Editorial

The capital is recovering from a bruising and humiliating battering from an estimated 300 "anarchists" who focused on causing trouble on Saturday, when over 300,000 people marched peacefully against the cuts planned by the coalition Government.

The Met Police have been shown to be reactive, and ineffective in protecting important London businesses, like The Ritz, Fortnum & Mason, central areas of Piccadilly against well documented plans by the protests groups to disrupt and cause as much damage as possible.  Apparently the Met was using Twitter to monitor events.  We humbly suggest that instead of being in a warm control room on the internet why were the cops, (and we hear over 4,500 were brought in presumably on "double-bubble"), should have been deployed to spot and prevent trouble makers.

We have an Olympic Games in a year’s time. By then the cuts in local services would have started and the anger at staging a costly Olympic Games when people are losing their jobs will be at its most apparent.   Unless a plan is put in place now to prevent riots happening during the Olympic Games, London's image internationally will be damaged severely, and potentially large investors deterred from trading in London.

The Government must impress on the Met and City Hall that it is the right of citizens to demonstrate, but there must be much more pro-active policing on detection and preventing known trouble makers from attending events.  Critics internally at the Met are saying that funds allocated to riot-control have been diverted to anti-terrorism.  A lame excuse, why can't cops multi-task according to the immediate priorities that arise?

Moreover we in London expect our central London roads and stores to be secure and protected for tourists, businesses to operate to keep the economy of capital moving, if the Met police are unable to do this, then is it not time to ask what the hell are we paying nearly £1 billion a year for?  

photo credit:  Natalie Mitrides