every American war movie since 1945, and the PR face of imperialism: decent boys doing their best in a tricky situation. I simply don’t accept the ‘Black Hawk Down’ description of policing.
That ordinary officers involved in riots may be so innocent as to have no clue as to their ultimate role and absolutely zero scruples in its performance does not seem to me to be a position that we should allow to be so easily defended.
technicolour: My earlier post was in response to Steve’s sob-story about how hard the Force has it on the front lines, beating the hell out of peaceful protestors. I was attempting to illustrate the disparity between the powers and offensive/defensive equipment on either side, and how the one side treats the other. A bit like when Israel goes off on an insane rampage against Palestinians, and then starts bleating that they are the victim.
I would like to see the police demonstrating against their share of the upcoming cuts, so they can find out what it’s like when the boot is on the other foot. Or more to the point, when its their heads having the boot stamped upon.
Steve
Could you please let us know, if you know, how many police bods are engaged day by day in bugging ordinary people who are not discussing crime, but who are discussing politics, religion, ideas etc? Is it all police officers, some of the time, or is it lots of non-police officers, full-time, or what? Are all police officers aware of the gigantic scale of these operations or are there degrees of flannel maintained inside the police organisation?
My personal assumption is that it must be impossible to maintain the level of security needed to keep secret this scale of deception, viz for example, surveillance of the entire Muslim population, the entire wealthy population, etc etc with bugs and GPS and plants and mobile phone and internet intercepts.
We are all walking naked in the streets, and even in our own homes. Given the amount of people who must be in the know about these ridiculous operations, how do they manage to maintain secrecy, or contain themselves from laughing at the absurdity of witnessing ordinary people going about their private lives?
Do they enjoy bathing in an Atlantic size jacuzzi of lies? Do they end up suffering from too much information syndrome, like the old cops got cancer from the radiation off their antiquated mobile phones?
Thank-you RTDR for your first-hand account which I find interesting. Can you confirm whether the guy chanting “off with their heads” was known to you and/or do you think he was a student?
@Vronsky, I think my views are more in line with yours than you imagine. I don’t sense that Steve is here in an official propagandist sense, as was, say, “justice for women” on a previous thread. Your point about self-analysis (or lack thereof) in official roles agrees very well, I think, with my points on the Authoritarian personality type.
But I’d sooner have Steve here so we can put our points to him – he may be here in the first place because he thinks the students are right, or at least the notion that something is unfair.
There is a common misconception in the force that our democracy is working fine, and that if we’re angry about tuition fees then all we need do is vote differently or otherwise engage with the democratic process. Here, we know that such a view is untrue. We can therefore use this chance to incrementally change an officer’s perspective: from reflexively defending the status quo, and towards an understanding of why a disobedient struggle for social justice is justified.
Jon: I should point out again that “Justice For Women” had nothing to do with those posts a few threads back. I contacted them, they confirmed it was a lie. Doubtless it was yet hit-and-run smear job on CM. Perhaps you should delete it.
@jon
“We can therefore use this chance to incrementally change an officer’s perspective”
Dream on. But I suppose a discussion forum on these occasions has the mood of first sex with a new partner – nervous, and it may fail from being too tentative (Suhayl will like this metaphor). Perhaps I’ve been a little too vigorous on my first bedding of steve. But I (we?) need time to get to know steve and to hear his thoughts on other subjects.
Anything is possible, for example, I’ve got used to anno – I agree with him on most things, he just makes my head nip when he talks about religion – but it’s ok, I suppose we’re becoming friends.
So don’t go away steve. The night is young. We may yet rendezvous at some disputed barricade (on the same side?).
Woah, glenn. not sure I get the thought of anyone being on the receiving end of violence. don’t get the feeling that Alfie Meadows would either; his mother certainly wasn’t calling for the policeman in question to be given a taste of his own medicine, hey. So please, calm down.
