Crowds are gathering in Belgravia protesting the arrest of Radovan Karadzic and his upcoming handover to the UN war crimes court in the Hague. They are confronting riot police, shouting, chanting and hurling missiles, according to the BBC. It is expected that this is only the beginning of prolonged and violent protests.
There was some protesting going on in the UK today as well. Dan Glass, a member of the group Plane Stupid - a group dedicated to protesting the building of a third runway at Heathrow Airport - has today attempted to glue himself to the Prime Minister.
Glass was at Downing Street to recieve an award from PM Gordon Brown. He managed to smuggle a small, non-metallic container of superglue through security and coated his hand with it. When Brown went to shake Mr Glass' hand, Glass touched his other hand - the glued one - to Mr Brown's jacket.
Reports from here become confused. Plane Stupid claim that Mr Glass successfully glued himself to the PM. Downing Street, on the other hand, says that the attempt was unsuccessful and that while Glass may have touched the PM's jacket for a few seconds "There was no stickiness of any significance".
I have two thoughts about this. The first is that we're supposed to be on some kind of permanent terrorism alert where we've got to be suspicious of anyone carrying so much as a matchbox-sized handbag, and yet somehow Downing Street security managed to allow a known protestor into the presence of the Prime Minister carrying an unmarked container full of a substance which could very much have been absolutely anything. Sure, it might have been superglue, but equally it could have been poison or mercury or hydrochloric acid. We could have ended up with a nightmarish "Our PM Is Two-Face Out Of Batman" scenario, and I don't think anyone wants that.
The second is that we British must be the politest protesters in the world. When French students are annoyed they run around the suburbs of Paris burning cars. Since they also live in the suburbs of Paris there's a good likelihood that they're burning their own cars, which just demonstrates how annoyed they must be. In Israel a Palestinian has been shot dead after attacking cars with a bulldozer. And it Britain? We dress up as superheroes and chain ourselves to railings. It's not even on the same scale.
Not that I'm calling for more violent protests on the streets of Britain. It's just that I'm not convinced that Gordon Brown will be convinced to intercede in the mutlimillion pound building of what I'm sure he hopes will be an important business link just because someone's put something sticky on his jacket. And not even significantly sticky at that.