Come back Inspector Clouseau, all is forgiven

Following their less-than-impressive policing of the G20 protests, the Met opted to go to the other extreme with the recent student protests and are now, it appears, trying to salvage what they can in the way of identifying and prosecuting those responsible for some of the excesses - in the form of issuing a set of mugshots. A couple are so blurred and grainy they could be virtually anybody. I didn't recognize anyone, and in the absence of any indication as to specifically what they're alleged to have done, I'm spared the possible moral dilemma of whether to 'name and shame', or frame a possibly innocent person. I'm not going to comment on the fire extinguisher incident other than to say it was a singularly irresponsible thing to have done, and it's more by luck than judgement that the consequences weren't more serious.

A somewhat dubious decision of the boys in blue was that to apply for the closure of an established blog site claimed to be "providing explicit advice to offenders". Like a Hydra with its head cut off, it's already spawned replicas of the offending advice, which it took me all of ninety seconds to find online. I thought most of what's there is fairly obvious and not exactly rocket science, while the remainder is simply what any halfway-decent defence brief would recommend. Once again, though, it serves only to reinforce the intrinsically uncontrollable nature of the internet.