Violence. Britain's Only Language.

Ahead of expected Mayday protests this weekend today has seen two interesting events. First the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) have been ordered to pay £85,000 compensation to five protesters who were arrested at a demonstration outside the Mexican Embassy in 2006. The compensation was awarded after the court ruled the five had been illegally arrested, unlawfully detained for forty hours and then maliciously prosecuted. The event that got the most media attention though was Haringey Council's decision to sack a social worker and three managers over the Baby P case. Cecilia Hitchen was sacked for a "loss of trust and confidence" while Maria Ward, Gille Christou and Clive Preece were dismissed for gross misconduct over the case in which they sat back and watched while a 17 month old child was tortured to death.

Both of these cases, along with the killing of Ian Tomlinson, were expected to fuel widespread violence at this weekends protests. The decision to take such dramatic action so close to the protests seems to be an attempt to diffuse tensions using a tactic known as de-escalation. De-escalation is a public order technique widely used by the British Police and the general idea is to allow an aggressive crowd to score some small and largely symbolic victories like burning a flag of hanging a banner in order to give them a sense of accomplishment that will discourage them from taking further action. Perhaps the most public example of the de-escalation strategy was the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith's decision to declassify the Hillsbourogh documents early in the wake of Ian Tomlinson's death at the G20 protests.

Of course both of these events only represent small victories for the protesters because the police, who have a long history of defying court orders, won't actually pay a penny of the compensation nor will any of those sacked from Haringey be prosecuted instead getting soft landings with a generous pensions or new cushy government jobs. It does however demonstrate Britain's attitude to negotiation; If you co-operate with them they'll laugh at you, If you speak to them nicely they'll stare at you blankly, if you threaten violence they'll make concessions and if you actually use violence they'll cave in straight away. The whole business could even be considered a British endorsement of violent protest because the Mayday demonstrators have already scored five victories before anyone's even pulled on a balaclava.

Compare that the the Ghurka's campaign. For decade these Nepalese soldiers who serve with the British Army have been campaigning for the right to live in the country they've risked their lives defending. So far their long running campaign has managed to unify both the opposition Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties in a strange coalition that today defeated the ruling Labour party in a Parliamentary vote on the issue. The only reward they received for their efforts was a promise to speed up the naturalisation process for those Ghurkas who have already been granted the right to settle. While I wish the Ghurkas every success in their campaign I fear they are doomed to failure. After all they still make the mistake of saluting the Monarch even though it is the Monarch not the government of the day who's stopping them settling in the UK.

How's This For Dopey?

In June 2008 two French bio-chemistry students were tortured, stabbed and set on fire in their flat in Deptford, South London. A few days after the bodies were discovered a petty criminal walked into a police station and confessed to the crime. Yesterday, 17/4/09, the trial of this man and his alleged accomplice began. In the reporting of the case the media went into lurid detail of how the two victims were bound, burnt, beaten and stabbed in an attempt to torture their PIN numbers out of them. This got me thinking, firstly that the term PIN number is a useless redundancy, but then I thought that if someone was robbing you you wouldn't automatically give up your PIN. Instead you'd make up a fake one to give them to make them go away so if your PIN was 3401 you would tell the torturer that it was 1752. But then I thought that an experienced torturer would probably work out that you were trying to trick them and 1752 was a fake so they'd just carry on with the torture. Then I though it would be a really good idea if you had a second fake PIN like 2440. That way they could beat you for a little bit and you could reveal you PIN to be 1752. They'd refuse to believe that 1752 was a genuine PIN and would start to slash you with razor's and burn you with cigarettes. At this point you could "break" under the pain and give away the fact your PIN was really 2440. Having being lied too once already the abuser would probably not believe you straight away and continue to bring the pain. If you kept apologising for giving 1752 as a fake and insisting that 2440 was genuine the inquisitor would probably believe that they were really good at torture, give up and walk away with the fake 2440 feeling really proud of themselves. It was somewhere through this thought process that I managed to unlearn my own PIN and now I can't get access to my own cash. I'm tempted to see if I can do a deal with a local hypnotherapist to see if they can regress my memory and reveal the lost PIN on the understanding that if they can't make this work then I can't pay them. Alternatively I could just phone my bank.

While I was contemplating this conundrum the Tamil protesters who had been demonstrating outside the Houses of Parliament did something unexpected. They expanded their protests to the Indian Embassy and the Sri Lankan High Commission. This resulted in both buildings being closed for the day, windows were smashed and a number of people were arrested. Details are a little sketchy because the MSM, especially the BBC's reporting of the events seemed to centre around sticking their fingers in their ears and pretending that nothing was happening. The media had probably already used up their daily protest quota by reporting an incident inside the House of Commons where three women and a man super glued themselves to a statue in protest over plans to build a new generation of coal fuelled power stations. The activists from the recently formed Climate Rush wore red sashes and targeted the statue of Viscount Falkland to mark the 100th anniversary of the Suffragettes and to highlight the importance of non-violent protest. This could mean that Climate Rush are a highly organised group who managed to avoid Special Branch surveillance and smuggled super-glue, period costume and red sashes past the House of Commons security perimeter. Either that or the police knew exactly what they were up to but couldn't decide if Britain is facing the worst flu pandemic since 1968 or 1918 so just decided to let them get on with causing chaos and confusion.

Time To Get a Shredder.

Today I got more then the usual amount of junk mail including an offer to teach me how to use Windows XP for a simple monthly fee of £14.99. Sadly it didn't come with the necessary paperwork from Croydon Council so it had to go straight in the bin. I also spent two hours of the day waiting to see my doctor which is a bad sign because it means the locals are still being a little petulant and that was the sort of behaviour that got them into trouble in the first place.

The real bad news though is that I've got that Swine Flu so if I want to go outside in the next two weeks I got to wear one of these;

Police Infiltration of Plane Stupid.

On Friday 24/4/09 the Guardian newspaper released tapes which show police officer's from the Community Intelligence Unit (CIU) grooming Tilly Gifford, a activist with protest group Plane Stupid to act as a police informer of agent.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/24/strathclyde-police-plane-stupid-recruit-spy

The CIU is a sub-division of the Special Branch who are now a separate entity within Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism command. Special Branch are an extraordinary police unit operating above and beyond the regular police who specialise in intelligence and surveillance work. In simple terms they function as a sort of buffer between the civilian police force and the UK Security Service, Military Intelligence section 5. As the name suggests MI5 are a military organisation who are exempt from UK law and in rare circumstances will just kill people. The use of such an extreme police unit against what are peaceful protesters is probably being justified on the grounds that Plane Stupid themselves could be infiltrated by Al Qaeda. Personally I think that security operation is being done from the more proactive and sinister reason of driving Plane Stupid's actions.

This sort of behaviour by the British authorities is nothing new and certainly date's back to World War 1, even proceeding the formation of MI5 itself. What is new in this case is the way that the grooming is taking place. When and Intelligence Officer (IO) is looking to recruit an agent they are trained to identify individuals with either a "Need or a Greed". What "greed's" are is pretty obvious, identifying a "need" is more complicated because it covers a whole range of human weaknesses. Most frequently it is the basic human need to be protected from fear be that a fear of going to prison, a fear of losing a job, a fear of a marriage breaking up or the fear of having and embarrassing secret made public. It can also include insecurities over personal, physical appearance, question marks over a person's sexuality, drug addiction and mental illness especially ones relating to power and control such as paedophilia. At a higher level it can include a person's fear they lack the talent to have the lifestyle they want. For example someone who wants to have a criminal career but just isn't good enough would be an easy recruit, especially for the police. In extreme cases the IO will create the "need" themselves by planting evidence of a criminal act or by using their own wives to organise a Nazi themed sex party.

