'68? No, my fee is €145

By Heraclitus

Here's a new commercial venture: young people, good-lookin' ones, too, willing to rent themselves out for your protest.

Organisations using the service are unlikely to reveal themselves, keen to pass off their protesters as genuine supporters of the cause. But German media reported a Munich march had hired protesters because its own adherents were too old to stand for hours waving banners...

But the fact they are paid has perturbed a number of commentators in Germany, especially those who remember the passion-fuelled protests of 1968.

"It seems to confirm the increasingly common assumption," wrote one, "that democracy is for sale".