Police amazed as pissed off mob cause damage to things

The Met Police were completely caught off guard yesterday as a mob of angry students, quite angry students and fans of smashing sounds ran amok at the Conservatives' HQ, breaking windows, burning placards and de-alphabetising a stack of folders.

About 30,000 people marched in London to protest against the government's decision to lift the cap on university tuition fees to £9,000 - a move that would deny higher education to anyone not in possession of a Jack Wills cardigan.

Many students felt aggrieved at having backed the Liberal Democrats in the General Election on the basis of their promise not to raise tuition fees; a promise that Nick Clegg has insisted shouldn't be taken seriously because 'nobody ever thought the Lib Dems would actually get in.'

A splinter faction of rioters went in search of the Lib Dem HQ, but were unable to find it after several hours of trekking around Westminster with an iPhone.

The protest initially went off peacefully, but police were aghast when a group of around 2,000 began to hurl missiles at Conservative HQ at 30 Millbank.

"Whoever heard of students getting rowdy and smashing things," policing minister Nick Herbert lamented. "I'd specifically told the Met Police not to expect any trouble."

Reports from Conservative HQ have estimated the damage at around £50,000, mostly in bland mid-priced European art, but the devastation goes much deeper than that.

"The rioters turned over several folders of documents that had been agonisingly put in alphabetical order," an insider told Extra Nonsense.

"It looks like we were lucky because A through G has stayed relatively intact, but H to R is a disaster zone."

Nearby MI5 even had to lock its doors, a rare security measure for the nation's counter-intelligence and security service.

Policing chief Nick Herbert met with criticism earlier this year when he refused to send officers to deal with a bull in a Twickenham china shop, stating that 'it looked like a reasonable chap.'