Just been reading various news websites and blogs re the protests yesterday. Most of the journalists seem to think the police did a good job overall- the protestors seem to think otherwise, their main complaint that the police were heavy handed and treated them all like criminals. They were stuck in a blockade for a few hours with no access to the toilet/drinks/feed etc. This included pregnant women, and children.
The thing is, rioting is a criminal act. If you have a crowd of people, some of which are rioting, you can't go in and pick out each rioter, so you have to contain the crowd. Which means IMO that if you go on a demo, you should be prepared for this, and take a drink, and cross your legs, or don't bl00dy well go on it. Especially don't take a child along and don't go if you're pregnant.
I am all for the right to demonstrate peacefully but lets be realistic, its easy to predict in advance which events may involve troublemakers - some people seem to put on this naive act just to suit them and it really annoys me.
