Bernard Dineen: The policeman, the protester and justice at last

When the case came to court last week, however, we heard a different story. The "peaceful demonstrator" turned out to be an animal rights activist who was "behaving in an aggressive way", seeking confrontation with the officer during what the judge described as "an anti-police demonstration".

The woman moved along the front of the crowd "waving her arms and behaving erratically". She was part of a crowd surging towards the officer and the judge believed it was necessary for him to use force to defend himself.

The first contact was when he slapped her with the back of his gloved hand. When she "charged back fast" at him, he hit her on the legs twice with his baton.

He had been on duty for 28 hours, with just three hours' rest, during the G20 protests, said the judge. He had a mere seven seconds to decide how to react as the woman rushed at him on his blind side, clutching a carton which could have contained anything.

The whole affair shows how television can distort and present as truth what is actually a lie. And what did the demonstrator say for herself in court? She chose not to appear because she did not want to face cross-examination.

But she had no objection to appearing before a Commons committee and telling her story to a bunch of gullible MPs. She also sold it for 26,000 to a tabloid. We have no right to make police officers face injury and then betray them on the basis of a 10-second clip on TV.

This officer was eventually acquitted of all blame, but only after

he had endured a year suspended from his job, pilloried by mindless media commentators and anti-police propagandists, before he could clear

his name.

THE dominance of independent schools in exam results is a sorry verdict on state education. At some independent schools, two-thirds of pupils have scored the new "supergrade" in their A-levels.

Now Labour has found a way of cutting these high-flying schools down to size. A teachers' union says that Ofsted inspectors are using trivial, politically correct issues to downgrade schools. The National Association of Head Teachers says: "At one school, because three Criminal Records Bureau records were not filed properly, the inspectors were going to escort the teachers from the premises. One was the headmaster and the other two had an average 30 years' experience."

A total of 74 schools were issued with notices by the Children's Department, including Shrewsbury and Christ's Hospital School. Many have fallen foul of rules on "child welfare". One excellent Yorkshire boarding school was criticised because of low water pressure in a shower. In another case, children "had not been taught how to play appropriately because, at break and lunchtimes, they run around shouting and letting off steam".

The list of "offences" is endless: "Parents were not made aware that they could ask to see a copy of the school's plan to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act, 2002."

"The school had carried out CRB checks but the information had been stored separately rather than on a single central record." By contrast, you can see what Labour thinks education should be about. The head of Cambridge University's international exams group says that teaching has become "a shifting menu of flavour-of-the-month social concerns".

Is it any wonder our children are becoming the worst educated in Western Europe when education has become a plaything of political zealots like Ed Balls?

WHEN are we going to stop Brussels meddling with our National Health Service? Patients have already died because EU doctors unable to speak English have come here to make money. We cannot insist that they should be tested before being allowed to practise because of the EU regulation on the "free movement of workers".

But it is in our hospitals that the worst damage is being done. The cut in working hours under EU law was supposed to improve the health of junior doctors. Instead, it has increased their rates of sickness. The length and frequency of sick leave among medical trainees has more than doubled in the year since the Working Time Directive was implemented.

New rota systems have increased the pressure on junior doctors by reducing total numbers of staff on wards,

and interfered with opportunities

for training.

The president of the Royal College of Surgeons says: "This crude legislation has led to doctors working variable shifts, starting at different times of the day. Juniors are left exposed without the support of colleagues, or the opportunities to train. It has left them more exhausted and strung out than ever." Nearly half the junior doctors are working far in excess of their official hours anyway.

In a sane world, the British Government would tell the EU to stop meddling in matters it doesn't understand and putting patients' lives at risk. But whoever said we are living in a sane world?