To call those people who sit in Parliament (when they can be bothered to attend) “Honourable” and “Right Honourable” is a joke. Worse than a joke, its a bastardisation of the English language, stripping those words of the meanings they should truly possess. And it insults the very very few that may be genuinely honourable.

Honourable only insofar as they’re not also dipping their fingers into the till of course… though still not raising a hue and cry (on behalf of those that elected them) about the behaviour of their brethren. And I wonder what reason there could be for that particular silence?

Moreover this far less than honourable behaviour on the part of what appears to be the majority not only brings into disrepute the (what should be) worthy institution of Parliament, but also the country itself… showing a face to the world akin to that of some tinpot dictatorship where every petty official is “up for grabs”.

yet another blog

And so began the all-too-familiar tale of the real message of the protests being hijacked… by hyped-up tales of violence and destruction, paving the way for the cops to switch into their getting-to-be-customary “thug mode” so that the story changes from being about the climate and economic crises and instead becomes about the policing of the various events.

Whilst there’s no doubt that the heavy-handed policing of protests is a story that needs to be told, particularly given its implications for what the future may hold when the worst effects of both climate change and the economic meltdown begin to bite, at this point in time shouldn’t attention really be focussed upon the messages these protesters are desperately trying to get out to people? To all the people who, when those “worst effects” do begin to bite, will be demanding “why didn’t someone warn us?”.

And when those same people, in their turn, take to the streets then they’ll encounter all the horrors of violent policing that are still, at present, only being tested and perfected. So perhaps, after all, it is the “policing of protests” story that should take precedence.