Guest blogger - Merry Christmas from the Gardener

Christmas is very much a time for reflection, and of course for bathing ones hands in antiseptic after cutting the holly for the Christmas decorations for the Big House and feeling smug about making a small fortune flogging mistletoe to the florist in the village. Most people think that, with the entire estate buried under six inches of snow, the work of the Gardener in winter mostly consists of keeping a very low profile, sitting in the potting shed with the paraffin heater on full blast, smoking a pipe filled with the more socially unacceptable sort of tobacco, drinking home brew and browsing pornography.

And indeed I can assure you that at this time of year, that’s exactly how I would spend my time if I had the choice. Some folk associate the smell of roast turkey with the Yule season, some the smell of Christmas pudding, but for me the smell of midwinter is a pungent mix of loam, shag, heating oil and parsnip wine (which can substitute for heating oil in an emergency).

The reality is somewhat different. The plants may be sleeping but nature is positively insomniac and this is the time of year when the Gardener, with time on his hands, is able to address certain matters.

Foxes, mostly.

By the time the gentry in the Boxing Day hunt have finished crashing through every hedge and fence in the county in pursuit of a single fox, commoners lacking horses but possessed of common sense pack a sturdy shovel, and follow the paw prints to track the little buggers down.

Foxes are not the only pests abroad in the deep midwinter. There’s badgers, stoats, weasles and so on. In fact most of the cast of ‘Wind in the Willows’ are out and about, except they don’t all wander around being fey, wearing waistcoats and generally acting like Edwardian toffs, unless the upper classes of that bygone era made a habit of crapping in the flower beds, digging up the bulbs and savaging raw chickens.

Pest control comes in all forms and, as Gardener, it’s my role to ensure that any pests are dealt with before they get to the Big House, especially since the Squire has developed the habit of keeping a loaded shotgun next to his drinks cabinet. Many a peaceful evening has been disrupted by the roar of both barrels being discharged through a hopefully open window and a cry of ‘got the bugger!’ addressed at whatever creature has just been vaporised in a cloud of the Squire’s bespoke shot mix of lead and depleted uranium. Of course, as the level of scotch drops through the night, the man’s aim and judgement do become a little erratic; I believe that the tally for this year is five foxes, two badgers, a nephew who was returning late from a party (only winged him), a rather charming terracotta pot (vaporised) and several branches of a nearby chestnut tree that were ‘waving suspiciously’ in the wind last September.

So it’s important that menaces such as ramblers, carol singers and gypsies are all deterred from making it within gravel scrunching range of the Big House.

And of course, this time of year gives a chap time to reflect and to plan for the future. Or more accurately, to plot the humiliation and ultimately the destruction of ones rivals; in my case the gardener at The Grange who last year pipped me at the post for first prize in the Most Humorous Looking Vegetable class at the village show. This was done, if my suspicions are correct, through the illegal use of a forcing mould (no beetroot would ever grow in that shape, not even nature at its most perverted would permit such a thing) and an application of rohypnol to the judge’s tea.

Of course, the owner of The Grange is a relative newcomer to the village, having won a fortune on the lottery they have decided to live the life of country gentry. In encouraging their staff to stoop to underhand methods to achieve something as petty as a prize in the village show, they have already demonstrated a natural aptitude for embracing country ways that normally takes generations to achieve.

Merry Christmas

Guest blogger - Merry Christmas from the butler

Preparing the house for Christmas is not unlike preparing it for any holiday weekend, or indeed any weekend when guests might arrive, except with more tinsel. One does, however, have to take precautions, like hiding all the best booze.

It is at Christmas that a large household comes into its own. Nothing does justice to a traditional Christmas dinner quite like a large kitchen staff and I believe the guests delight in being roused from their slumbers before dawn to the sight of half of the kitchen staff chasing the geese that have made a last break for freedom before being rounded up and beaten to death where they have been run to ground. Those of a delicate disposition are so affected by the scene of feathery carnage that they can hardly manage second helpings at lunch.

There are also seasonal delicacies to be considered. In particular, pickles, and the Master is very particular about his pickles. Normally the household source pickles from a very reputable pickle supplier, but for Christmas, the master insists on purchasing home-made pickles from Mrs Crone in the village. With but a single tooth and a singular passion for pickles, Mrs Crone dedicates her garden to cultivating the sort of things one normally finds in a pickle jar, such as onions, shallots and beetroot, as well as the sort of twisted shapes that can only be guessed at. The woman even brews her own vinegar. The taste is, I am reliably informed, remarkable and the kitchen staff inform me that the vinegar itself is like nothing else for getting the tarnish off of silver, or indeed unblocking drains – useful with an entire country house on a rich diet.

