Crowd Control

So we're really privileged to protest in the UK, given the lack of such a right prevalent in other parts of the world. What about the right for protection against violence and shameless destruction witnessed on 26/3/11? Protesting has been around as long as mankind, but its origin stems from a social infrastructure vastly underdeveloped to what we have now, the Internet...
And no Western democracy would even contemplate to (overtly/covertly) interfere with that. It's helped elect the current generation of governments and is deeply embedded into the fabric of modern society. Use the Internet to protest. Its what Wikileaks did, to protest against government censorship, a movement that I'm sure could raise mass support relatively easily. But no buildings have to be hacked to bits, innocent bystanders' safety threatened and an entire city's reputation brought into severe questioning. Create a hashtag, start a Facebook group or deploy any one of the numerous Web 2.0 tools to gather support and raise awareness. Create a music video. It's just as credible, if not more relevant. If you're going to protest against government spending cuts, how is running up a multi-million pound policing and clean-up bill going to change that? If anything cuts will be marginally deeper than before. Threatening West End businesses is going to threaten profitability and jobs.

Rioters should be dealt with via 21st century means, not numbers and riot shields. They don't hesitate to throw sticks, bricks and bottles and yet the police apparently get criticised if they mention "water cannon" or form too tight a line formation. I envisage some kind of non-toxic immobilising goo, delivered either via helicopter or water cannon in the same vein as this. Either that or a Spiderman-stylised adhesive web-shooter. I'd like to see the protest against that.