Expect a summer of Pesto bombs and the widespread looting of bottled water in the Knightsbridge area.

It sounds like a guy using scare-mongering tactics and playing to the daily mail crowd to get more cash to me. I’ve been to dozens of marches, rallies pickets and demos over the years and I’ve never once seen any trouble break out that wasn’t actually started by the police

By the way, do “Possible Wasp stings” count as “eco-terrorism”?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/15/kingsnorth-climate-change-environment-police
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7784301.stm

I quote :
Norman Baker, the Lib Dem MP for Lewes, who had called previously for an investigation of police tactics, said: “I personally witnessed unnecessarily aggressive policing, unprovoked violence against peaceful protesters, an extraordinary number of police on site, and tactics such as confiscating toilet rolls, board games and clown costumes from what I saw to be peaceful demonstrators.”
The list of items deemed potentially dangerous by police and seized from protesters included glue, marker pens, board games, cushions, carpet, wood, paint, and scissors as well as bicycle locks which could have been used to lock protesters to fences. Police also seized anything that could have been used to set up camp, including spades and duct tape, generators and hammers and nails.
Howarth said: “That the minister could defend as ‘proportionate’ a £5.9m policing operation in which there was not a single injury to police officers caused by the protesters beggars belief. The threat posed by environmental direct action is being systematically overblown by both the government and the police.
“I hope the government and the police will now stop trying to portray peaceful protesters as somehow equivalent to terrorists or violent extremists. In light of this new evidence, one has to ask, were climate campers so heavily policed because they posed any genuine threat of violence, or because they posed a challenge to government policy?”

No doubt the UK govt is scared the same level of protest will happen here, and this warning by the police will be part of a propaganda campaign to scare people out of exercising their right to protest peacefully against the actions of the government.

It’s not about the BNP or eco-terrorists: the secret services will be targeting ordinary people who are forced by the economic crisis to protest their conditions. Remember that the phrase “enemy within” was used most memorably by Thatcher about the mining communities protesting the pit closures…

street fighting and rioting is fun or it was when i was young, i’m sure it is about time that the ‘kids’ will feel the urge again, i think the weather will be a key factor, if it is nice weather there will be riots, if it is the usual dull grey drizzle, it will be murmurings in the estates, it is going to be an interesting spring\summer

can they be tapped with big enough ‘boxes’ or will the government just ask vodaphone for a shared line agreement?

Have to agree with you to some point on the Eco threat. However I also suspect that the people behind the thuggish end of that, are the same as behind the old May Day riots / Poll tax riots etc. These people are a real threat, but then so is the government using them as an excuse to clamp down on the rest of us.

After all it wouldn’t take much for an interest in English Nationalism to be portrayed in the media as something nasty. Thanks to the now legal monitoring of the internet plod could be at your door in minutes.

Perhaps there are those looking for a state of emergency to suspend Parliament etc and delay the next election ?

We live in interesting times.