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The Slapdash Cook Gorges on the Last of the Veggies

  By Patricia Lee Sharpe

These are the glory days for the Farmer's Market in Santa Fe.  It's chilly at eight in the morning when the market opens.  Jacket weather.  And there was ice in the folds of my newspaper when I retrieved it from the driveway one day last week. 

But the sky was already blue when I reached the Market, and the sun made everything look so promising, cooking-wise, that I wanted to snatch it all up.  I’m a carnivore, and fairly unapologetic about this proclivity, but I’m helplessly addicted to vegetables, too.  I can’t resist them, even in the supermarket with the overhead pipes spewing a disgusting cold mist over everything green. When I’m confronted with the real thing, mere hours its living connection with the earth that nurtured it, I become a ravenous locavore. Uncontrollable.

And how could anyone resist these last fruits  of the season?  Tomatoes, some grape-like, some surely weighing a pound each, all red, red, red. And a precious few baskets of raspberries.  And bunches of beets, deep red violet. And ristra-strings of hot peppers so intensely aflame with color that my inner Carmen wanted  to break into a flamenco on the spot.  Not to mention the orange carrots and pumpkins and the golden squash and the slick green chiles still waiting to be roasted.  And the purple fingerling potatoes and the dark satiny eggplant.   And the pearly white Vidalia onions.  And the garlic that comes wrapped in its own white tissue, like a gift to chefs.  And skinny green beans.  And vases of zinnias and cosmos and marigolds.  Plus apples, of course.  Macintosh.  Rome.  Delicious.  Apples by the pint, by the peck, by the bushel, their skins taut with juiciness that spurts down your chin if you don’t bite carefully, which reminds me of the inimitable taste of just pressed apple juice, set out in little cuplets.  To tempt you to buy a bottle. Or two.    

Talk about cornucopia!  These final weeks of summer vegetables are like the finale at a fireworks display, all the more glorious because the program is almost over. And so, as I walked through the market this morning, exceeding my budget as usual, I gloried in the color, but couldn’t help thinking of the killer frost that’s due any night now. 

Among other delights, including a week's supply of leafy salad mix and a mammoth cauliflower I intended to curry, I bought several pounds of tomatoes, not at all sure what I’d do with them,  except that I'd have to do it fast, because they couldn't get any riper without going bad.  Still, I had to have them.  There's no such thing as a surplus of vegetables in my house.  

Once I got home with my booty, the fate of the tomatoes had already been settled: soup.  What's more, I decided, I’d make the soup, for the first time in my life, without cracking a recipe book.  Slapdash cook style.

Actually, it was a matter of trying to remember a formula I’d already felt the need to improvise last year when I discovered a peculiar and apparently invariable pattern among tomato soup recipes .The hot soups all wanted cream.  The cold soups didn’t.  And—here’s the nearly unanimous and criminal part!— most recipes called for a tablespoon or more of canned tomato paste as well as fresh tomatoes.   Intensity at the cost of authenticity? No way, I decided.  Why disguise the flavor of fresh tomatoes at the peak of perfection?   Ditto for the addition of cream, plus this: why pile on the calories?

Anyway the recipe I’d come up with was so simple I did indeed remember it perfectly.  Better yet,  anyone can follow it without a lot of finicky measuring.  Start with three pounds of tomatoes (so you’ll wind up with enough soup to make the effort worthwhile).  Chop a medium onion and a big stalk of celery and fry them in any oil you want (I use olive) until they’re soft, which means the onions are translucent.  It wouldn’t hurt to add a small clove of garlic, diced, a couple of minutes before the frying’s done.  If you decide to skin the tomatoes, cover them with boiling water, briefly, to loosen the skins, but you don’t need to.  You’ll be blending the soup before you’re finished. Anyhow, dice the tomatoes and toss them into the pot with the sauteed onion, add a quart of chicken stock and boil until the tomatoes are soft.

After the tomato mixture cools a little, blend it until it’s less than perfectly smooth.  (I like it with a little texture.) Then add another quart or two of chicken stock (I make my

Was the EU Referendum Vote the Tory Party’s Bunker Hill?