In the old days (pre-2004) when UK plc couldn't afford more then 20 quid British IO's were told to concentrate on the "need" or coercive recruitment because it was cheaper. This means that when people describe agents of the British state as weak-minded individuals who are beneath human contempt they're not insulting them, they're merely quoting from the recruitment manual.

The interesting thing that this case reveals it that Special Branch appear to be now concentrating on persuasive recruitment by appealing the to "greed". This is evidenced by the early offering of cash payments although the conversation quickly reverts to intimidation tactics. That is not to say that the game has suddenly changed and Special Branch are now paying Plane Stupid activists tens of thousands of pounds while the Senior Intelligence Service, MI6 is having it's budget slashed. What is more likely is that if Tilly had proceeded with the grooming process she would have received a "goodwill" payment of around £50 while the officers "got the paperwork sorted". In the meantime Tilly's Vodafone bill and Barclays bank charges would go up by around £55 meaning she'd have little choice then to accept another payment of £50. Also when the officer say she is free to walk away at anytime he is lying through his teeth. Running an agent is a process based entirely on control and coercion. The people who do it are like the Mafia. Once you accept a gift from them, they own you for life.

Having being raised on a diet of Fredrick Forsthye and Alister McLean novels I am tempted to go back and look at a previous incident when Plane Stupid made a huge fuss about how they'd trapped a British Airport Authority (BAA) spy. In light of this case that might have been only a small part of a much more elaborate operation in which a spy was put into Plane Stupid and then allowed himself to be caught in order to lull the group into a false sense of security by making them think they were better at catching spies then they really are.

Cognative Dissonance Awards.

Despite a late entry from a Nottingham councillor who, at a public meeting to discuss the introduction of CCTV, tried to have a journalist arrested for taking photographs and "invading their privacy!" I've decided to give this weeks award to the home help supervisor from Help the Aged because three days on it's still making me smile.

While visiting my grandmother Julie, this help home supervisor, began by making a big performance about how she had to get up very early every morning and worked very, very hard. As the visit progressed Julie commented that the kitchen was very untidy and could be dangerous so my grandmother asked if Julie would be prepared to help tidy it up. Julie responded to this by saying; "What, get up even earlier and tidy up here before I go to work?"

At which point I physically had to fight the urge to pat her on the head and say; "No dear, Helping the Aged is what you're being paid to do whilst at work!" Anyway she's got two boys at private school apparently.

Pithy sarcasm aside there have been more happenings in protest land. Firstly the Guardian newspaper have revealed that police officers have been approaching activists from Plane Stupid to act as paid informants. I haven't had time to fully read the article or the transcripts but there doesn't seem to be anything going on that's worth getting excited about. More interesting is the news that the Royal Bank of Scotland is pursuing a Brighton based protester for £40,000 over the damage done to one of their branches at the G20 protests.

As the girl's only 17 this claim has no chance of success and seems to be an admission by RBS that their insurers have refused to pay for the damage because they think the whole thing is the result of police action.

Threats To Kill Martin McGuinness.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) have announced that Republican dissidents have threatened to kill Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein's Deputy First Minister. This is hardly noteworthy because Mr McGuiness has been living under threat of assassination since the 1970's, first by the British Army, then by loyalist paramilitaries and most recently by dissident Republicans. The real reason for the announcement seems to be a bit of political gamesmanship by the PSNI with two main objectives.

The first seems to be to discourage people from attending the upcoming Mayday protests by giving the impression that there is some sort of split between those groups who are preparing to attend. I haven't seen any evidence of such a spilt but what I do know is that the Police nationally are very worried about this years so called Mayday weekender. In light of Ian Tomlinson's death at the G20 protests the police are expecting one of the largest turnouts ever seen at the Mayday protests both in London on May 1st and in Brighton on May 4th. If the police's predictions are accurate and the Mayday protests do successfully bring out a large number of people then it will further underscore the irrelevance of the UK security services so whatever happens don't expect to be able to watch the events on TV.

The PSNI's second objective seems to be to make it appear that Martin McGuinness' is assisting the UK security services. An accusation like that is only going to further undermine his Republican base and may even endanger the Northern Irish peace process. This seems bizarre given the vast amounts of money Britain has poured into Northern Ireland over the last decade so I'm struggling to imagine why Britain would be so keen to unbalance the province now.

Oh Yeah Home Help Gubbins

Today the home help supervisor came round to get my grandmother to pay for and allow a Croydon Council approved home help into her home. My grandmother flatly refused to give her consent. This caused the supervisor and my father to have quite a long head-scratching and conspiratorial conversation to decide their next move. The nuclear option they discussed was getting a doctor to rule my grandmother mentally deficient so Croydon Council wouldn't need her consent and can treat her against her will. Nothing was decided so we've moved into a little bit of a lull while the state considers it's next move.

In related news tonight a rather theatrical meeting between the leaders of the three main political parties to discuss the issue of MP's expenses broke up without agreement. In light of today's budget I feel I should pull them to one side and explain that while the country is facing at least a decade of cuts to health care spending and there is no money to trial and error new treatment protocols the ability to provide cheap and effective health care could be considered a national security issue. To put it more simply, the only choice Britain has now is the degree by which it loses.

UK Budget 2009.

Sorry for the delay but by an amazing co-incidence this home help person was scheduled to turn up 30 minutes after the Budget speech and was late, but more of that later.

There isn't much to analyse in this year's Chancellor's speech because it was less of a budget and more of a reading of a roll-call of the dead. Alistair Darling began by announcing that the predictions he made in November's pre-budget report were inaccurate to the point of being delusional. He went on to predict that the UK economy will shrink by an unprecedented 3.5% which is worse then even I expected. He also announced that national debt will rise to £175bn or 60% of GDP. Assuming that this prediction itself is not overly optimistic then it means that Britain has one of, if not the worst levels of national debt in the developed world. Following an announcement like that it was impossible to announce anything other then a budget of managed decline. This began with some quite dramatic cuts including;

• 0.4% cut in public spending which is the equivalent of around £15bn and will come mainly from health and education.

• £9bn in "efficiency savings" from the civil service. Although some of this will come from the stopping of buying new equipment it is mainly a diplomatic way of saying that most of the civil service's pet project will now be stopped.

• Crucially no cuts were made to the bloated public sector pension scheme.

These cuts were followed up with equally dramatic tax increases including;

• A 10% increase in the higher rate of income tax.

• A reduction in pension tax breaks for those earning over £150,00.

Combined these spending cuts and tax increases are predicted to save around £28bn and allowed for some small new spending plans including;

• £2bn to help get the unemployed back into work. The idea of this is to further reducing spending by getting people of benefits and back into paying tax. While the former will certainly happen the latter will only be possible if there are jobs there for them to go into.

• £500million for house builders and £80million for house buyers. This close to an election these measures make the budget look like an anointment of the Conservative Party to form the next government

There have also been the standard increases of tax on alcohol, tobacco and fuel but the most interesting part of the budget gives you a clear idea of who really wrote it. Amid all these cuts an extra £50million has been found to spend on the military. That will keep the men at arms happy and shows that the UK economy is under military control until at least the next General Election.

