Student protests in London lead to violence

Surprised no-one's made a topic about this yet.

Last night student protests about the raising of fees and cuts to higher education turned pretty violent.

Prince Charles and his wife Camilla got caught in the crossfire, too.

The vote in Parliament was pretty damn close - 326 in favour vs 302 against. I'd say this is far from over even though the bill's been passed.

edited 10th Dec '10 7:18:18 AM by pagad

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

Another proud moment for students everywhere...

(Is a student.)

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

And the bitch of it, from a civil liberties  ^*

viewpoint, is that the violence only gives lawmakers more of an excuse to pass increasingly restrictive limitations on demonstrations and free speech in general because of the violent asshats in the crowd (a lot of which, I suspect, aren't students, but anarchists and other "fuck the system" retards that are looking for an excuse to get violent, and couldn't care less about the protest subject).

All your safe space are belong to Trump

Not really an accurate title. Should read 'Kettling leads to violence'.

Because seriously met, way to fuck up there, what did you think it would make people do?

"When you cut your finger, I do not bleed." Response of a man who lived on the outskirts of a concentration camp.

What is "kettling", anyway? From the context of the Beeb link it's something bad, but beyond that my US-based (and biased, admittedly ) brain is drawing blanks.

All your safe space are belong to Trump

Lets say you have thousands of people.

You block off one three routes, get the protestors to go down the block and then have more riot cops rapidly redeploy to block off the route they came through.

Keep all these people in a tiny freezing areas for hours on end without letting them leave, and occasionally charge at them with horses.

"When you cut your finger, I do not bleed." Response of a man who lived on the outskirts of a concentration camp.

"I didn't understand quite how bad things had become in this country until I saw armoured cops being deployed against schoolchildren in the middle of Whitehall. These young people joined the protest to defend their right to learn, but in the kettle they are quickly coming to realise that their civil liberties are of less consequence to this government than they had ever imagined The term "kettle" is rather apt, given that penning already-outraged people into a small space tends to make tempers boil and give the police an excuse to turn up the heat, and it doesn't take long for that to happen. When they understand that are being prevented from marching to parliament by three lines of cops and a wall of riot vans, the kids at the front of the protest begin to moan. "It's ridiculous that they won't let us march," says Melissa, 15, who has never been in trouble before. "We can't even vote yet, we should be allowed to have our say.""

Wikipedia is fun. Lest any self-hating Americans feel that Europe has evolved beyond human rights issues of its own.... <.<

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

Another proud moment for the Met as well then...

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

I thought it was about college students?

Fight smart, not fair.

Kettling is not a new thing by far. The Met has been at it for months, if not years.

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

Could have been undercover police. They do that in Canada, pretend they're protesters and start becoming violent. They got caught red-handed in Quebec during a union protest.

edited 10th Dec '10 9:10:41 AM by breadloaf

That's idle speculation... scary thought nonetheless though.

edited 10th Dec '10 9:15:05 AM by GameChainsaw

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

Deboss: Younger people are protesting because this will affect their prospects for a university education - the law won't go into effect until 2012.

Current students and graduates are protesting on principle, even though the law won't affect them.

The heavy-handed tactics used by the police seem to have been getting more and more questionable since the initial protests. Cavalry charges? Kettling nonviolent protesters and not allowing them out, even when children are involved? What the fuck? At least one student has brain damage from a police truncheon.

edited 10th Dec '10 9:24:36 AM by pagad

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

I sincerly hope that the police realise that this kind of stupid crap is why no-one respects their uniforms anymore and a lot of people consider them overstuffed bullies. Because seriously, this whole thing is bullshit, the police seem to be terrible at their job of keeping order and also terrible about not letting things get out of hand on their side.

Seems police officers are just crappy everywhere. I feel for you guys across the pond, especially since they're raising my tuition fees as well over here.

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

This is ludicrous.

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

That's extremely unfortunate, I wonder if anything will come out of it.

Couple of channers/anons//b/tards/moralfags/whatever-the-fucks were there, trolling the police by the looks of things (standing close to them, not doing anything, but looking like they were saying plenty, then suddenly one of the cops made a lunge at them).

The kettling is disgusting.

But the government needs these violent student protests to get big, to distract attention from and cast doubts upon other protests, about more immediately essential cuts. It's win-win from their POV.

edited 10th Dec '10 1:58:18 PM by mmysqueeant

So, wait. They herd them like cattle into an area and then they protest and get rowdy as a result.

Uh, entrapment?

Sucks.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

It's not exactly entrapment, since they were protesting anyway, but it is quite nasty. The agent provocateurs that always get rumored of, too.

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

The student with a brain injury should never have been hit in the head.

The press should also not be waving around the generic term "brain injury" without any further details. The long-term symptoms of a brain injury range from nothing to debilitating. If the student has a serious brain injury then he has my sympathy and I hope the asshole who hit him is dealt with. If he doesn't then the press who are using this to sell papers and the protesters who are using this for political endse are all fuckers and I hate them.

Full disclosure: Father's brain injury left him with no sense of balance.

Not all of them are agents is the problem. There is always at least one hot headed asshole ruining it for everyone else in every group no matter how calm. I do not doubt there are agents in the crowd who insight it into a riot but not every time. Sometimes folks as a whole are just really angry or upset and that sort of emotion spreads quickly in large crowds. I could see them being pretty ticked about this change.

Isolating them like that and redirecting them is a common riot control tactic. Your supposed to use it for riots though not a protest. The idea is to break off pieces of the crowd from the group until the calm down and release them away from the mob. You basically take chunks out of larger body let them cool off a bit then release through a series of controlled streets to keep them from readily rejoining the riot.

It has a lot in common with controlling herd animals. For the U.S. linguistic label I would call it Corralling. It works in the same way redirecting the movement of a group of animals through physical barriers until you trap them in a single location.

And then there is the excessive force side -_- never a fan of it when it comes to non-life threatening or combat situations.

edited 10th Dec '10 3:40:00 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

^ Ever since those bloody idiots attacked Millbank tower in the first major protest the police have basically been treating every subsequent protest as a riot about to happen. There was one that happened recently during one of the worst cold spells this country's had in a long time in which the police immediately kettled the protest despite the fact that nothing disruptive had occurred, and this is just the logical conclusion of such treatment.

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

I can understand having a presence of riot control standing on the street sides to dissuade any reckless action but preempting everything is rather shocking suppression of freedom of protest. How bad has this gotten in Britain?

edited 10th Dec '10 4:32:48 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

I'm not good at british politics?

• Can the lords stop this?
• Is are the lords against this or for?

Also I am for semi violent protest, as fear of no re-election is not as good a motivator as fear of personal injury.

edited 10th Dec '10 6:48:05 PM by Foringinn