Of course Christmas is very much a time for traditions. The Master delights in setting the Christmas quiz and as it is announced one can see the bright young things up from university keen to prove that their grinding student debts are being invested in a fine education straining at the bit to show off their expensive knowledge, only to have their hopes dashed as the quiz is revealed to be an entirely scandalous and borderline libellous test of what has happened in the village that year, which inevitably ends with fisticuffs over the question of ‘which bounder got little Marion up the duff in March’ or a more serious thinly veiled accusation of cheating to retain the village cricket trophy.

As butler though, there is no greater privilege than being trusted to distribute the various clues and prizes in the treasure hunt. And of course the tradition of booby-trapping the suit of armour in the Great Uall is always satisfying, especially when one sees the end result. Is there a greater thrill than seeing a young chap almost faint with embarrassment as the thing clatters apart at the merest touch as he moves to retrieve a clue from the visor, or hearing his shrill scream of terror as the axe that was previously upright falls quickly forward, shaving to bristles the hair on one side of his head before embedding itself three inches into the solid oak floor? As I always say, smelling salts and a clean pair of trousers for the guest are the butler’s friend at Christmas.

But no mere parlour games, not even the traditional ones the Master insists are played at Christmas; ‘bloated goat’, ‘slap the leather’, ‘soapy dog’, ‘goose fat twister’, ‘chimney surfing’ or even ‘sherry gargling kareoke’ compared with the glorious sport of the Boxing day hunt. Or, as the Master says: ‘the Boxing Day hunt, thank Christ they’ve outlawed it’. Gentry in general love the idea of hunting, as a class they love leather, love borderline bondage and tight clothing obviously to hold well-fed guts in, but having it all tied up with hunting a fox on horseback with hounds is just not on. As the Master explains, the best way to get rid of a fox is with a gun, or shovel, or increasingly as more of the village lads return from a tour of Afghanistan, a young man toting heavy duty contraband weaponry aided by night vision goggles.

Merry Christmas!

Guest Blogger - Merry Christmas from the Squire

At this very special time of the year, ones thoughts turn very much to ones family and friends. One considers ones family, the near and the dear, the far away and the not so dear. One thinks of friends, many of whom are no longer with us, others one is not allowed to socialise with any more because ones wife has decided they are a ‘bad influence’. One thinks of those who want to be near us at Christmas and one thinks; pull up the drawbridge and hide until New Year.

Because if Christmas is a time for anything, it’s a time for copious amounts of alcohol. And traditions. And one of the grand traditions if one resides a home that has enough room to put up a guest, is how to avoid having guests at all costs.

When one resides in, say, a Highland cottage this might be achievable, especially as the current climate means that the roads should be open again some time in May, but when one resides in a large country house things become a great deal trickier. Traditionally, the prelude to somebody inviting themselves begins in early November, when they attempt to show what jolly good fun they are by breathing gin fumes onto the bonfire to turn the flames blue. Innocent questions along the lines of ‘are you ski-ing over Christmas? Or ‘Will you be in Australia for the Ashes?’ or even ‘have you ordered several crates of port yet?’ really mean ‘can I come and stay with you for at least a month and eat all your stilton?’.

Deflecting house guests is part art, part science. Obviously one can cite germs. While he days of scarlet fever, the plague or measles are long behind us, thanks to media hysteria one can put the name of any animal before the term ‘flu’ with total credibility. ‘Bird’. ‘Dog’ and ‘Man’ have all been used with real success. But there’s always some bugger who’s had vaccinations or who thinks they are immune, so one has to be prepared to permanently damage the family name to get some peace and quiet. Current favourites are to make the home a no-go area by hinting that one has a daughter who is associated with a member of a terrorist cell, or who has married somebody who is from quite the wrong set, or foreign.

However, one is expected to do one’s bit when it comes entertaining and, somehow or other, one inevitably has to put up with some house guests at Christmas. The thing to do is to try and enjoy oneself by making the most of traditions. I always enjoy the tradition of hiding all the televisions and pretending that there is no reception, as this rather thins out those who really want to stay for the whole period.