This makes it a good time for me to explain to these military types the principle of opportunity cost. This very basic principle of economics states that the success or failure of an activity can only be judged after it has been weighed against the cost of not taking another path. In my case this means that the £30,000 the government has saved needs to be weighed against the £15bn it has spent. To put it another way, from this point forwards not only can Britain not win there is nothing they can do to break even. That's a shame because it doesn't need to be this way.

Constitutional Clarification.

The United Kingdom has both a Monarch and a democratically elected government. This makes the answer to the question of who runs the country a fluid and difficult one. Strictly speaking it is the Monarch however every year in recent history the Monarch signs over authority for the day to day running of the country to the democratically elected Prime Minister. This means that pretty much every decision made in Britain between 1997 and 2008 was led by the New Labour party led by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson and a succession of Home Secretaries. Obviously during this time the Queen took an overview of events but had no active involvement in the decision making process because she also had to maintain an overview of Australia, Canada and the rest of the Commonwealth. Therefore the Bristol Abuse Case was totally the brainchild of the New Labour government specifically a cabal of female civil servants, MI5 officers and media figures who self-identify as homosexual.

Then in 2008 the credit crunch happened and the Queen lost an estimated £15million from her own personal fortune. This caused the Crown to take a much closer interest in the way Gordon Brown was running the country as evidenced by the Crown's refusal to include plans for a national identity database in the Queen's Speech. From that point the economic and national security situations in the UK were seen to deteriorate dramatically. Matters came to a head just before the G20 Summit while the Prime Minister was touring the Americas and the quarterly inflation figures were released showing that Britain was facing the twin devils of economic recession and inflation. This caused the Crown to take full control of British economic policy as will be evidenced by Wednesday's budget speech. At around the same time the Crown also took full control of Britain's national security as evidenced by the North-West anti-terrorism operation and the Nottingham power station arrests which both have Prince Phillip's dirty little finger prints all over them. In doing this the Crown also took full ownership of the Bristol Abuse Case.

This was a mistake so terrible that I think the Queen should identify the person who advised her to do so, take them outside and have them shot. You see now the Queen has full ownership of the Bristol Abuse Case then if it continues I will have little option but to question if she can still be considered a legitimate Monarch. What I cannot comment on is whether or not the Queen interpreted the death of David Cameron's son as an act of anointment.

G20 Protests: The Smear Campaign Is In Full Flight.

Tommorrow a House of Commons Select Committee will begin to investigate the policing of the G20 protest following the death and subsequent cover up of Ian Tomlinson and 90 individual complaints of the police using excessive force. This investigation has largely been attributed to the release of hundreds of videos showing the police using all sorts of tactics forbidden by the police's own public order handbook. Channel 4 news declared this to be the moment that citizen journalism came of age.

If that's true then Sunday must have been the moment when the old hands at the BBC gave the citizen journalists an abject lesson in media manipulation. It started when the Sunday Times released this video http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6122553.ece (for some reason I can't embed videos). It shows the events at the G20 Climate Camp and includes footage of a police officer punching a protester in the face, a silver commander using his shield to strike another protester in the face and another police officer using his shield in a chopping action which is technically speaking the most alarming of the incidents.

As the video had already been widely circulated on the Internet and picked up by a national newspaper the BBC had no choice but to include the story in the news bulletins although they went to great pains to emphasises that the video had been edited and the person who released it had been paid by the newspaper. It was what they did next that was really sneaky. They cut from the Climate Camp video and showed that now famous video to the RBS's windows getting smashed and footage that appeared to show a group of police officers being forced to retreat from a surging crowd. That was an attempt to portray the protesters as extremely violent people who the police needed protecting from. It was deliberately misleading for three main reasons;

• The footage does not show the police being forced into retreat. If it was shown in context it would reveal that the police had been keeping two sections of the crowd separate by cordoning them into a small space. The police then decided to withdraw the cordons as part of the kettling process so all the video really shows is the crowd spreading out into the vacated space.

• Neither that footage nor the video of the RBS were shot at the Climate Camp, they were shot at the G20 Meltdown protest. Admittedly the two protests were close to each other but the atmosphere at the two was very different. The Climate Camp went on for around 12 hours amongst many unprotected buildings none of which were damaged.

• Aside from being from the wrong location the BBC footage was also from the wrong time. The kettling process happened at around 12:00 and the RBS windows got put through at around 13:00. The footage from the Climate Camp was shot between 19:00 and 00:00. This is important because the main accusation against the police is that they kettled a large crowd and brought it to a violent boil before the whole situation calmed down. Then when the situation had become so calm that the media got bored and went home senior police commanders (Gold) sent officers in to give people extra-judicial punishment beatings. A serious charge to level at the supposed upholders of the law.

The BBC also put in a similar performance with the Nicola Fisher interviews which bordered on the libellous but I'm getting too bored of my own post to go into details. Let's just say that it's a good job she's got a publicist because no-one's yet accused her of urinating on the officer as he lay dying before stealing his wallet.

God That Was Very Nearly Stressful.

After yesterday's rather cryptic post I should probably add texture and context. Obviously I don't want to post details of my grandmother's medical records but it is fair to say she suffers from certain problems with her bones and joints. These are the result of old age and there is nothing the medical profession can do about them and we wouldn't expect them too.

However rather then simply letting the matter lie Croydon health authority and by extension MI5 and at this point I believe the Queen herself are working very hard to convince my grandmother that she is suffering from other medical problems she simply isn't. Aside from psychologically wearing her down the idea of this is to get her to pay for a home help from the Croydon chapter of Age Concern. As this home help has already made it quite clear that they won't be prepared to provide any help around the home the only purpose of this exercise seems to be to bring an extra observer into the household ahead of my brothers return from Europe.

Obviously I'm coping with this but I have to say that I really object to it being referred too as a care system. It's not, this is simply a system of abuse designed to do nothing more then cause maximum damage to me, my grandmother, my father and my brother. The most frustrating bit though is my father fully understands that this is a system of violence and chooses to participate in it yet cannot work out why his life gets worse with every passing day(!)

Much As I Hate to Post Like This

Today my father and I have mostly been arguing. Loudly, publicly and frequently. The main topic, aside from him being an snidey cunt has been whether or not a district nurse will provide a home help to assist my grandmother who is currently suffering from several fused disc's in her lumber spine. This discussion is currently ongoing and fuel mainly by alcohol.

Stop The War Coalition G20 March.

As I've mentioned in earlier posts I left the Climate Camp protest at around 13:45 and headed straight for Grovesnor Square where the Stop the War Coalition (STWC) were assembling outside the US Embassy before marching to Trafalgar Square. To say I went straight there isn't exactly true. I actually got the Tube to the Embankment and stopped by a pub to rest my feet and quench my thirst. After about 20 minutes I made my way up to Trafalgar square and not really looking where I was going almost clattered into four police officers carrying machine guns. If they'd been walking a little further to the right or if I'd looked up a moment later this could have led to an incident that would have taken quite some explaining. As it happenend the police couldn't get any further to the right and I fortunately remained un-shot carrying on by way of Haymarkets and Shaftsbury Avenue. At Cambridge circus I realised I got a little bit lost and headed back along Shaftsbury Avenue and Piccadilly before cutting up through the Mayfair backstreets to Grovesnor Square. In spite of this little diversion when I arrived at the Embassy the STWC march still had not moved of with about 750 people assembled.

