The biggest public spending cuts in a generation + use of the internet to mobilise scattered individuals = TROUBLE

Tim Montgomerie

People have organised extraordinary flash mobs over recent years - pillow fights... nude gatherings... and we are now in the era of flash protests.

In the past it wasn't easy for scattered but angry people to find each other and organise micro protests. They now can.

The action by UKuncut against Vodafone and Top Shop in recent weeks were the early manifestations of what might be a wave of unconventional protests that could have big but unpredictable effects.

Ian Birrell has written about the phenomena in today's Evening Standard:

"A small group can make a sudden and dramatic impact. A long tail effect is visible, in which scatterings of isolated people can join forces in a way that would have been difficult before the internet, linked by social networking and amplified by Twitter. This is potentially revolutionary. It could reinvigorate political discourse, making politicians more accountable just as the internet is making businesses more accountable to consumers. Or it could disrupt and destabilise politics, just as WikiLeaks is doing to diplomacy, giving small unrepresentative groups the power to cause chaos."

I hope the police and intelligence services are keeping an eye on all of this.