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

24 Oct 2011. London. Tonight 81 Conservative MP’s rebelled against the vaunted UK system of party discipline to vote in favour of a motion to submit an “in or out of Europe” referendum to the voters.  As much as what the Prime Minister famously called his party’s “obsession” with Europe, the vote seems to embody a warning shot across the Prime Minister’s bow, fired by the increasingly disaffected right wing of the Conservative Party.

Soon after coming to office, the Coalition government instituted an experiment in direct democracy.  Voters who want to see Parliament debate an issue may petition the government for such a debate, using an online petitioning procedure. If 100,000 voters sign, the Parliamentary “back bench business” committee considers whether to schedule a debate. 

Hundreds of thousands of voters signed such a petition calling for the government to submit a referendum on the UK’s continued involvement in the European Union to the voters.   Polls suggest that as much as two thirds of the voters favour such a referendum. The data is less clear whether or not such a referendum would result in a majority voting to withdraw.

The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary argued that such a referendum was the wrong thing at the wrong time.

The leaders of all 3 major parties invoked the well known “3 line whip” discipline rule.  Under this discipline, party members must vote as directed by their leaders or face potential long term career consequences. 

Not only did 81 Conservative MP’s defy the rule, including 2 junior Ministers, at least one, Adam Holloway, stepped down from his (albeit minor and unpaid) ministerial post.   The final fallout for breaching discipline is not yet known.

The defiance was not confined to Conservatives. 111 MP’s voted in favour of the motion, including 19 Labour.  But the imposition of the "three line Whip" by each of the 3 major parties delivered a crushing 483 vote defeat for the referendum on EU membership in the House of Commons. 

Although defeated, the Conservative vote was particularly eye-catching. It was perhaps the most significant Conservative rebellion in this Parliament and the most significant Conservative rebellion on the European question since 41 Conservative MPs did so in 1993.  

1968, a Call to Candles in the Rain

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

Whatever happened to 1968?  

I ask the question as the fabric of Eurozone collective will thins to fraying, the promised resolution to the Eurozone “debt crisis” breaking down in the very weekend it was to be announced.  The tele hums to the sound of riots in Greece, brought to me courtesy of BBC. The tweets carry interviews with the new face of China, its credit master confidently lecturing European reporters that European workers must accept significantly lower compensation, longer hours, and harder work.  Bad news for the UK economy mounts amid reports of serious divisions between the Chancellor and the Business Secretary. But the Prime Minister remains feet firmly planted in the cement blocks that, if I am right, will carry both him and the country to the bottom of the Thames.             

It is a question I often ask myself.    

1968 means different things to different people, of course. But It was a special time for my generation. Some marched with King, others with the anti war movement, others in Vietnam’s jungles.  Some boycotted grapes. Some sought White Rabbits along the streets and in the back rooms of San Francisco’s “Hashbury.”  Others trained as Marines and MBA’s.  

I watched my university football team the Pacific Tigers, danced to “Acid Rock,” played at Disk Jockey and announcer for my University FM and AM radio station, and, in the embrace of the Raymond College Common Room, dreamed happy daydreams of doing great things.  I smile to myself remembering Robin Williams character in “Hook” saying he didn’t do the 1960s. He was an accountant.  I did not catch up with the movements to make a better world until years later as the world convulsed with fear of Nuclear Weapons. 

1968 was a wonderful time to be a 19 to 20 year old California boy. But it was thought by some to be a pivotal moment in human history.  Tonight I am not so sure it turned out that way. 

The Military Way With Development: It Doesn't Work Very Well

By Patricia Lee Sharpe.

Drip, drip, drip, and whoooosh: that’s the sound of our hard-earned personal income, once taxed, going down the drain in the Pentagon.  And now I know why the military gets away with it.

America the Fearful

First off, there’s the fear factor.  Too many Americans have been terrorized by military fear-mongering into granting whatever the Pentagon asks for.  As for “our” representatives, they have a different fear.  They’ll support the iffiest military project, lest campaign donations dwinde to a dribble that won’t be enough to get them re-elected in our increasingly plutocratic star-and-serf system.

Here’s some context: the U.S. spends nearly as much money on its military-related functions as the rest of the world altogether and nearly half of all U.S. discretionary funding is allocated for the use of the Pentagon, yet all those trillions are still not enough, we’re told.  No, we sheep are not yet 100% safe from free-wheeling, copy cat terrorists, let alone the occasional malefactor dispatched by organizations like Al Qaeda.  So the dictum is: give up your Social Security, give up your Medicare, give up your carefully-inspected food, give up your well-tested medical devices, and fork it all over to the national security apparatus.   

