Police used a familiar tactic known as "kettling" during yesterday's protests in London, blocking protesters in and refusing to allow anyone out for any reason. It's presumably called kettling because you keep the hot water in a tightly confined space. This does, of course, make it less likely you'll get boiling water on your hob, but it also keeps the temperature high, and kettles do boil over.
One young man reported the experience thus: "I just remember shields coming down on us. The police were stamping and kicking. I asked them to let me through the line for medical treatment, but they said 'no'."
Yesterday's demo was different. A man died, and although the police did try to treat him on the scene, we may never find out if his death was related to the tactics deployed by the Met. Had he tried to get help earlier, or to get out of a "kettle"? Had he been baton-charged?
The BBC, extraordinarily, have this incident as a passing reference in paragraph six of a story which says that world leaders are arriving (I think we knew that). You can visit the front page of their news site and see nothing of this - I will update this if it changes - but are we really quite so blasé about casualties outside the Bank of England?
afternoon geez, don't know about kettling, but in Kelman's How late it was..., the main character Sammy discusses getting "cattled", namely:
"the wider the spaces, the easier it is to get cattled".
think it was a nod to close, door-to-door, urban guerilla techniques.
still can't get any more word on St As for G20 rumours...kettling up Butts Wynd?