Establishing a real country house atmosphere for Christmas is, of course, a fine art. It requires one to do more than turn down the heating and cheat in an outrageous manner at board games. Nothing marks Christmas quite like a ghost story and I only consider my tales a success if the listener is in therapy for some months afterwards. It’s particularly satisfying if one can weave a tale about the guest room that somebody is staying in.

Games and ghost stories are all very well but Christmas is, as we all know, really a time for young people, as they creep from room to room in the dead of night in order to make their own entertainment. Of course, not having any lights on at night only adds to the excitement, as one really has to make sure that one has the right room before entering. Many a happy relationship has, I am sure, started with the knock at the wrong door and a delighted surprise. Indeed I know two fellas who run an antique shop in the village who met just like that.

Indeed when it comes to the best way to enjoy Christmas, I consider it’s best to hole up in the study with some cold cuts, a crate of scotch, some back numbers of ‘Gentleman and Player’ and a half kilo of Moroccan gold an old school chum is kind enough to send every year.

Merry Christmas!

Countdown to Christmas

Bloody hell! It’s metrological mayhem as winter grips the nation once again, like an icy fist grabbing at your festive nutsack. Everyone appears to be in a total state of shock that there could very well be a white Christmas. The surprise is, to my mind, totally unfounded – just look at the evidence; all those Christmas cards showing jolly carollers, people going to midnight mass and revellers enjoying themselves, in the snow. OK granted, these are all paintings of jolly goings on in Victorian times but seeing as we are bombarded with these images every year for the last two years in December, can it really be that much of a shock when it actually snows before Christmas?

Well, yes, apparently. Next year’s Christmas card will be not so jolly people, not going anywhere, stuck in a check-in queue at Heathrow while the airport crew try and dig 747s out of snowdrifts. Christmas is indeed a time for friends and family, not a time for trying to jet off to the Caribbean for two weeks, as many people at Gatwick are currently finding out. Looks like this December the only bugger flying will be Santa.

Surely if you are stuck in an airport in the snow the temptation must be to start a rumour that terrorists have taken the place over in order to free the dictator of a banana republic, and see how long it takes for people to stop screaming and work out that that is the plot to Die Hard II.

And it certainly has snowed. This morning I struggled to the small shed in the garden where the lawnmower, garden stuff and, importantly, shovel, is stored. Shovels are fantastic for stoving in the heads of foxes (at least two visited the garden last night, looking at the tracks) and almost as good for digging your car out of the car park space you left it in that morning before the latest big dump. There are no airplanes, there was little traffic and what there was was hushed by the snow, it was a moment of almost perfect peace, with the church bells chiming seven – I could almost hear the frost crackling on the wood of the shed door. Standing there two things occurred; how little time we get to stand and listen to the bells; and what sort of person gets up to be at their bell rope for seven in the morning thinking ‘time for a really good peal!’. I’m betting hearty Christian.

All this snow and ice means that normal service has been severely disrupted – including Amazon and other on-line retailer deliveries. This means that unless I am to face alienation from the family come Christmas, I have to fit in some shopping, as well as trying to struggle into work.

This leaves no time at all for blogging. Hence, some of the chaps from the village have decided to step in as guest bloggers.

Food for thought

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20101118/BUSINESS/11180324/Farm-slices-up-squash-but-not-the-profits

This is the sort of story that gives you a warm glow. Not just because it's a good story about seasonal good food, consumed either at a communal table with family and friends during a special meal, or alone in front of the tee vee, or just as a vegetable offset to a mainly meat treat or even, if you're in a hurry, blitzed in a blender to constitute a soup to cut out all that tedious chewing. No, it's because it corrects a misconception and you finish the article knowing the world is a little bit better than you thought it was when you started.

Thanks to the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, I thought that isolated farms in upstate New York were used exclusively for strange rituals, inbreeding and the odd genetic experiment gone horribly wrong (which I guess is more inbreeding). Not so, it would appear that innovation lurks in the woods and fields, as well as vegetables.

Or maybe it's just me. I've always had a problem with excessive food packaging. I can't see why you need the skills of a safecracker to get into a bag of spuds. And as for vegetables presented in cardboard trays with plastic lids, what the hell is going on there? Unless the avocado in question is gold plated, it's just not justified.