What can I say? It was standard Socialist Worker Party (SWP) fare; wave a pre-approved placard, sign a petition, buy a newspaper and don't dare do anything that might actually change things. Most of the protesters seem to have been gathered from the SWP's sister organisation the Muslim Council of Great Britain (MCB) and were waving placards calling on America to help the Palestinians and bring peace to the middle east. After about another 15 minutes or so the group still hadn't formed up into a march so I got bored and decided I'd go and wait for them in Trafalgar square. As I was leaving I almost got run over by what I presume was a Saudi motorcade which was just leaving the Embassy. The occupants of the vehicle's looked less then happy so I can only assume that the meeting did not go well. As the Saudis are one of the regional power brokers in the Arab / Israeli conflict it looks like by protesting outside the US Embassy the STWC might actually have made things worse.

After another shambolic walk through London I found myself sitting in a pub just off Trafalgar square listening while the pub bore gave a loud and incorrect lecture on the G20 summit and three police riot vans stood guard outside in their now standard Sovereign's gone to the pub formation. I then went outside and saw stragglers milling around SWP stalls in Trafalgar square. I therefore, wrongly, assumed that the march had arrived and broken up so I headed back to the protests at the Bank of England.

I'm sorry if this is the shortest of all my G20 reports but nothing really happened and the whole thing was a bit rubbish really.

Ian Tomlinson. Killed By The Police.

Ian Tomlinson was found dead at the G20 demonstrations in London. Within hours of his death the police announced that he died of a heart attack and had no contact with the police. The next day an autopsy was performed and conveniently it fully supported the police's version of events. This meant that the Independent[sic] Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) saw no need to open an investigation and instead let the City of London Police carry out their own inquiry.

Six days later a video emerged showing Mr Tomlinson being struck and knocked to the ground by a police officer. As the video showed that Mr Tomlinson had significant and violent contact with the police the IPCC were finally forced to open a full investigation and the Tomlinson family exercised their right to have a second autopsy performed. That autopsy was completed on April 11th and since then the IPCC have been pressurising the Tomlinson family not to make it's findings public. Yesterday the family broke their silence and it immediately became apparent why the IPCC and the police wanted the results to remain a secret.

The new autopsy showed that Mr Tomlinson did not die of a heart attack. Instead it showed that he had died from internal bleeding in the abdomen. This is exactly the sort of injury that is caused by traumatic impact to the Liver, Kidney's or Spleen. All vital organs located in precisely the part of the body where police officers are seen striking Mr Tomlinson. Since then a police officer has been interviewed under caution of suspicion of manslaughter but has crucially not been arrested. No action has yet been taken against Dr Freddy Patel, who performed the first autopsy, even though it has been revealed that he noticed the internal bleeding but refused to accept it as the cause of death.

Knowing that the second autopsy was about to be made public the police yesterday took the cynical decision to turn off the life support machine of an officer who was injured in East London on April 11th. In this incident four people have already been arrested, charged and remanded in custody to allow the police to determine who, if any of them, struck the fatal blow. Don't expect anything like that to happen in the Tomlinson case because the IPCC's decision to allow the police to run the investigation for 6 days means that vital evidence has been destroyed and police suspects have been allowed to make sure their accounts of events match. As a result the IPCC investigation will have no option other then to conclude that "There is insufficient evidence to prosecute any individual for the death of Mr Tomlinson." and the state will get away with murder yet again.

This killing and subsequent cover up has led to protests outside Scotland Yard and today's demonstration in Jacqui Smith MP's home constituency in Redditch where protesters will call for the beleaguered Home Secretary's resignation. A Mayday demonstration has also been called outside the Bank of England at 5:04pm on May 1st. For this demonstration protesters are being advised to wear stripes and bring a sense of humour. The police, as always, are being advised to wear balaclava's and remove their numbers if they plan to go clubbing.

Q. How Do You Know a Government's Lying?

A. It's Lips Are Moving.

Sorry to go on about this suspended TSG sergeant but the mainstream reporting of the story has been appalling. First up was the BBC who repeatedly showed a taped interview with a former police trainer. This public order specialist said that we shouldn't judge the Sergeant's actions because the video doesn't show context and he may have been acting out of fear for his safety. This is a nonsense because the full five minute video shows the Sergeant's actions in full context. It shows the crowd to be peaceful and largely quiet until a man asks a police officer to explain why he can't leave the crowd. The police officer, being a bit short on wit and repartee, continues this discussion by picking the man up by the throat and throwing him to the floor. This causes the sergeant to go charging over to the incident colliding with the woman in the process. The woman then shouts at the sergeant "What are you doing hitting a fucking woman?!" The sergeant responds by backhanding her across the face before stepping back and drawing his baton. If that's the sort of situation that puts the sergeant in fear of his life then he's clearly in the wrong job.

Next up is Kit Malthouse, deputy chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority and deputy Mayor of London on pretty much every news outlet. In his interview Mr Malthouse defended the Metropolitan Police by saying they deal with dozens of protests every year without any problems and cited the recent Tamil demonstrations as an example. This is exactly true because the Tamil protests saw ten people arrested and several hospitalised with police inflicted injuries. These include a three year old toddler who's leg was broken in a police baton strike.

Finally the BBC, again, spent most of the day interviewing John O'Conner a former Commander with the Metropolitan Police on various programs. In one of these live interviews Mr O'Conner said, with a straight face, that the sergeant had not removed his numbers, they were merely being covered up by the tabard he was wearing. That was just a bare-faced lie because the video and photographs show that the silver epaulets where the sergeant should be displaying his numbers end before the tabard begins. Mr O'Conner went on to claim the sergeant isn't a ranking officers. Again this is a complete lie because the silver epaulets show the sergeant is a silver commander. In public order situations this is an equivalent rank to an Inspector and meant that the sergeant had direct control over the two dozen Met officers you can see in the video.

The BBC are also making much of an issue out of the fact the woman in the video has employed a publicist. There is nothing sinister about that because the woman has already received request for interview from around 150 news agencies so she clearly already has the publicity she just needs someone to help her manage it. Besides, as the Hillsborough relatives will testify, if you're going to go up against the police then the first thing that will happen is that your reputation will get trashed.

Oh and the Crown Prosecution Service have decided they are not going too charge Damian Green, MP with any offence. This is no great surprise because the MP was arrested in a blaze up publicity just before the State Opening of Parliament. The whole thing was just a bit of theatre set up to divert attention from the fact the Queens speech had to be hastily re-written after the Queen vetoed plans to set up a national identity database.

Second Police Officer Suspended Over G20 Protests.

Today a senior Sergeant from Uxbridge Territorial Support Group has been suspended over allegations of assault stemming from the release of this video;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7999277.stm

Shot at the April 2nd memorial to Ian Tomlinson the video shows a young woman arguing with the officer who has his arms encased in plastic body armour. The woman says "What are you doing hitting a fucking woman?" The officer then backhands her across the face and shouts at her to "Go Away!" The officers then steps back onto the pavement, draws his extendable Asp baton and strikes the woman several times across the legs.