Playing expertly on those fears, Leon Panetta, Obama’s new Secretary of Defense, accompanied for intimidation purposes by the usual be-medaled general, in this case the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin E. Dempsey, was in Congress this week, doing his best to protect the humongous Pentagon budget from cuts that may go beyond the present $450 billion over the next ten years.  The specter of a $1.2 trillion lopping looms.  To put all those zeros (count ‘em: eleven)  in perspective, that’s the cost of three or four military aircraft.  Seems entirely doable at a time when ordinary people have been losing their jobs and homes, doesn’t it?  Not to the military.

An Audit for the Pentagon, at Last

Meanwhile, Panetta also let a very interesting, very relevant and potentially damaging cat out of the bag: the military doesn’t know how it spends all its money—or whether the funds have achieved their nobly intended goals, which (in practice) may come down to box-checking or  promotion-seeding (see Van Buren below). Evidently, while other executive departments are being hounded to stop waste, fraud and abuse right down to the last paperclip, the Pentagon has escaped thorough scrutiny.  Panetta, clearly on the defensive, has promised to expedite “a full audit” of the Pentagon budget—and (wow! what speed!) to have it done by 2014, not the previously anticipated 2017.  Says Panetta: “ I have also directed increased emphasis on accountability and a full review of the Department’s financial controls....”  Who’d have thunk the Pentagon wasn’t already paying attention to such basics?  Even I had more faith, and I’ve got pretty cynical in recent years.

The FederalTimes reports that “many lawmakers have latched onto the Pentagon’s inability to pass an audit as a [relatively painless] way to make the Department more efficient in light of upcoming budget cuts.  However,” the report continues, “most defense analysts agree that efficiencies alone will not generate the kind of budget savings needed.” 

Indeed!  But easier said than done, as Americans have discovered, whenever attempts to cut military programs or eliminate military bases have been advanced.  Can you say pork?  Have you ever heard, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”  Today, if you listen closely enough, you’ll discover that many of the stingiest no-more-taxes Tea Party freshmen have already learned these little tricks.

The Need for Anecdotes

Still, it might help those who are really, not just cosmetically, trying to put an end to the malallocations of business as usual, if we had a trustworthy accounting of exactly where the Pentagon-designated money goes (including the security stuff that’s being turned against us)—and whether this billion or those millions actually achieved anything but ribbon-cutting publicity (also see Van Buren).  Until we have this complete and systematic audit, we’re left with various outrage-producing but isolated examples and anecdotes of a sort that are easily criticized as “atypical” or “merely subjective.”

Peter Van Buren’s “We Meant Well” – Book Review Essay

By Patricia H. Kushlis

A few weeks ago an active duty 23 year veteran of the Foreign Service named Peter Van Buren who served on two Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Iraq between 2008-9 published a book that described his experiences and put forth his views about the impact those teams had on Iraqis in the central region where he worked.

The book’s title:  We meant well: how I helped lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people in essence says it all.  For those of us old enough to remember Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 which chronicled the absurdities of US military life during World War II or read Lawrence Durrell’s Stiff Upper Lip and Esprit de Corps – hilarious and more innocuous tales based on Durrell’s work as press attaché at the British Embassy in Belgrade at the end of that same war - Van Buren’s We Meant Well should be seen in a similar vein. 

It too is hilarious, horrifying and heart-wrenching – although Durrell’s books are less about the horror and more about the idiocies of life in a British diplomatic Balkan backwater in a politically torn and desparately poor country struggling to recuperate from a war and occupation not of its making.  

We Meant Well is well written and biting satire.

It is brutally honest - although names have been changed to protect the innocent and not so innocent. Its goal is not to curry favor or plump for yet another trip into the war zone embedded with the troops or a lucrative short term contract to bring American values, chicken-cultivation, or plumbing to Iraq.

Rather it was written as a wake up call with the hope that Americans will start to understand the ways their hard earned taxpayer dollars have been all too cavalierly tossed around on projects of questionable utility in post-invasion Iraq. Projects that were designed and implemented by Americans too often ill-equipped for the job and assigned to well protected fortresses constructed by the US military for its own troops sent there for a grand total of six months to one year at a time and governed by the metrics they have been required to employ. 

