Pramping in St Paul's

It's Occupied London are, I suppose, protesting about the dire dearth of decent public loos in the capital, and quite right too. It's bad enough that public loos are few and far between, with those super-loo monstrosities dotted around the place like, literally, a shit TARDIS, but one can't even be assured of a decent loo if one employs the popular tactic of dodging into a pub, pretending to be a customer and using the facilities. Even perfectly decent boozers seem seem unable to maintain a perfectly decent gent's. In the case of the place I was in last week, going to the gent's was like wandering into a coastal cave at low tide, it was gloomy, the floor was wet and there was a prominent odour.

Of course, there is also I believe a faction within the protesters who represent Occupy London. Like their hipster brethren across the Atlantic in New York, they are protesting that the banks have all the money and won't give it to people like them to, presumably, buy bigger tents. They are angry, but not as angry as the people who think that the architectural and spiritual magnificence of St Paul's cathedral is really not improved by being surrounded by quite a lot of nylon in jolly primary colours.

The prampers outside St Paul's cathedral are doing a fantastic job of drawing attention to how crap the Church of England are at taking a hard line on using a holy water cannon to wash the protesting scum off the streets, while at the same time neatly deflecting attention away from the bankers down the street who are fucking up the economy through their trademarked working methods of greed, stupidity and spending the afternoon wandering round in a coked-up daze after doing a couple of lines off of a sweaty hookers arse in the company car park during lunch.

The media has made much of the prampers. Apparently they go home in the evening, leaving their tents behind. I trust that the local homeless population are aware that a load of comfy middle class tents, presumably with iPod docks and cool boxes full of sustaining snacks and indifferent wines, are available for occupation at St Paul's. Let's see if the protestors are quite so happy to occupy a tent that has been used overnight by Dosser Dave and his incontinent dog Digger. And I hope that when the protestors do eventually pack up and leave, they check the tents first. Nothing would put a crimp in your first day at the Glastonbury festival quite like shaking out your two-man 'Mountain Master 4000' and discovering a desiccated tramp. And his dog.

Whatever you think of people who camp in the centre of the city, they are bloody irritating. The council, police and church all appear powerless to get rid of the tents. In my experience, the best way to remove campers is to start charging them exorbitant rents for their pitches. All St Paul's needs to do is become a National Trust property and it's problem solved.

The other way to remove tents is of course for the weather to turn bad, although I expect that foul weather in England in November is too much to ask for (and the ongoing mild weather could be taken as a sign that the protest has some sort of higher approval). Maybe they need an act of God. A few days of rain and I don't care how committed the protestors are, they'll soon beat the twat singing Coldplay to death with his own lute and buggered off to the nearest decent pub.

Protest camping...Pramping?

Camping. It’s very popular, apparently. Of course, it’s always been popular with outdoorsy types, and poor people. But as the recession has bitten deeper, it’s also become popular with families who have worked out that the airport tax that it costs to get their three kids onto a flight to somewhere sunny will keep the parents in enough decent chardonnay to numb the pain of having to spend two weeks in a field with a dozen other families all coming to terms with the fact that in order to be able to help their kids with university fees, they are going to be spending less time sunning themselves and more time wondering why the shower block doesn’t have complimentary Molton Brown toiletries, and trying to out-do one another with barbeque marinades (my tip…lard, simple, elegant, and nothing says ‘campsite feast’ quite like the smell of frying lard).

By 2010, a holiday under canvas could be categorized thus:

Camping. Heavy canvas tents, featured in ‘Carry On’ movies, tents with a sense of history, the sorts of tents that the Empire pitched in jungles and artic wastes, the sort of tents a scout master was disgraced in, with guy ropes that are set like booby traps to trip the unwary. In recent years, advances in camping technology mean that entire tents are now made out of the same material that cagools used to be made out of, making them light, waterproof and ensuring that the inside of the tent usually has the same smell that the inside of a cagool.

Wild camping, used to be called trespassing, different to camping because while it still takes place in a farmer’s field, there's no stand pipe in the corner, just a cattle trough. (Nearby salt lick likely to deter middle class families on low sodium diets).

Glamping, a recreation favoured by middle class parents who can no longer afford to take their children abroad or the even more expensive alternative: centre parcs. Glamping offers the promise of a stay in a decent B&B or a boutique hotel. This is, of course, complete bollocks as, even if you stay at a Travelodge, your stay is unlikely to feature you treading in cow-shit as you make your way to a stinking toilet block in the dead of night. A tent is a tent, deal with it, be honest with yourself and embrace camping – it’s easy, just strike up a conversation with your camp-site neighbour about your journey to the site, sustaining a conversation about the perils of this countrys’ A roads for three hours before drinking enough wine to allow you to sleep despite your wife’s muffled sobbing and your eldest child’s stubborn refusal to exit the car. At all.