This sort of behaviour comes as no real surprise to experienced protesters because although the officer has removed his identifying epaulet numbers he is well known in protesters circles from his conduct with the Forward Intelligence Team and more recently as a Silver Commander with the TSG. He is widely regarded as a cowardly and violent thug who if he hadn't found work with the police would most certainly now be in prison.

What is surprising is the way the video has been edited down by the media to only show this incident. If you watch this longer video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V23PGWd46MM you can see the incident that caused the woman to be arguing with the police officer in the first place. Around 3min 10sec into the video you can see a black man in a black coat holding a newspaper. This man is remonstrating with the police presumably asking to leave the cordon so he can go about the rest of his day. The police officer respond by grabbing him by the throat and throwing him to the floor.

Choke holds are strictly forbidden as a restraint technique so if the police or anyone else uses one it is automatically considered excessive force and an act of criminal assault. I think this other officers should also be identified and suspended but I'm not sure we want to reward any more police officers for their bad behaviour by giving them a paid holiday.

Nottinghamshire Power Station Arrests Update.

All 114 Released Without Charge.

I should start by pointing out that I have no information linking those arrested with the Climate Camp. I only described them as such as a lazy way to summarize the dozen or so protest groups who campaign on the issue of climate change.

After yesterday's massive police raid which features over 200 officers from four separate police forces the police have been forced to release all those arrested without charge. All 114 will have to return to a police station on July 15th when the police will decide if they enough evidence to charge any of the arrested and proceed with one of the largest conspiracy trials in history or as is more likely they will completely withdraw the allegation. The police have also confirmed that what they described yesterday as; "Specialist equipment that posed a serious threat to the power stations safe operation" was in fact a pair of bolt cutters and some bicycle locks.

As the police's case is so thin they've been forced to resort to playing mind games. They've done this by announcing that these arrests were the result of an intelligence led operation. The idea of this is to make the arrested group and other protest groups paranoid by suggesting there is a police informant operating within the group. This is most likely untrue because it is far more probable that the police have an informant operating within an associated group and that informant has identified target members of the arrested group. Then either the police, misusing their anti-terrorism powers, or GCHQ who rarely bother with the law have placed these target members under electronic surveillance such as telephone wiretaps, email intercepts, hard drive hacks and financial record checks. Then either a wrong word in the wrong place or a misplaced electronic transaction have given the police the wrong impression about the groups activites and objectives.

There has also been some dramatic activity in Britain's other large police investigation, the anti-terrorism case in the North West of England. On Monday evening the police summoned an Army Bomb Disposal team to an address they were searching in Liverpool. The bomb squad then proceeded to evacuate residents from surrounding streets and set up and exclusion zone. This development has me very worried because the police had been searching the address for the last week. That means that the highly trained, specialist police search team are so thick they'd been wandering round a bomb factory for 7 days with out noticing. Either that or the police only brought in the bomb squad as an act of pure theatre to try and add credibility to an investigation which has already seen one suspect released without charge.

No explosive device or components have been found and by an amazing co-incidence the police were, this morning, granted permission to detain the remaining 11 suspects for a further 7 days.

Edited to add: My software is currently preventing me from using paragraphs so I apologise if this post is a little difficult to read.

G20 Climate Camp

Once the kettle closed around the protest outside the Bank of England I decided to head over to the Climate Camp to see what was going on. Due to pre-planning that was so half-arsed I hadn't bothered to look at a map I was expecting Bishopsgate to be a good half hours walk away from the Bank of England. I was then quite surprised to find that the Climate Camp had set up the other end of Threadneedle street.

When I arrived at around 13:15 the camp had already sprung up along Bishopsgate between St Helen's Place to the south and London Wall Street to the north. The campers had set up their own boundary at either end of the camp and set up tents, tables and sound systems within the site. Beyond the camps own boundary the police, in soft-uniform, had set up a porous cordon that allowed people to come and go from the camp at will. The police had also deployed officers within the camp which could easily come together to form cordons between the camp and the surrounding buildings if the need arose.


My coverage of the event in the weeks running up to the protest meant I was probably less popular at the Climate Camp then the police so I didn't stick around for long. From what I did see the mood at the camp seemed, as always, friendly and good natured. Campers sat around chatting, sharing food, playing musical instruments, dancing, holding meditation circles and reciting god awful poetry. With the police cordon open the camp was joined by local school children and people who were obviously dressed down bankers. All of these people were welcomed by the campers and allowed to freely and peacefully mingle. The atmosphere is well captured by this video shot at around the time I was there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc1jCsESLAU
The contrast between the scenes at the Climate Camp and the nearly violent scenes at the Bank of England is quite interesting. It is the sort of thing that a female MI5 officer in her early to mid-30's would describe as displaying the juxtaposition of "good" protesters versus "bad" protesters. The idea being that this display is to encourage disaffected people to join ineffective "good" protests rather then more effective "bad" protests. At around 13:45 I decided to leave the Climate Camp to see what was happening at the Stop The War Coalition protest at the US Embassy. As I left I witnessed a terrible indictment of modern society. Around 200 metres north of the Climate Camp there was a pub showing the news of a big screen TV. Outside the pub a group of around 100 people had gathered to watch, on TV, events that were happening 200 metres away from them.

When I returned at around 15:30 the atmosphere over the whole area had changed from the worse. At the Climate Camp the soft, porous cordon had been replaced by a sealed cordon made up of hardcore Uxbridge TSG officers in level 2 dress. Although many of them were wearing their NATO helmets from their belts rather then on their heads I did see them make a couple of snatch arrests as well as push, shove and punch a few protesters. To the campers credit they remained calm and good natured in spite of provocation. This included a chinless wonder of a banker who went on a little mission to march through the camp hurling abuse at anyone who came close to him. To be fair to the police an inspector did eventually pull this man to one side and give him the "Fuck off now or I'll nick you speech." At around 19:00, after I'd left, this happened. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t244-zEENSs

Aside from showing the polices general attitude to the the G20 demonstrations the video reveals several interesting things;

• Sussex Police Officers. These can be identified by their all black riot shields and the "KB" designation on their helmets. Sussex is several police jurisdictions away from the City of London so their presence along with officers from Hampshire shows just how large the G20 policing operation was. Also there are rumours of large protests happening in Sussex so it appears they were involved in the operation in order to train them to operate under the Metropolitan Police command structure.

• Police Conference. 30 seconds into the video you can see "Bronze" squad sergeants with orange epaulets in conference with "Silver" inspectors with white epaulets and "Gold" chief inspectors with yellow epaulets. This shows that the polices command structure was under little or no pressure at the time and were able to well plan their next move.

• The Protesters. In the video you can see and hear that the protesters are standing, facing the police lines, with their hands in the air chanting "This is not a riot!" This is important because it shows that at the time of the baton charge the protesters were posing no threat to either the police or members of the general public. I also shows that the rather then being some sort of violent hardcore the protesters aren't familiar with this type of contact with the police. In this type of situation more experienced protesters would stand with their backs to police lines. This reduces confrontation with the police, makes it harder for them to land baton strikes and stops the police using some of their dirtier tricks like punching people in the throat or kicking them in the balls.

Climate Camp Arrests.

Several years ago the Climate Camp collective was set up to lobby the UK government on the issue of climate change through a series of headline grabbing publicity stunts. Being quite a young and naive organisation they did not take their internal security as seriously as perhaps they should have done. This allowed the police/MI5 to build up and extensive network of informants and agents within the organisation.