According to Van Buren, these metrics, such as they are, necessitated the spending of as much money as possible (tell that to our welfare recipients, State Department and USAID officers assigned to non-war zones or non-priority countries, or the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators) in as short a time as possible.

It’s like Vietnam CORDS all over again:  a war fought not as a single war but as eight different ones each a year’s duration.  This is about as far from post World War II Western Europe as one can get when and where US troops really were greeted with flowers and showered with kisses.

The inevitable rebuttal

 A stinging rebuttal of Van Buren’s book appeared in the October 5  FP Flashpoints by Stephen Donnelly, a former contractor who had been assigned as a senior civilian urban planning officer. Donnelly claims that he and his PRT accomplished so much more during the same time period as that of the hapless State Department employee Van Buren.  Maybe so or not.  It would certainly be nice to think so.

But face it, Donnelly who tells us his specialty is urban planning (FP describes him as a certified planning consultant who lives in Maryland), was based in Salah ad-Din north of Baghdad near Tikrit.  Van Buren was in the south.

The good news is that Donnelly was hired for his expertise. It’s people like Donnelly who possess the requisite credentials who should be working in Iraq - if any American advisors should be there at all. It’s unfortunate, however, that he also didn’t speak Arabic so he could have heard for himself what the Iraqis were saying to his face and behind his back.

Had this been Vietnam, Donnelly would likely have been a USAID employee assigned to CORDS at less than half the price to the American government. Maybe he would have received language training to boot.  Nevertheless, he was not a diplomat like Van Buren who was trained to adjudicate visa requests (and sniff out fraud on the part of applicants) as well as help Americans abroad in distress.

Donnelly was also not a member of the US military skilled at fighting wars but also ducks out of water in the area of civil reconstruction.   I still remember when the US military sneered at taking on police duty in the Balkans during the Clinton Administration – arguing that they didn’t do peacekeeping.    

Van Buren's stories of public diplomacy funds wasted and PSYOPs gone wrong

Let me not regurgitate either of Van Buren’s or Donnelly’s stories however – or actually mostly Van Buren’s stories because - Donnelly’s emotionally charged rebuttal is, as an article not a book, shorter on specifics.  Nevertheless, far better to read Van Buren’s book and Donnelly’s response yourself. 

I do know, however, that Van Buren’s tales of public diplomacy wasted and PSYOPs gone wrong fit like the tightest of gloves with the reports I’ve read and heard elsewhere ever since US foreign policy in the Middle East went awry beginning in March 2003.  

Liam Fox and Atlantic Bridge - don’t lose the important question to the excitement of the Fox hunt

By John C. Dyer, UK correspondent

Scotland banned fox hunting in 2002, England and Wales 2004.  But 14 October 2011 the hounds closed upon one fox, Liam Fox, the Coalition Defence Secretary.  On the afternoon of 14 Oct 2011 Secretary Fox resigned his post as Defence Secretary, citing a blurring of his personal and professional interests.   But I fear that in the excitement of the scandal and its conclusion, let’s not lose sight of the significant revelations surfacing concerning Atlantic Bridge, 3 other Coalition Cabinet Secretaries, the Prime Minister’s Press Secretary and 3 US politicians.

 A Fox in trouble

Leading to the resignation today, the Guardian and Labour surfaced serious questions concerning Fox’s relationship and dealings with Fox’s friend, former intern, best man at Fox’s wedding, and, arguably, protege, Adam Werrity.    Labour and the Guardian alleged Fox may have broken the Ministerial Code. The who did what and knew what when has dominated UK news outlets for several days right down to moments before news of the resignation broke.

Werrity “turned up” on a third of Fox’s official visits abroad. At least 19 in all, and at least 22 additional meetings at the Ministry of Defence.  These included meetings with international businessmen and Sri Lanka politicians.  Werrity described himself on business cards and in at least one programme for an event as Fox’s “advisor.”  Both the Ministry of Defence and the Conservative Party denied that Werrity worked for them.

The official line from Fox in the beginning was that the contacts were social. But that explanation began to unravel as reports mounted from others involved in the growing number of reported meetings.  Fox apologized in the media on October 10 and to Parliament on the 11th, but argued that he had not done anything to break the Ministerial Code or place national security at risk.  He maintained that Werrity had not had access to sensitive information involving national security.

