Boil that Kettle

If you're stuck at home or in college away from the Kids v. Cops fun, don't despair: play Kettling online and learn how to crack heads.

Stick that in your kettle

One of my distant superiors was involved in the design and defence of 'kettling', the police tactic of imprisoning legal protestors for long periods, allowing them out only if these innocent people surrender their details and images to cops for a database that's been declared illegal.

Well yah boo sucks to you, Professor: your methods have been described as 'inadequate' and outdated by the official report into the G20 events.

Some highlights:

Commanders appeared not to properly understand basic human rights laws or the legal requirements surrounding the use of kettling, the report said. However, O'Connor said this was the case for only some senior officers, and refused to identify those at fault.

It says police are currently failing in their human rights obligations, and describes public order policing guidance issued by the Association of Chief Police Officers – adopted by all forces across England and Wales – as "insufficient".

The national policy should be overhauled, it says, to "demonstrate explicit consideration of the facilitation of peaceful protest".

contrary to claims by senior Met officers ahead of the demonstrations, there was "no specific intelligence which suggested any planned intention to engage in co-ordinated and organised public disorder".

Despite that, senior commanders gave "no consideration" to the idea that the protests might be peaceful and planned how to deal "robustly" with unlawful activity.

Just to be clear: there are some individual officers behaving insensitively and criminally, but this report, and my point, is that there's a structural and institutional problem with policing when it comes to protest: the police force is far to the right of the population and shows no sign of recognising citizens' rights to peaceful protest.

Policing: nature's way

I knew I'd seen the police tactics ('kettling') employed to kill Ian Tomlinson and beat up numerous other inoffensive protesters somewhere else. Sorry about the appalling hyper-America voiceover - I couldn't find the staid BBC footage.

Atten-SHUN

Already overrun with ex-bizzies expounding the joy of 'kettling' peaceful protesters, my esteemed institution is toying with the idea of a degree for squaddies. As we've just merged with the Law school, how about 'Spotting an Illegal War for Dummies', and 'What Actually Constitutes Torture and Why It's A Bad Thing'?