Ahead of the G20 Summit this network came together in an attempt to get Climate Camp to eschew the idea of a traditional summer camp in favour of setting up a camp outside the European Climate Exchange on Bishopsgate. This was only partially successful and resulted in about 95% of the spy ring having their cover blown.

This loss of control over and information on Climate Camp's activities caused the Security Services to panic. The police responded last night with a show of force raid in Nottinghamshire in which 100 people where arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit criminal damage and aggravated trespass. As with last weeks anti-terrorism raids the police don't have much evidence as there is some debate as to whether any offence was actually being planned.

What will happen now is the police will use this handbook as evidence to hold the arrested for the full 36 hours. They will then be released without charge and asked to surrender to police bail sometime in mid-May / early June when the criminal investigation will be dropped.

This is an old police trick of effectively using their powers as a form of internment to keep people out of circulation. It also has the added advantage of keeping the Climate Camp legal team very busy just as that legal team is collecting and collating evidence of police involvement in the Ian Tomlinson death.

Ian Tomlinson Death. An Apology.

Ian Tomlinson was the man who died following an assault by the police at the G20 demonstrations in London. Following an initial post-mortem the death was officially put down to natural causes by way of heart attack and rumours abounded that Mr Tomlinson died of head injuries sustained as a result of a police baton strike. At the time I dismissed these rumours on the grounds that not even the dimmest Home Office pathologist could get away with missing evidence of head injuries at autopsy. It has now emerged that this is not the case.

In 2002 a suspicious death investigation was opened after the body of Ms Sally White was discovered in a flat in London. Although the victims body showed extensive evidence of violence including bruising, a head injury and a bite mark on the inner thigh the pathologist, Dr Freddy Patel, ruled the death as natural causes by way of a a heart attack and the criminal investigation was closed. The man who lived in the flat went on to murder two other women before chopping up their bodies and dumping the body parts in bin bags. Dr Freddy Patel was not disciplined for this failure and went on to perform Mr Tomlinson's autopsy.

Although Dr Patel is a fully accredited pathologist he is not a member of the Forensic Pathology Service, a group of specialist pathologists who normally investigate suspicious deaths in the Greater London area. Dr Patel does however have quite a lot of experience in dealing with deaths in police custody. In 1999 he carried out the autopsy on Roger Sylvester who died in St Anne's Hospital, Haringey after being violently restrained by eight police officers. Mr Sylvester's death was again put down to natural causes by way of heart attack and the police were cleared of any responsibility for his death. Following the coroners inquest Dr Patel was formally reprimanded by the General Medical Council (GMC) for giving false and misleading information about the case to the press.

While I still think the UK Security Services have irrefutable evidence that Mr Tomlinson did not die of head injuries sustained by a police baton strike I have to concede that yes, even the dimmest Home Office pathologist can get away with missing crucial evidence at an autopsy. This is especially true if the pathologist in question is Dr Freddy Patel.

In related news a Metropolitan Police officer is in a critical condition in hospital following an incident in which he received serious head injuries. In this case three people have already been arrested to allow the police to carry out a thorough investigation of the incident.

The Police Seem to Be Very Much on Edge.

On Wednesday something very unusual happened. I actually left the house. This little adventure took me past the local railway station where the police were doing a ticket inspection. This routine check involved a van load of riot cops and a van load of dog handlers stopping, sniffing and searching everybody who got off the train and some people who were just walking past the station. Far from being an attempt to catch fare dodgers this is an example of what the police call harassment policing. The idea is that they swamp a designated area and harass everybody in that area in order to stamp their authority on the area and send out the message that the police own these streets. On Wednesday this tactic proved to be so provocative that it caused a fight to break out further down the street. The police, being courageous upholders of law and order, decided to ignore the fight because it looked a bit nasty.

I've heard that these routine checks are being carried out across London and this type of in your face policing is only normally done when the police are feeling very nervous. Taken alongside the polices softly softly approach to the ongoing Tamil demonstration in Parliament Square, the unprecedented suspension of officers involved in the G20 protests and the fact Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick handed in his resignation before anyone had the chance to call for it makes me think the police are now very scared that they're about to find themselves in serious trouble.

Part of the reason for this uneasiness is the upcoming Mayday demonstrations. Police intelligence reports indicate there will be a G20 style demonstration in central London on May 1st. There will also be a large carnival style protest in Brighton on May 4th. The police are especially concerned by the Brighton protest because it is being organised by the Smash EDO campaign whose actions during the Israel/Gaza war brought them to the worlds attention. Also unlike London, Sussex is a rural area with dozens or parks, fields and country lanes for visiting protesters to set up camp. This makes the police think that the Brighton protest will be very large attracting protesters from across Europe and explains why Sussex police were invited up to London to take part in the G20 policing operation. Special Branch are so worried about the Brighton protest that they've gone to the extent of printing up flyers to promote a police brutality demonstration outside Scotland Yard on May 4th. This is an attempt to discourage protesters from attending the Brighton protest.

On top of this messy intelligence picture the police are also getting nervous over Wednesday's anti-terrorism raids. The rumour is that now a full two days after the raids took place they have yet to find any evidence to support the polices claim that the raid was a against a terrorist cell planning to strike over the Easter weekend.

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.

G20 Meltdown.

While I didn't think it we be a good idea for the opening speech of the G20 summit to be given by me to a judge the G20 protests promised to be the biggest story of the week if not the month so I had to go along and see it in person. To give you and idea of just how vast the G20 protest were here is the key I will be using for explanatory diagrams.


I decided to start the day by following the Silver Horse to symbolise that I was running late and it was the easiest for me to get to. When I arrived at London Bridge the march had already assembled and had begun to move off. There were less the 1000 people in the march so the police moved in to kettle the group in a moving cordon followed by several police vans.


As the march got halfway across London Bridge blocking the southbound carriageway the police stopped it moving forward. The police then went into the crowd to forcibly remove the masks of protesters so they could be identified and photographed by the Forward Intelligence Team. This process looked like it was going to go on for quite some time so I went on ahead to the Bank of England / Royal Exchange. When I arrived at around 11:40 none of the 4 horsemen had arrived but there were around 1000 people (mostly press) mingling around. The police had erected crowd control/crash barriers to separate the Royal Exchange courtyard from Cornhill and Threadneedle streets. There were police in soft uniform lining those crash barriers and dozens of police vans waiting in support along side streets such as Princes street, Cheapside and Queen Victoria street. At this point I got distracted by something and wandered off across Southwark Bridge. By the time I returned to the Bank at around 12:15 all of the four marches had arrived. The police were using soft cordons to try and keep the four groups separate and had established a porous cordon around the entire area. Then at around 12:40 the police began to withdraw from inside the cordoned area and stopped people passing through the outer cordon sealing the Kettle. They then brought up police vans in support of that cordon.


Next the police vans were turned side on preventing onlookers from seeing what was going on within the kettle. More officers, some with NATO helmets and short shields, then got out of the vans and lined up to establish an outer cordon. These two cordons then pushed out from the police vans in opposite direction in order to establish a so called sterile area.


