It's the Beeb yes, but not as we knew it...

Last night, while we repaired our march-tired limbs with tea and Thai-green curry, the anchor over at BBC News 24 thoughtfully worried on our behalf. How 'disappointed' us law-abiding types would be, she lamented, that our efforts had been 'overshadowed' by the 'criminal' acts of a bunch of 'maurauding' anarchists 'intent on causing havoc'. Although deeply moved by her concern, I was, as I suspect will be many, far more troubled by further evidence that the Beeb has clearly decided its long-term future is best secured by aping The Daily Mail.

Intent on ensuring (while performing such distress at the fact) that the march would be overshadowed, the footage of the total break down of law and order in Trafalgar Square consisted of a 30 second sequence played on a loop...cue fireworks, some small fires, and then one (conveniently) black man waving his hands ineffectually at a line a line of riot police. Over this, the stone-faced anchor intoned her litany of talking points: What, she demanded, is anyone doing in Trafalgar Square on a Saturday night after the biggest protest in this country for eight years, unless they are undesirable criminal types set on unleashingly limitless chaos? The protest has finished, surely they understand that all right-thinking people have gone to bed? Luckily, Bob Broadbent, the Met's Commander for Public Order, was on hand to supply an answer. They are, he usefully clarified, not protesters, but simply "mindless yobs" who "don't care who they hurt or what they damage" and who must be contained in order to prevent people leaving the theatre being terrified by burning placards and wheelie-bins lying on their side in the street. It is such a shame, the Mayor of London wailed across the bottom of the screen in inch-high type, that people will insist on abusing their right to protest so recklessly.