The Prime Minister ordered an investigation by the UK’s chief Civil Servant, the Civil Service Permanent Secretary.  While reputedly the investigation was winding up the afternoon of the 14th, the report of that investigation is due in days. 

The heat builds at the Fox’s heels.

If the Prime Minister’s office hoped that the combination of the apology, Fox’s responses to questions in Parliament, and the referral to the chief Civil Servant would mute the story, they were disappointed. The story continued to grow, with the Times alleging Werrity’s travel was funded by a combination of a private Intelligence firm, a property developer with ties to Israel and others.  The Mail claims to have identified another, a US lobbyist, calling himself an advisor to Fox  The Guardian has published charges that Fox was running a “shadow foreign policy” in Sri Lanka in contravention to the Coalition’s public position.

Allegedly, Werrity was the defence industry’s “go to guy” in that very important business of massaging public policy. Reputedly, one invoice and Fox is gone.   The focus of the investigation appears to be who paid for what appears to have been around £150,000 in international travel. The Civil Service Permanent Secretary is set to determine whether Werrity made money from contacts among business interests which would benefit from defence procurement.

A 12 October YouGov poll shows 54% of UK voters think he should go now.   In the face of now constant questions and criticism, the Prime Minister asked the public to suspend judgment pending this report.  Tory back benchers and Ministers roared support and approval for the embattled arch Conservative during Prime Minister’s Questions.  Fox had been an alternative candidate for leadership to David Cameron.

Atlantic Bridge

Fair enough, but the story of Liam Fox’s relationship to Adam Werrity and whether and/or how this may have influenced UK defence policy, budget decisions, and procurement has much wider implications than the reported focus.  The implications stretch across the Atlantic and raise questions concerning American politicians and business interests. They also reflect on UK (and therefore US) policy toward Israel.

Mission Impossible: Justifying Assassination by Drone

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The following is a excerpt from a transcript of a press conference held several days ago in a not entirely friendly country somewhere in the Middle East—although it might have taken place most anywhere else, for that matter. 

A U.S. diplomat whose job description requires him/her to explain U.S. policy to the local media faced an assembly of representatives of said media—print, tv, electronic, et. al.  The diplomat was a highly regarded officer who is at home with twitter, texting, Facebook, etc.  Unfortunately, like all too many foreign service officers filling public diplomacy slots, he/she has no significant training or experience in public diplomacy and he is not an area specialist.  We are told that his/her emotional range during this encounter oscillated provocatively between timidity and belligerence.
 
At this point in the press conference, the Dream Diplomat needed to convince a roomful of fearless, skeptical, articulate, well-informed journalists that it was legally and morally justified  for the U.S. to neutralize U.S.-born Islamist Anwar Al-Awlaki by sending a missile-armed drone to do the job.

The relevant section of the transcript is as follows:

    Journalist: This was obviously a very controversial act.  Could you give us the legal thinking behind it?

    Dream Diplomat: Sorry, that’s classified.  But hey!  We hit the target on the nose this time. No wedding parties.  No sleeping kids.

    Journalist: I thought the CIA said that never happens.

    DD: Yes, well, um—that’s kind of classified, too.  Commenting on it, I mean.  We don’t affirm or deny it.
   
    Journalist: Well, can I conclude that it would be equally ok for Ahmedinajad to take out John Bolton, assuming the Iranians had drones, as everyone will, eventually?  He’s been pushing to get you guys to bomb Iran for years.
   
    DD: Of course not.
   
    Journalist: So Americans can assassinate.  Bin Laden.  Al Awkaki. Whomever. However.  But you object when the Iranians go after the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.  How come?
   
    DD: There’s a difference.  I just can’t discuss it.  You have to trust me.  You have to trust us.
   
    (Laughter.)

    Journalist: On another topic, the Afghans are mistreating prisoners evidently—

    DD: Yes.  And Secretary Clinton has informed them that we disapprove, very strongly, of abusing prisoners.
   
    (More laughter.)

    Journalist: So we really can’t get a copy of that al Awlaki legal justification?

    DD: Sorry.  Even American journalists can’t get their hands on it.  

    Journalist: You mean Americans don’t know what it says either?