This process of separating groups of friends coupled with the fact the police did it by pushing, punching and kicking people raised the tension. This led to scuffles with the police in which batons were used and missiles were thrown. With the kettle firmly closed and the adrenaline pumping the protesters heard that the Climate Camp Protest had successfully set up on Bishopsgate at the other end of Threadneedle Street. A group then decided that they were going to attempt to push through police lines and link up with the Climate Camp. Having no desire to get involved in this I retreated to the Threadneedle Street / Bishopsgate junction. This was not the best vantage point but from where I was standing it seemed that the 200+ police officer, 25 police vans and 10 police horses were having no trouble whatsoever repelling the charge of underweight vegans. At this point I went off to see what was going on at the Climate Camp itself and that is a whole other post. Although I did not see it myself I believe that at around 13:15 the police took the interesting decision to withdraw their cordon 20-30 metres back along Threadneedle street. This put the branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland with the mysteriously un-boarded up windows firmly within the Kettle. You've all seen what happened next.

I then went off to see what was happening with the Stop The War Coalition march assembling outside the US Embassy which again is a whole other post. When I returned to the Bank of England demonstration at around 15:30 the atmosphere had noticeably changed. The first thing I noticed was several ambulances lined up along Gracechurch street. The ambulance crews looked as though they'd been kept busy over the last few hours running a sort of field dressing station. All the police were now in full riot gear wearing NATO helmets and carrying circular, short, shields. There was a sense from the groups of exhausted protesters and police officers littering the pavements that this was a lull in the fighting and boredom had begun to set in. I then nipped into a pub to have a beer and watch the news to catch up on what had happened in the G20 summit itself. While in the pub I decided it was time to go home because I had to cook the kid's dinner. As I was walking to the station I noticed several worrying incidents. The first was a Metropolitan Police officer swearing at, spitting at and generally goading passers-by on, I believe King street. Next on Queen Victoria street the line of riot police were withdrawing 50-60 metres back towards the Royal Exchange. This caused members of the public to follow them as it appeared the street was being re-opened. Ahead of the advancing public, up one of the side-streets, there was a large deployment of riot police who looked ready to spring out and form a new cordon.


To me this seemed like an attempt by the police to draw as many people as possible into the Kettle. I did not stick around to find out what happened next.

The final thing I saw before I left the area was a City of London Police dog handler violently shaking his own van. This is an old police trick I remember from my football days. The idea is that the dogs inside the vans will get whipped up into such a frenzy that the moment they are let out they will viciously attack the first thing they see. It is normally a sign that the police are about to move in and give someone, anyone, an absolute fucking kicking and yes that is the technical term.

You'll Have to Excuse GCHQ.

When the conficker virus went round the silly little boys took it literally and disabled all my USB ports as a precaution. This means I am now having trouble with my iPod and have been forced to download a new version of iTunes causing them to go into something of a panic.

This display of epic fail means I'm delayed in posting up in my much awaited account of the G20 protests. This post does detail an incident relating to the conduct of City of London Police dog handlers which when viewed alongside the freshly released video of Ian Tomlinson shortly before his death at the G20 protests suddenly becomes very revelant. I just want to mark this moment in time to state my post had already been written before I saw the Guardian's video.

Busy, Busy, Busy.

With all the stuff that's been going on recently if I don't make at least three posts today it's going to be Friday night before I'm vaguely back on schedule.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlosconi is one of the major architects of the Bristol Abuse Case. Politically Mr Berlosconi is very right wing, almost to the point of the fascism. He has made it quite clear that women's rights, gay rights, immigrant rights and basic human rights are no concern of his. This means that whenever I hear one of the gay rights for gays mob speak in support of the BAC I cannot help but laugh in their faces. Perhaps if they actually believed in their own cause they wouldn't be so easily exploited.

On the subject of exploitation the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) have been poking the widow of Ian Tomlinson with sticks until she made an appeal for witness to come forward and help with the investigation into her husbands death at the G20 protests. There seems little point in contacting the IPCC on the matter because they're not carrying out the investigation, the City of London Police are. Besides when the Home Office decided that they weren't going to carry out Mr Tomlinson's autopsy correctly they also decided that there is no way on earth this investigation will conclude that the police were in any way responsible for Mr Tomlinson's death. The only reason for this appeal is to get G20 protesters to voluntarily walk into an police station and hand over their names and contact details. This will no doubt help the Forward Intelligence Team (FIT) match names to faces and will probably result in a few arrests. I have to say that I feel very sorry for Mr Tomlinson's family because it appears that they're about to be frogmarched into a repeat of the De Menezes inquest debacle. It seems killing the husband wasn't enough for the police so now they're going to go and torture the widow.

Tamil Genocide: Britain's Dirty Little Secret?

At around 16:00 yesterday (6/4/09) around a thousand Tamils seized Westminster Bridge in protest against the Sri Lanken army's ongoing offensive in Sri Lanka's Tamil north. The Metropolitan Police, still overstretched from the G20 protests, were powerless to stop them and the protesters held the bridge until around 10:00 this morning. Then as the police shift change brought in re-enforcements scuffles broke out as protesters were marched into Parliament Square where they remain. Police have indicated that they intend to move in at around 16:00 to clear the square and arrest demonstrators under SOCPA which criminalises demonstrations around the Houses of Parliament.

I must confess that I do not know much about the situation in Sri Lanka. Since the latest offensive began in January, alongside Israel's Gaza war, the British media seem to have been discouraged from reporting on the conflict. What I do know comes mainly from talking to members of Croydon's large Tamil community who take great pride in selling Tamil products, flying Tamil flags and displaying posters showing the destruction going on in their homeland. Sadly I also know that Croydon is a die-hard loyalist town riddled with MI5 networks and full of veterans of nasty little wars from Belfast to Beirut. This means that I can't help but think that rather then being a country that will call for an end to Sri Lanka's war Britain is complicit in it. MI6 have clearly been providing the Sri Lanka government with intelligence on the Tamil Tiger's funding and resupply networks. They may even have helped the Sri Lankan army plan the offensive.

Pussy Update.

I know. I'm sorry but there's been lots of exciting news amongst our feline friends.

In the middle of March my cat suddenly and mysteriously lost his voice. He just walked in on day and started to move his mouth as if to miaow but no sound came out. This surreal and disturbing scene almost caused me to make a post entitled "My Cat Has Lost His Miaow!" but I resisted the temptation. I am glad to report that after about a week my cat's voice returned although we are slightly envious of the time when he was quiet.

My cats arch-nemesis. The black cat from next door. Has finally come of age and proved himself to be a sleek, muscular and highly efficient hunting machine. His owners have decided to mark this milestone in the traditional fashion by awarding him with a large bell to hang around his neck. The idea of this bell is to warn the poor, little birdies that he is on the prowl and generally slow down his attacks. My cat is finding the whole situation to be nothing short of hilarious.

My mothers cat, Sam, has been having a much worse time of things. On the morning of April 4th my mother went out to the garden to find him dead. Apparently the otherwise healthy 7-year old just suddenly dropped dead from natural causes. As there seems to have been alot of that going around this summit season I think one of my mother neighbours poisoned him. This served two main purposes. Firstly rumours that Sam, my mother's pussy, had dropped dead from natural causes is the sort of brain melting story that would give a few of the NATO delegates a stroke. Secondly causing my mother grief would make me feel compelled to strengthen a familial link that has been strained of late. This familial link is key to the cunning trap the Brits are planning to spring on me in June.