As it is, I’d bet the vast majority of coppers have never ‘beaten anyone to death ‘. Or even stamped on someone’s head. And the Israel/Palestine analogy is really stretching things a bit far too, isn’t it?
Ha!! That’s a good one, Vronsky. I won’t mention mezzo-sopranos… I promise, I won’t…
Actually, just to remind everyone, Steve has been hereabouts for a while – remember his discussion with (retired, ex-pat Glasgow cop) Redders, who was basically advising him not to let it all get to him and that even in the worst situation he would be able to find the decent people in due course?
But yes, as you say, it might be good to hear his thoughts on other (i.e. non-police-related) matters as well, if he wishes, on the appropriate threads when they arise. Like, say, Gaza or whatever. Or even on the lovely Babra Sharif. Babra is a Jewish Pakistani actress/ film-star who lives in Karachi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babra_Sharif
Ahem.
Hot Dang, Suhayl… Babra doesn’t look bad for her age!
Vronsky
Or do you want to be collectively infiltrated by Steve like coral milt or fruit pollen?. In which case I’m happy to be just friends. For my own contributions here, innama t’unthiru man ‘itaba’adhikra wa chashiya Rahmana bil ghaib, which means: indeed you only be able to warn those who follow the reminder, the Qur’an etc, and fear the Most Merciful God in secret.
I believe in prayer, but not in self-will even to change my own destiny. I ask for God to change it for me. I also believe that God corrects us by putting us through the receiving end of some of our own unpleasant characteristics, if we are capable of understanding the lesson through inner reflection. Maybe Charles and Camilla understood what it feels like to be kettled for a very short moment of time.
And I agree with Mark above when he complains about feeling massively lied to without being able to put my finger on it. So to nip your head completely, please can I mention that the totally unredeemable sin in Islam, towering over all the other disgusting things that human beings do to eachother, is to reject God. He afterall made us and the universe and has knowledge of our inner hearts and histories. We are the big liars, are we not? because 99% of our lives we forget, or even reject, the sole source of our existence and our only purpose in life. Are we not the biggest liars in this case?
Sorry, I have no spare fuses for the mind.
Anno: I reject the notion of a God, a sky-spook who created the entire universe just for our feeble benefit. Since I’ve committed such an irredeemable sin (which is common to just about every religion, btw – so you have to choose carefully!), presumably anything else I do is totally unimportant now.
So does this mean that I might as well be the most horrible, selfish, uncharitable bastard that ever lived now, in your view? Screw over anyone for a penny’s worth of profit, destroy relationships, despoil the environment, lie, cheat and steal without a moment’s pause? Because as I’ve already done the most unforgivable thing, from where comes my compunction to be as honest as possible, and live my life honourably?
@anno
“the totally unredeemable sin in Islam, towering over all the other disgusting things that human beings do to eachother, is to reject God”
See, this is where I get into difficulty, anno. Perhaps I’m eccentric, but I have this feeling that there are things – many, many, many things – that are much, much, much worse than rejecting God. God is a god, after all, and presumably can cope with the odd bit of rejection. Most of the rest of us can.
But Glenn and Vronsky, do you reject the fundamentally creative nature of the Universe, the wonder of life and the principle of diversification? I think not. You do not reject That Which Creates. It is, as Glenn says, merely the “notion” that you reject.
Good Lord no, Clark – I am in complete awe at the wonder and beauty of nature. But I don’t need to have faith (i.e. believe that for which there is zero evidence) in some sky-spook mumbo-jumbo dreamed up by ignorant, fearful, superstition old men thousands of years ago, in order to have full benefit of that awe and wonder.
In fact, I’ll go further – the undiscovered beauty of every smallest thing is a source of joy, I can imagine there is unfathomable wealth of intricacy, delicacy and grandeur in things we will never see. I don’t believe the universe stops at our limited experiences, because I don’t think it was created solely for our personal benefit. If someone is sufficiently vain to think it _was_ created all for them and their fellow brand of sky-spook believers, then their world and their imagination has to be terribly limited.