400 - nil

I was going to write today about what happened last night in the Athens district of Exarchia when the MAT (Greek riot squad) tried their own version of "kettling" following a petrol bomb attack in the neighbourhood. Like their UK counterparts the police attempted to seal the area and then attacked anyone slow enough to be caught up in the cordon. As a result two students at least have been hospitalised with broken bones after being beaten by officers following their arrest, according to Greek bloggers.

According to that hotbed of anarcho - communist propaganda, The Economist 400 people have died in the last decade following contact with the police. Yet not one has ever been convicted of manslaughter, let alone murder. Is anyone placing bets against the officer who beat Tomlinson just before he died making that 401 - 0? With watchdogs like the Independent(?) Police Complaints Commission on the case it's a wonder that there has been an investigation at all.



It would be easy to write them off as toothless, but their wanton attempts at misleading the public, (CCTV? What CCTV?), surpressing video and conjuring up "favourable" evidence have shown them to be morally and legally compromised. Leaders such as Kim Il Sung , Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein could only have dreamed of such diligence by their functionaries.

Still, never mind the charade will go on, probably at the cost of millions to show that Great British Public that what they saw with their own eyes in the video did not, in fact happen, and if it did it was certainly not what it seemed and that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why masked members of the police are quite within their rights to attack people from behind while they are walking away.