The other things I need to round up are not strictly related to pussies but I've been doing some more research into the G20 death. On a lot of news wires, bulletin boards and discussion forums used by activists and journalists there have been a number of posts claiming the deceased had died from police inflicted head injuries. The circumstance of the death are inconsistent with head injuries and a brain injury is not the sort of thing even the dimmest Home Office pathologist could get away with missing at autopsy. These rumours appear to be an attempt by MI5/Special Branch to build a sort of grass roots campaign claiming that Mr Tomlinson died of head injuries. This straw man argument would then be easily discredited by the IPCC investigation further helping to cover up the fact that Mr Tomlinson was killed by the police.

Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol was closed on Saturday night. Apparently this was the first time this had happened in 40 years and it was done because engineers discovered cracks in the supporting rods. The bridge was meant to re-open on Sunday but I didn't bother check because this couldn't possibly be a reference to the Bristol Abuse Case. After all it would take more then a team of engineers and 24 hours to make that project viable. No wonder the Sun wants you to avert your gaze.

An earthquake has struck Italy killing at least 70. I have to offer my deepest sympathy to the Italians because it appears Silvio Berlusconi was not amongst the dead.

G20 Death: Still No Autopsy Report?

In November 2008 Greek police shot and killed Alexandros Grigoropoulos. This murder of an unarmed 16 year old boy sparked six weeks of ferocious rioting across Greece and led to ongoing social unrest in the country that has seen government buildings bombed and policemen killed in drive by shootings. In January 2009 Oakland police shot and killed Oscar Grant while he was handcuffed and pinned to the ground by several officers. This event led two days of rioting which saw over 100 people arrested and caused over $200,000 worth of damage. These events have meant that the state's belief that it can kill with impunity has become the defining issue of 2009.

Against this inflammatory backdrop the events of the G20 protests in London were probably enough to send the British security services into a tailspin of panic and lies.

At around 19:30 on April 1st London Ambulance Service (LAS) attended a man who had collapsed with breathing difficulties in the Bishopsgate area of London where the police where clearing demonstrators from the Climate Camp protest. While the Ambulance crew were in attendance the man went into cardiac arrest and at around 20:00 was pronounced dead in hospital. By 22:00 the Metropolitan Police had issued a statement declaring that the dead man was not a protester. Instead they claimed he was a family man returning home from work when he was attacked by a group of protesters causing him to have a heart attack. These same protesters then prevented the man from receiving medical attention by attacking the police coming to his aid with a barrage of bottles. This story was widely presented as fact by the national press the next day.

Throughout the following day (April 2nd) a few problems began to emerge with the police's version of events;

• Although the man had a wife and nine children he did not live with them. Instead he lived in bed & breakfast accommodation near Whitechapel.

• He had not been at work. Instead he had spent most of the day loitering around Monument Underground station where his friend had been selling newspapers from a street stall.

• When he collapsed he had been running away from police lines which had been baton charging the crowd in order to clear the street.

• The first person to give the man medical assistance was one of the protest's own first aiders. The first aider immediately contacted the LAS control room by telephone and was following a paramedics advice to establish and preserve the casualties airway.

• When the police first arrived on the scene their first act was to attack the first aider(s) with batons and shields.

• There was no barrage of bottles

• When the police finally sent two of their own first aiders to attend the casualty those officers refused to continue contact with a more qualified paramedic who was already monitoring the casualties condition.

• The police first aiders moved the casualty before they had stabilised his condition.

• No cause of death had been established. The autopsy was not even scheduled to be performed until the afternoon of April 2nd.

On Friday April 3rd detectives from the Metropolitan Police's Special Branch transported the victims widow to the Bank of England for a sick little photo shoot where the officers encouraged her to tear down messages of condolence from a memorial. This level of contact between the victims family and the police force under investigation breaks the Independent Police Complaint Commission (IPCC) own guidelines for investigating a death involving the police.

Now an autopsy has been performed and cause of death has been established the police are keeping that COD secret and have gone very, very quiet on the matter.

If they continue with their silence I will have little choice then to believe the well informed rumours that the dead man had been sprayed in the face with CS gas causing respiratory distress leading to cardiac arrest. This is something an unobservant pathologist would record as death by natural causes negating the need for a coroners inquest.

NATO Summit.

Summit season continues with the 2 day NATO summit in Strasbourg. This means National Bullshit Month is limping on like a wounded dog and I haven't really been paying attention. One story I cannot avoid though is the coroners inquest into the Foster family deaths. As you may remember this is a case from August 2008 where a Mr Foster killed his wife and daughter before burning down his mansion and shooting himself. When this story first appeared it was presented with Amy's birth father playing the role of Mr Foster. In order to cause confusion the story is now being presented with me in the role of the "ruined millionaire". Personally I think that's a bit unfair because it wasn't me who burnt down my house in 2006 nor was it me who burnt down my house in 2004.

The coroner recorded a verdict of suicide on Mr Foster and two verdicts of unlawful killing on his wife and daughter. The only interesting revelation to come out of the case was the detail that it had been recorded on a computerised medical database back March 2008 that Mr Foster was suffering from depression and experiencing suicidal thoughts. This just reinforces my initial conclusion that Mr Foster had been identified as a viable suicide risk by MI5 and then harassed until he committed this crime in order to produce a headline grabbing story.

The most impressive bit of bullshit though comes from the summit itself. A new law being discussed by the Afghan parliament has caused some people to call for a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan because the Afghan government does not respect women's rights. Those of you with long memories will remember that long before September 11th the British government were calling for an invasion of Afghanistan because the Taliban didn't respect women's rights. This means we are now using part of the excuse for invading the place as part of the excuse for withdrawing troops from the place. Outstanding!

G20 Summit Final Communique.

(02/04/09) Today the G20 Summit, London broke up with the release of the final communique. I haven't had time to fully digest the document or read it's several appendix but a quick glance reveals two very interesting things;

1. Fiscal Stimuli: When the G20 summit was announced back in November 2008 Gordon Brown heralded it as an opportunity to enact the largest, co-ordinated fiscal stimulus in the history of the world. In the final draft the term "fiscal stimulus" appears only once. All previous stimulus measures are now referred to as "expansionary policies" and there is a resolution to put in place credible exit strategies for existing measures. This is a diplomatic way of saying that the world is now looking for ways to undo Gordon Brown's economic policies.
2. $1.1trillion for the IMF: The centre-piece of the communique is the announcement that the 20 will boost funding to the IMF to a massive US$1.1trillion. However when you break down that figure it is actually;

• $100bn from the sale of gold. Basically transferring an existing IMF asset from one form to another.
• $250bn in credit guarantees. Not actually money as it will only be required in the event that an international transaction defaults.
• $250bn in drawing rights. Again not actual money just a change in the way existing money can be accessed.
• $500bn in extra funding. This was the original figure touted before the summit and will be made up by USA($200bn), EU ($100bn), Japan ($100bn), Saudi Arabia ($60bn) and China ($40bn).

When you look at it like that it appear the G20 leaders have come up with this massive figure to grab headlines. This makes it look as though the worlds stock markets have risen because of bold political leadership when in reality the markets rose because the G20 broke up without achieving very much at all.

The Neither Dead nor in Jail Post.

Because I am neither of those things although I do have a big blister on the sole of my foot.

I have been up to the protests in the city and I have to say that as I was leaving about 5:00pm the mood started getting nasty and you got the impression that the police were getting ready to move in and crack some heads. More to follow tomorrow but first I've got to watch the news to find out what the hell went on.