    DD:  Nope!  So, no one’s discriminating against you guys!  Now some people say there’s considerable leaking going on, which may or may not be true.  I can’t affirm or deny it.  But you can be pretty darn sure the leakers will get what’s coming to them, once they're  identified.

    Journalist: Jail?

    DD:  Could be.

    Journalist: Must be wonderful—living in a democracy. 

    (Tittering.)

    DD:  It is.  That’s why we want you to copy us.

    Journalist: We are.  Oh, we are.  And that’s no laughing matter.

    DD looks at his/her watch and heaves a sigh of relief:  Time’s up.  Thanks.  And don’t forget to pick up a copy of the press release on chicken farms in Iraq.

 

What you were not told about the London Riots of 2011

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

What David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Ed Milliband, Secretary Theresa May, Secretary Kenneth Clarke, BBC, Channel 4 News, Sky News, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Sun, and all Humpty Dumpty’s horses and all of his men failed to tell you about the London Riots of 2011.

Between 6 to 10 August, 2011 several UK cities convulsed in riot, looting and arson. In the  aftermath everyone had a theory why.  What no one had were the facts of who the rioters were and why they rioted at this moment in history.

 Theories  theories  theories

Historian David Starkey, joined PM David Cameron in blaming “gang culture.”   Cameron added, not budget cuts or social protest. Former PM Tony Blair blamed alienated youth.  The Financial Times blamed financial deprivation. London mayor candidate Ken Livingston blamed government cuts.  David Lammy, MP for the first hit Tottenham blamed unemployment.  Home Secretary Theresa May blamed criminal opportunism.  Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke blamed a “feral underclass” of repeat offenders, products of a broken prison system. The media faithfully reported all the theories.

But no one reported the facts.  The facts appeared unnecessary to the dialogue. The Prime Minister launched an initiative headed by Minister Ian Duncan Smith to tackle gang culture.  Cameron sought the expertise of a top US anti gang cop and even reportedly considered appointing the American to the Met’s (Scotland Yard) top job.   Ian Duncan Smith called it a “pivotal moment” in Cameron’s tenure as Prime Minister.

But some facts did become known. On 6 September the Met revealed some information  (but only some) about 1700 or so of the arrestees. Over 80% had records. Most were adults. The Met revealed little else, but Secretary Clarke, discussing the data, commented that there was little direct evidence of gang connections.

Eventually London appointed Bernard Hogan-Howe its top cop to lead the inquiry.  Hogan-Howe promised to “lead a service that criminals will fear.”    In the meantime, much of the buzz has died down. I see little evidence of Ian Duncan Smith’s “pivotal moment” or, for that matter, media interest in further clarifying the facts.  The issue hardly came up during the Prime Minister’s address to the Conservative Conference last week.

But the unanswered questions remain. Who were the rioters?  Why did they riot in August, 2011 (as opposed to May, or August 2010)?  Why this moment in history?  Again, opinions prevail, but based on precious little direct evidence from the profiles of the rioters themselves.

I have asked these questions from the beginning.  Early on I concluded pundits had concocted an awful lot of theory out of very little publicly known information.  I was concerned by the similarity in method and appearance of a number of the rioters to the anarchists who turned to violence during otherwise peaceful demonstrations in London the preceding year.  I concluded I was not going to get the facts from the sources on whom I would normally rely. So I asked Scotland Yard a number of questions in a Freedom of Information Request on August 18. 

Questions for Scotland Yard

I asked:

Of the 2,700 plus already arrested:

How many are known or admitted members of gangs?

How many had prior arrests?

How many were also arrested in conjunction with either the pension demonstrations or the tuition fee demonstrations?

How many lived within the community they looted?

How many are charged with inciting, organizing, or leading the rioters?

How many of these are known to be connected to a gang?

How many of these are known to be connected with anarchist groups?

How many of these have prior arrests during the Pension and Tuition Fee protests?

How many are under 18?

How many are employed?

How many are white?

How many actually come from single parent households?

How many were living with parents at the time of their arrest?

On 10 October 2011 an answer finally arrived.  Scotland Yard refused to answer, citing a clause in the Freedom of Information Act which provides an escape valve where it would cost more than £450 to answer.  Scotland Yard estimated it would take more than 18 hours to sift through the information contained in its records in order to answer my questions.