I predict a riot

Chanting citizens taking to the streets to protest against cuts and pensions - sound familiar? Yes, the French are at it again… but could the mass demonstrations in Paris soon be replicated across the streets of London?

No one does revolting quite as well as the French, who have now brought Paris to a standstill for almost a week. What started with an organised march from teachers' and students' unions in opposition to the raising of the retirement age has now become mass civil unrest.

Blockades of France's oil refineries have left 4,000 petrol pumps out of fuel; Paris' airports have had to come to a near stand-still; French industry is said to be losing at least £100m a day; hundreds of thousands have taken to the wide Parisian boulevards; cars have been set alight; bank windows smashed; shops looted.

The French pensions row has now become a referendum on President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is bent on raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 and full pension entitlement from 65 to 67.

With that in mind, it is not infeasible that France's Autumn of Discontent could spread across the border and spawn some winter turmoil in London.

The seeds have already been sown by Chancellor George Osborne's incredibly unpopular Spending Review, which was this week delivered to a packed House of Commons in a highly charged hour-long speech.

While Mr Osborne was outlining his complicated list of cuts worth £81 billion, demonstrators had already gathered to make their anger known. Around 2,500 people, predominantly students, marched from Lincoln's Inn Fields to Whitehall where they met with trade unionists to protest against the cuts, which included the loss of 490,000 public sector jobs and a 40% cut in university teaching budgets.

Chants of "Whose streets? Our streets!" were interspersed with "No ifs, no buts, no education cuts!" One student told The Guardian how he was angry that the people who caused the recession - the bankers - were doing fine, while those who had done nothing wrong were being made to suffer. "Cutting public services now is like kicking a wounded dog," he said.

Jackie Mitchell, a professor at the University of East London, told the same paper that she was "shocked" about what she had seen in the spending review and urged people to take action. "These cuts will fundamentally change the fabric of our country - and if we believe in this country and what it stands for, we have to fight."

Soon there were around 3,000 students, health workers, council staff, teachers and other public sector employees outside Whitehall, being held back by the police who had just learnt themselves that their own funding will be cut by a fifth and their overtime pay and bonuses sent tumbling. It doesn't bode well.

The last time London saw mass demonstrations was in last spring's G20 protest during which a man tragically died. Those protests were primarily against the banking system in the wake of the global financial crisis - but mood brought about by the spending cuts would create a whole different type of malaise.

Just like in France, where the pensions row has become a chance for people to voice their opposition to President Sarkozy, the enforced spending cuts could well become a referendum on the coalition government itself.

All things considered, it's hard to see things getting as out of hand as they have in France, a country which has a revolting tradition which harks back to the late 18th century.

That there will be demonstrations on the streets of London is as likely as there will be, no doubt, another couple of tube strikes before Christmas. It remains to be seen how far the aggrieved British population are prepared to go. The worst is surely yet to come - but surely the public reaction won't stoop to the levels seen in France.

Arnie the deficit Eraser

One way of dealing with unrest on the streets would to be to bring in some Terminator-style commando to keep any ruffians in check. Prime Minister David Cameron clearly has somebody in mind, for this month he welcomed Arnold Schwarzenegger to No.10. "He's going to help me terminate the budget deficit," said Dave. While the bodybuilder-cum-actor-cum-politician has plenty of experience dealing with such issues as Governor of California, he could always run the rule over London's under-fire schools as a Kindergarten Cop. On the same day, Schwarzenegger visited Wellington Barracks where he met some British soldiers, hailing them as the "true action heroes".

Gimmicky prices for 2012

The most expensive tickets for the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony in July 2012 will cost £2,012 while the cheapest seats will go for just £20.12. With a backdrop of impending spending cuts, it was perhaps not the best time for the Olympic officials to reveal the ticket prices for the London 2012 Games. Just under nine million tickets go on sale next March. Watching Usain Bolt in the 100m final will cost between £50 and £725; seeing Rebecca Adlington swim (hopefully) to gold could set you back £450; while a ticket to see Sir Chris Hoy in the velodrome will be between £50 and £325. Thankfully, a lot of the heats will cost as little as £20 - but even so, many Londoners will find themselves priced out of the party.

Take-away a Chinese Boris

A Chinese portrait of Boris Johnson riding one of his London rentable bikes will be on show at the Affordable Art Fair this week in Battersea Park. The life-like picture shows the Mayor burning up the tarmac with his blond hair blowing in the wind and his suit jacket flapping. It was painted by an artist called Xiaobai and is priced at £2,200 (a little bit more than the top-tier ticket to the Olympic opening ceremony). Boris made something of a name for himself in China in 2008 when he waved the Olympic flag around at the Beijing Games and talked of "wiff-waff" coming home to London.

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