Festival camping - does not really count. Camping is all about pitching your tent, fetching your water, cooking your dinner and brushing your teeth in a communal toilet block next to a bloke who you are pretty sure sneaks looks at your wife’s breasts when he thinks nobody’s looking. It’s also about waking at dawn in the countryside far from the cares and distractions of the pantomime that passes for real life and having a cup of tea in complete silence before the business of the day – a punch up with your lusting neighbour and trying to tempt your kid out of the car – begins. It is not spending ten seconds sproinging your pop-up tent into existence, hoisting one of those fluttery pennants above it so that you can find your way back, realizing that every other bugger has a pennant just like yours and so fixing your position using GPS on your smart phone, then going and getting wasted for three days, doing all your sleeping in hedges or the St John’s Ambulance recovery tent/chill out lounge.

Previously, those were your choices. Let me add another:

Pramping - protest camping.

The tented village on Parliament Square has been forced from the grass on to the pavement. This, I suppose, tests the convictions of the protesters as it's one thing to camp on grass, but a different proposition entirely to pitch your tent on paving slabs six inches away from a bloody big bus belching diesel fumes. Also, it's harder to dig a latrine pit through concrete. I have always been perversely proud of the peace camp outside parliament, when it was a single bloke but bloody hell, a whole village?

One can’t help but have the sneaking suspicion that while Brian Haw was a committed protestor who embodied much that was great about England – taking a stand, commitment to a cause he considered just, defiance of authority – and while his presence there was a living embodiment of the other great English values – tolerance and fair play (can you imagine a protestor trying that in North Korea, or Italy? At least when they turned the water cannon on it would put out the flames from the burning encampment), I can’t help but wonder if any of the other campers are not so much there to protest but rather saving on a hotel room and spending their money on tickets for Madam Tussauds and the Phantom of the Opera.

I walked past the other day and there were so many tents I was wondering if there was some sort of festival on.

Pramping is, I think, here to stay. And I’d like to see more of it. We have many gorgeous civic buildings in this country, seats of power crafted by Victorian architects. But what those tall towers, high windows and splendid cornices need to set them off is a little village of tents in primary colours outside each one. Pissed off with your council cutting libraries? Pramp! Annoyed that your parish council have chosen to ignore your plea for a bus shelter with a roof for the third year running? Pramp! And why draw the line at democratic institutions? Who the fuck organises ‘Britain in bloom’ and why has your village never won? Pramp! Camelot…every week you buy a ticket but have you ever won? Ever had a sniff? No? Pramp!

And as for the ticket prices at Glastonbury…actually, no, your protest would, I’m pretty sure, go unnoticed.

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'.

The answer to climate change...take a flight to somewhere warm?

I’m confused about climate change. I thought that we were all supposed to be concerned about global warming. Global warming was, apparently, going to result in the UK being like the Mediterranean. On the one hand, I like the idea of doing f**k all work in the afternoons and tapas, on the other hand it might mean that our cars get smaller and women get hairier.

Looking out of the window on this August evening, I don’t see many olive groves sprouting. Indeed it’s pretty hard to see anything, what with the wind lashing the rain against the window like that.

Now, this is not global warming, but climate change. Climate change results in severe weather events like rain in summer. Frankly, anyone who’s had experience of the British summer might consider that rain in August is situation normal and the only emissions we should be worried about are people talking out of their arse about climate change.

So hand-knitted home-made hats off to the climate change protesters at Heathrow who have set up camp to try and raise awareness about the dangers of air travel. Well done them for tying up police time and public money with quite the most pointless bloody protest since I staged a sit-in for extra ribena at play-school.

‘Deluded’ is the word that springs to mind. Looking at these tossers on the news I was a little shocked to see that what I had assumed to be a cagouled troll was in fact a person, who was spouting off about air travel being bad and who was ‘demanding to be heard’.

Okay. 1. Stand as an MP. 2. Get elected. 3. Vote against air travel. 4. Get enough of your mates to do the same and end the problem. Or…spend the weekend in a damp camp pooing lentil curry into a latrine you’ve had to dig yourself, getting pissed on home-brewed scrumpy and wearing a sweater you’ve never washed with detergent in order to save the environment.

The truth is that the best we can do is manage air travel and that nobody is interested in direct action tossers. The last big protests, marches through London and so on to do with airports were when airport expansion was being mooted. Lots of middle-class people saw the threat of large reductions in the value of their properties and the possibility of tyre-marks on their roof if the pilot came in for a low-landing and they rebelled. Result - no new runway.

You want to see people truly exercised about air-travel? Ask anyone who lives on a flightpath or who has ever had a cube of blue-ice the size of a fridge land like a meteorite in their greenhouse (tip – get rid of it before it melts!).

And if you want to be taken seriously, get a shave a suit and a job.

A professional protestor in uniform – you know love, you’d be quite pretty if you washed your hair, used some make-up, dropped a stone and wore a nice dress. How on earth does she think she’s going to attract a bloke like that?