Update on the Ian Tomlinson Case.

Ian Tomlison was the man who died at last week G20 demonstrations in London. Last night the Guardian newspaper released this video which clearly shows Mr Tomlinson being assaulted by a member of the Metropolitan Police force minutes before his death. Aside from showing a police officer being involved in a criminal act it also completely discredits the police's repeated claim that Mr Tomlinson had no contact with the police before his death.

The release of this video provoked a flurry of activity from the UK government who suddenly decided it was not appropriate for the the City of London Police to investigate the accusation that the City of London Police had killed a man and ordered a new investigation to be opened. They also ordered that a new post-mortem be carried out on Mr Tomlinson's body. Both of these actions are completely useless because any forensic evidence on Mr Tomlinson's body which would prove that he was murdered by the police would either have been washed off at the initial autopsy or been degraded over the past seven days. Also the police have now had a full week to make sure that the witness accounts of their officers match and any other physical evidence has already been destroyed. If the Home Office were serious about getting to the bottom of the events of the G20 protests the would immediately terminate the Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation on the grounds the investigatory process had been fatally compromised. Then would then open another criminal investigation to find out why the police had been allowed to destroy evidence and by extension conspire to pervert the course of justice. As the IPCC were involved in the initial investigation they should be deemed unsuitable to carry out any further investigation.

Of course none of this will actually appear on the front pages of tomorrows newspapers. This because earlier today Britain's most senior anti-terrorist police officer, assistant commissioner Bob Quick (he of the Damien Green investigation) made a terrible "mistake". As he was getting out of a car in Downing street Mr Quick "accidentally" exposed to the assembled photographers a top secret document detailing an ongoing anti-terrorism investigation. This breach of security meant the anti-terror operation had to be brought forward and this evening 12 Muslims were arrested in a series of raids across the north west of England.

Of course tomorrows newspapers are now going to be full of positive stories telling us how the British police are working very, very hard to protect us all from terrorism and we should be jolly grateful to them no matter how many people they kill.