The truth is such speculation is idle. No such course of events would ever be allowed to happen. No such movement would ever be allowed to grow. The whole point of the destruction of the Zuccotti Park camp was that it brought to an end the Occupy Wall Street protest long before it ever had the chance to develop any critical mass.

In Britain, too, the authorities know exactly how to deal with dissent that goes too public. Right at this moment there is something of an ‘Occupy’ protest going on in Parliament Square in London. Several hundred people are trying to use their much-vaunted freedom of speech to demonstrate in favour of fundamental change in British society - the sort of change that isn’t on offer from any of the mainstream political parties who have a stranglehold on political power through Britain’s antiquated ‘first-past-the-post’ electoral system.

I would like to tell you what is happening there, but there’s very little I can say. The British media, who have so much to say on the subject of Hong Kong, seem rather reluctant to find space in their columns to provide any information on their own home-grown protests. On Monday 20th October - three days into the protest - the ever-liberal Guardian did finally manage to script a generous 255-word article, but the loud voices of the BBC have been strangely reluctant to express an opinion. Some prominent China-bashers, like the Daily Telegraph, appear to take the view that it would be best if the British public hears nothing at all about these events.

What I can glean from alternative social media is that the protest has been going on for all of three days, and it appears that the authorities have already sent large numbers of police to put a stop to it. Protesters are now being physically hauled away. In Britain, under the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 it is a criminal offence to be in Parliament Square "in possession of items that might be used for sleeping", and the police have deemed that anyone who is sitting on a tarpaulin to keep off the cold tarmac is guilty of ‘erecting a structure’.

I should perhaps emphasise that I am not making any of this up in an attempt to be funny. This is all genuinely happening in a country that seems to spend half its time lording it over the Chinese government for its ‘repressive behaviour’ and denouncing the Chinese media for their refusal to report openly on events in China.

The Hong Kong Occupy demonstrators should be careful what they wish for. It is true that they do not have the same right that Americans do, to vote for one of two millionaires who have sold themselves to a group of financial interests, and then to vote a couple of years later for the other one. But tens of thousands of them have been allowed to conduct their protests on the streets of Hong Kong for weeks now, erecting barricades, causing obstructions, and disrupting the lives and the work of their fellow citizens, and their protests have been managed for the most part without violence.

Whereas if tens of thousands of Hong Kong Occupy protestors had been out with their barricades on the streets of London, they would have been dispersed within days and many of them would now be in prison. If they had been out with their barricades on the streets of New York, they would have been dispersed within days and many of them would now be in hospital, or the morgue.

That's what I call depocrisy.