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'.