Most fruit and vegetable come in their own packaging, which you scrape off anyway, then boil the contents to buggery to make sure you remove any pesky vitamins. This packaging nonsense is the fault of supermarkets who all think that their customers are elderly spinsters that must be protected at all costs from a vegetable that is even slightly misshapen - because nature likes a laugh and misshapen vegetables always, but always, look like willies. Even the sprouts.

So the packaging protects the precious product. I think the World Gone Mad moment was when a supermarket sold slices of apple sealed in a plastic bag. Possibly this was designed for children who were not to be trusted to slice up fruit themselves and who were too stupid to work out that apples do not need to be sliced for consumption, they can be chewed, gnawed, bitten and chomped. An apple is the perfect fruit for eating on the go, it is perfectly sized to fit in one hand and it even comes in it's own edible wrapper. Putting it in a bag is not an improvement.

Which led me to believe that placing vegetables in plastic bags was a bad thing.

Not so, it would appear. And now I get it. Not everyone is as lucky as me, with a council that will provide you with a free compost bin for your kitchen waste, bits of chopped up garden, grass cuttings, the occasional fox corpse and of course any contraband you want to keep hidden and away from the house (fun fact trivia fans, glossy magazines featuring 'art' portraits may take a while to compost, but compost they do, so don't leave them in there for long or Miss August will have turned to mulch).

There is, it would appear, a lot of a vegetable that people don't use. There's the peel, which is disposed of, and the seeds, which are normally not eaten either. So all of this just gets thrown away, composted at best, landfill at worst. The idea that all this waste is somehow put to good news is fantastic.

Turning the peelings into animals feed and so on is great for a number of reasons. The first is that, of course, if you feed your animals on good stuff, they will taste even better by the time they fulfill their destiny, which may be to become a mascot of a sports team or state and travel the country before being retired to a life of standing in a field wondering where all the glitter cannons went, but is, let’s face it, a lot more likely to involve gravy and a slide of fries.

And let’s not gloss over the animal feed part – I long to see the advert where two cattle are tucking into a trough and one says to the other ‘Good squash today’, his friend replying ‘Not just squash…Martin Farms squash.’ Then the tag line ‘Martins Farms squash…a natural source of starch’. Read by either James Earl Jones or Christoper Walken, I’m not sure yet. This would cause people like me to instantly panic that I was not getting enough starch, hitherto something I thought was only used in laundry, and to rush out and panic buy squash.

EDIT

Once you’re done with the pith, and the peel, and the flesh has been sent off to be packaged and distributed, you’re left with the seed. Now, you’re a farmer. You have seed. What’s the obvious thing to do…that’s right, press those bad boys and extract oil from them. After the frankly disappointing discovery that you can’t run the tractor on it comes the revelation that you can, however, cook with it.

EDIT

But bottling the oil and flogging it in artisan food shops to folk who want to cook their veg in something a little more exotic than olive oil is genius. The trick to the marketing is to make it four times as expensive as the thing it is replacing and put a rustic label on it, then try not to grin yourself inside out as you start making a profit from something you used to throw away! Not only that, it ticks all the boxes of cooking because nobody knows a damn about the nutritional content! Is it healthy, like some television nutritionists bark at me to be? Is it rich and tasty, like television chefs bark at me to be? As long as I’m still taking instructions from the television it’s a case of sod it, it’s over seven bucks a bottle, it must be good, I’ll have some.

Student protests, round three, 9 December

Or...the revolting masses vs the surprised to be ruling classes

Kettling. That's an odd word, isn't it? It may sound like a quaint Victorian custom involving fine bone china, parlours, hot infusions of tea, corsets and enough repressed sexuality to power a dreadnaught, but in fact it has a very different meaning. It's a tactic the Met use to keep demonstrators packed together in one spot, usually away from any site where they might influence what they are protesting about, or any valuable cars or property.

Kettling is not one of those words that has had it's meaning changed in recent years by changes in the lifestyle followers who have adopted it, like 'twitching', but rather is a freshly minted new word. And because it's been thought up by buracrauts rather than Charles Dickens, it's a bit crap. It's also far more sinister than it sounds. Like tea bagging, which if you Google you will discover has nothing to do with preparing a refreshing cuppa, although that's exactly what you'll feel like after you've read what the practice actually is.

But surely we should be weaving a reactionary language in response to having words like this foisted upon us. If being kettled is being held by a cordon of police in a spot with no toilets, no view and no decent public wi fi network, then surely the term for escaping said cordon is spouting. Or is the term for transferring from one kettled zone to another decanting?

