7gcbc obviously was one of the protestors who got a mouth full of horse hair.
I just love the irony of a pom telling us we did a lousy job. More ironic (or was that "moronic") that he refers to the Poll Tax riots in the UK to proove his point.
For the record idiot - sorry, I mean 7gcbc - the poms wouldn't know how to handle a piss-up in a brewery, let alone a riot. The poll tax riots are a classic case in point - half of London got destroyed on a daily basis; and as we all know this was "rent a riot" and not legitimate protestors. Take any civil disobedience event in the UK and you'll see cops and protestors injured by the dozen; bulidings, cars, etc damaged beyond repair.
The SYD event was hardly a cause for protest; as was reported on the news no 2 protestors agreed on what they were protesting about. Therefore, the perceived risk was that this was another professionally managed attempt at creating anarchy for the sake of it through civil disobedience. Heavy handed is appropriate - less than one thousand people showed up - why should the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of other Aussies and tourists be threatened by this minority element? Perhaps if the poms adopted a "dont f*ck with us" approach then London would look less like a battleground and more like the brilliant city that it is.