Sometimes manning the barricades can mean kicking a few old people in the teeth

Direct action is what we hear from our brothers and sisters on the hard-bitten left:

At an electricity substation on a bleak industrial estate north of Paris a masked union militant is preparing to deprive a neighbourhood of power.

His colleague is outside, dragging nervously on a roll-up cigarette while keeping a lookout for police or security guards. "Get a move on," he says. "And then let's get out of here."

A switch is pulled down, the door of the sabotaged transformer is locked and the two activists — employees of EDF, the French state electricity supplier — drive off.

In their wake hundreds of houses and a handful of businesses in Montigny-lès-Cormeilles are left without electricity for much of the morning.

Direct action is what we get:

Last Thursday 66,500 EDF customers lost their electricity supply, some for several hours. In Douai, northern France, two patients in intensive care had to be moved when a hospital lost power for 40 minutes.

In the Paris region the Grand-Val shopping centre suffered the same fate. "We had to turn away customers from all 48 shops," Félix Crespo, a technical manager at the centre, said.

....

The power cuts have continued. In Montigny-lès-Cormeilles the saboteurs took action against EDF offices and several hundred homes were affected. A home-help assistant said: "I look after a 92-year-old woman and this sort of thing means she hasn't got a proper meal because there was nothing to cook it with."

Remind me about the left's "respecting, nurturing, tolerant, non-violent, struggling to make sure all points of view are debated in an open, inviting and oh so much more caring environment than you selfish, greedy, capitalistic bastards" routine again?