One word we can associate with kettling is 'unsuccessful'. I may not be an expert on law and order but I would say that rampant civil unrest at the doors of Parliament is a pretty good sign that your plan to contain the protesters in a back street in another location, preferably in Wales, has not worked.

This was student protests 3, the final act. MPs were voting on the measure to have students pay for their education and the students, seeing their tuition fees rise and so putting a dent in the disposable income they would have to spend on pot noodle, porn, crap music and ironic art to decorate their flatshares, were not happy. Like all franchises, the producers were hoping that better special effects and more money being spent on the production would disguise the fact that the plot was a re-run of student protest and student protest 2 and that the law of diminishing returns meant that the public has less and less time for this sort of nonsense.

The forces of law and order were faced with a problem. This was that if they actually wanted to keep law and order, the way to do it is to soak the crowd with a water cannon and then taser the lot of them in one big jolt. Then CS gas anyone that is still standing. The problem with this is that stamping on a protestors face is also stamping on the civil rights of the public. So the thing to do is to push back when you are pushed by a student. Very much like some sort of playground argy bargy. But with less hair pulling.

Still, the reports of the more spirited acts of violence against public property did make one wonder if perhaps now wasn't the time to stop faffing about and start beating the shit out of anyone who climbed on anything.

A few years ago, protestors made the discovery that it didn't matter if they turned out in their thousands, they still only got a few minutes on the news and that segment was usually spoiled by their spokesperson being some ugly bloke or shrill woman with ill-judged hair standing in front of a banner which, if it were painted by a student, were probably miss-spelled. Hence they started fielding a dozen or so protestors, including ugly bloke or shrill woman, arranged a time to meet the media to protest, filmed their interview and then took the rest of the day off.

Now, the media don't have to be at the protest. That's because the students are filming themselves protesting and then uploading it onto Yoohootube or other social networking sites. This is the protesting equivalent of a new parent telling you about their child's potty training; unpleasant to hear about and a baffling source of pride and enthusiasm to the person originating the information.

Surely the mainstream media's reliance on poaching mobile 'phone clips of some bloke kicking a car is going to result in the hoax of the year, with shocking images of civil unrest frame-grabbed and repeated on the front pages of every newspaper in the country, only to be exposed as actually being filmed in somebody's bedroom using a set made of old cereal packets decorated with poster paint and glitter, and a cast of protestors drawn from some action figures and old toys, hence the baffling scenes of one of the aliens from the Star Wars cantina stiffly beating a tellytubby.

The print media, meanwhile, are frothing with excitement. Journalists have worked out that not only can they tweet in up-to-the-minute updates about their experience in the crowd but unlike the visual media they don't actually have to produce footage of being a the actual location of the protest. All they have to do is watch the live footage from the news helicopter, monitor the twitter feeds of a couple of protestors and invent the rest, all from the comfort of their own front room. Key phrases to throw in are the bravery of the children on the protest, a disruptive element in the crowd, the heavy-handedness of the police and the commitment to continuing the struggle. Also, make sure to make constant reference to the fact that this is very much not your normal day in the office. Too right, you are currently sat on your arse on the sofa, in your pyjamas, drinking tea.

Social media and instant communications have changed a lot of things. It used to be for instance that if you reported from a war zone you actually went to that war zone, coming back with an amazing story and enough shrapnel in your leg to set off every airport metal detector you will ever go through again. If you don't come back from an experience of conflict with an eye watering story of desperate struggle and a pretty serious booze habit, then maybe you should be working at a garden centre.

I wonder what the peace protestors on Parliament Square made of it all. The peace camp, either an eye so or a symbol of democracy depending on your point of view (I tend to the latter) has been there for years now, with one bloke maintaining a vigil in all weathers. Oddly, it makes me proud to be British that somebody can protest in such a spot without being murdered by the state. I wonder what such a chap makes of people who set things alight not because of a brutal war, but because they are being asked to fund their own three year course in media studies and politics, hence meaning that they can only afford to travel to Europe on their gap year, depriving the people of South America and South East Asia the opportunity to meet yet another opinionated middle class tosser from the home counties who plans to travel the world and seek out new experiences but only if he can do it while updating his Farcebook page and film the ping pong ball trick in a bar in Thailand.

In fact here's how to eliminate the student debt problem and the gap year issue all in one go - geT a job in a chicken tendering plant in East Anglia on leaving school. Not only will you meet people from all over the world, but you'll come back with some top stories about foreign food (like the week you were on the tikka masala ready meal production line) and bird flu. How authentic is that?

Student protests, round 2, 24 November

Ding dong! Round two of the student fees demos. Like many sequels, this one had essentially the same plot as the original, but a bigger budget and better special effects.

Last time out, a few protestors had kicked in the windows of an office block and the police had been criticised for their response. Just what the logic is of criticising the police I'm not sure, as I can't recall seeing a copper booting the crap out of a window. Possibly the criticism was that the police should have done more to stop the violence. What more could be done was not specified, but the sort of people who usually call for a tougher response tend to have lots of books about the war, own shares in a company that makes water cannons and have theories about the dispersal of crowds based on news footage of protestors taking a beating by coppers in some brutal regime.

The protesters' tactics had changed though. Previously, they had been kettled. This is a term the police use for surrounding a group of protesters' and keeping then together in one place for a few hours. Normally this is done in the street or a square rather than, say, a rather nice coffee shop or indeed anywhere with adequate toilet and snack facilities and the idea is that not only does it remind the mob that they can protest for as long as they want, as long as they do it in a side street where they don't cause any disruption, it also provides much needed overtime for the Met in the run up to Christmas.

To avoid tea potting, or whatever, the protestors broke up into small groups and rushed around the centre of London, like some sort of militant tour group.

This is not at all how schoolchildren should behave when out in public. They should form a long crocodile, and hold hands. If you are a boy walking next to a boy you don't hold hands properly but rather simply touch a single finger, because you are not whoopsies. If you are a boy walking next to a girl you hold hands with even less contact, because you don't want to be known as the sort of boy who likes girls; mysterious creatures who are a well known source of trouble and, probably, warts. Or you hold hands properly, all the time experiencing a rushing, gushing sensation in your tummy that signals a cauldron of hormones about to come to the boil. Then you go to the Science Museum.

These students had not come to London on a coach to further their education, unless they were drama students practicing their rushing about for their upcoming production of the farce ‘oops vicar is that your cock?’.

My nephew is entering his teens and hence is developing an interest in current affairs, partly because he wants to have a greater understanding of the world around him, partly because he wants to act more grown up than his brothers and this requires sitting at the grown ups table which in turn requires knowing who the government are so you can understand all the moaning being done, but mostly because it makes radio four comedy shows interesting and they are the best places to hear the word 'knob' spoken aloud by an adult before the watershed.

He has also picked up on his parents starting to say the word 'university' not with hopeful expectation but rather with a sense of gloom of a couple who are going to have to sell a kidney to finance the further education of their offspring.

As a result, he took to chanting 'no ifs, no buts, no education cuts' for the afternoon. After fifteen minutes of this I felt like reaching for the CS gas, so it's understandable if the coppers want to do some kettling, tea bagging or whatever it is when confronted by an unruly mob doing same.

Student protests, round 1, 10 November

Panic on the streets of London as some disaffected students, confronted with actually having to pay for a service, riot. Well, I say riot, they actually broke a few windows and burned a few banners. Their own banners, actually. One wonders at the sort of intellect that decides to burn their own property.

The French do a good riot, as do the Greeks and as a result their police have a reputation for brutality and no sense of humour. The Americans rarely riot but when they do it's spectacular, like a big budget remake of a European art house movie. The only problem is that Americans riot in their own neighbourhoods. This is always a mistake as the benefits of not having far to tote your looted wide screen tee vee are offset by pitching up at your favourite breakfast place the next morning and finding it a burned out husk...and yet the juice bar is still standing!

The students attacked Conservative party offices. Security in that building looked daunting, consisting of two very nice ladies behind a desk. To be fair, the desk looked pretty substantial but lacked an AK 47 in the top draw that would have been more useful than a book to ask the rioters to sign in.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the argument about fees, one thing is for sure; if you kick off some trouble in the centre of London you should expect water cannon and police with badge numbers removed. As it was the police response was somewhat feeble and some rioters got away. The plan is to set everyone an essay titled 'what I did on my trip to London' and arrest anyone who makes reference to any activity other than 'caught coach to demo, dipped out of protest and went to see Billy Elliot instead'.