A better title for this article:
'What these exceptional events mean, and do not mean to me'. To me (Martin)
they have a different significance!

@a. cole

My only concern is that such action will set a precedent for similar action in future legitimate protest, such as the student protests.

@Gwyn; in the past 30 years the wealth hasn't been transferred, the wealth has grown as a result of an increase in GDP. All people in all social classes have seen an increase in their actual wealth. Take a look at the number of people who own cars, washing machines, computers, mobile phones, colour TVs etc today in comparison to 30 years ago and you'll see that every class has benefitted from the increase in wealth. Many people are actually owners of capital through their pension funds .. you are probably one of these people. Pension funds are the biggest holders of global shares and bonds. In short the workers own the capital.

You are living in the past Gwyn Williams, take off your anorak, your silly Trotsky googles and get with it.

Even as the loyal opposition (I am a church minister) I find your posts insightful and challenging.

This however seems more an apologetics to liberalism than anything else.

Don't know if you have seen the Adam Curtis short "oh dearism" as it seems this is an oh dearism moment for the liberal middle class. It is obvious we need reform in the police but equally obvious we need to portray a sence of strong policing.

Addressing the problems with the police leads to a confidence crisis among the police.

Add to the powder keg a fatherless , aimless generation and a society which places more value on things rather than people and you realise for all the blogs and commentary today there is no easy or quick solution

And as Mr Curtis concludes in his short film all we can do is look on and say "oh dear"

A rioter just walked out of Highbury Magistrates Court...he WORKS in a primary school.

So much for the lefty poverty, no opportunity apologist argument!

I'm all about the pragmatics, me. If water cannon aren't a magic cure-all on the wide avenues & in the open spaces of the french banlieux, they certainly won't work in the narrow, twisty streets of London.

There are all kinds of ordinary people caught behind police lines at various points in these riots. Which of them shall we accidentally kill with a baton round or blind with a water cannon? Shall we call such mishaps "collateral damage"? Which rioter shall we accidentally transmogrify into a martyr & victim?

The law of unintended consequence is at its strongest when people are more concerned that "something should be done" than that something effective be done.

At the end of the day the Police are only ordinary human beings even though they have special powers of arrest and detention. There is only so much they can do, and they can only police with the consent of 'the people' and withe co-operation of the people. So I don't blame them for not intervening when buildings are ablaze. After all its only property, although it is ordinary hard working peoples livlihoods at stake.
What we ow need is a curfew on younsters An appeal to parents is useless because parents themselves are helpless to deal with their ferral kids, because they indulged them and are to blame for their subsequent behaviour.

This seems to be about: short supply/high price of crack cocaine; prevalence of methane; PC gangsterism/media-savvy hacktivism; policing methods overwhelmed by the war of(!) drugs.

While I do accept that crimes committed during the riots of the last few nights may be statistical blips what the real long term affect will be is to reinforce feeling in places like Peckham that during the summer young people are out of control. Every summer there are clashes between small numbers of local youth and with those from places such as Lewisham and other local areas which make people pre-judge the young here. Recent events will just divide local people further and the number of young people without older role models, guidance and a sense of belonging will grow leading to events like we have seen lately more likely.

I wonder how many of the moaning minnies actually wrote to their MPs and councillors objecting to the cuts in police and armed forces budgets but instead rubbed their hands with glee that their council tax didn't rise?. Chickens, home and roost comes to mind

This blog post is so bad I can't even be bothered to slag it off.

@ Disqualifier.
yes it;s strange how in some instances where a swift police intervention was safely workable, they sat by watching looting... politics at work by chance (nonono cries the left, never- it's the Tory cutters) er... but i watched 6 coppers stand there as a kid walsks by with a telly, i mean I saw it (nonono protests the left, u don't understand how policing works, or you're blind- In the last 15 years we (Livingston)hired an EXTRA 7000 coppers so that they could deal with the paperwork we (Brown) created that requires an 10,000 coppers and 3000 extra civil servants and...) YES YES,i said, though, that the copper could have nicked that kid , right? all i'm saying is blatently if the policeman had walked forward 10 steps and extended his arm, then said'you're nicked', the kid would, er.. would have been nicked. That's all i'm saying, not all of it was like that, but a lot of it. (leftie sighs shaking his head...'you don't get it do u , faschist property owning/loving pig. we have human rights and were the kid to be nicked, as you so rudely suggest(what about his rights to be fairly described- he's not guilty till proven so. he may have been carrying a telly but had the policeman enquired as to wheter he was ALSO carryinfg a receipt for the telly, eh? did he?I think that the tax funded lawyers will have something to say about that you nazi!! any way, he has human rights, and to ensure that they are never violated, 3 coppers take him down the nick, the third making sure the other 2 don't beat him up, where a booking sergeant does the paper work, another copper preparing his party bag for when he's packed off home later- THAT, you scum pig tory cutter, is the mark of a civilsed society, and not some bizarre notions of self-knowledge or consciousness or compassion) Wow, I get it now. Arresting them means all the police have to come off the streets, so we don't arrest anyone. hang on though, dodn't that newspaper guy get taken out? Tomlinson(the lefty shrugs, unable to answer- for a split second he feels a buzz in his head, his synapses are trying to forge a new pathway, but years of training at the Academy of Clowning and Advanced Buffonery(this was funded by an EU grant incidentally)kicks in, and he reverts to type, positing what needs to be done to save society from itself: Clearly we need more money to fund some research into how we got here, 2)fund some research into what to do next, 3) fund some more coppers, 4) fund some more civil servants to help the coppers,5) fund some more lawyers to ensure that the cicl rights of the looters not be beached-AND in case anyone accuses the left of false fiscal accounting, we will fund the lawyers for the looters by decreasing the fund to assist the small business owners, and if need be just increase their business rates the capitalists should pay their dues it's about time. And the guys who go bust as result can go and get one of the 'alledged' jobs the rioters are being told to get...we will also have to fund extra extra policemen becuse only using 3 coppers to take a 15 year old down the nick in a £50, 000 armoured van is dangerous- what if the 3rd copper, who is meant to be ensuring the other 2 coppers don't beat him up secretly, actually wants to beat the kid up? Of course, we would need to get funding to fund the original funding i.e. service the original debts- clowns don't see a problem in that and indeed, Ponzi was one of the great clowns often cited in their lecture theater at the Circus Maximus

@ Disqualifier
Don't forget the protest that took place a little while before by the church and Trade Unions where the Police managed to kill Ian Tomlinson. His crime was to walk home. I seem to recall that those peaceful protesters were kettled and inflamed for marching peacefully. The banks managed to riot with everyone's money but that was called business, oh and so was the MP's expeses, wasn't that a riot of the public purse? Just goes to show.

@ Matty- agreed. Fiendishly complex paperwork designed to keep people in non-jobs means that the truly neady in our society don't get the help they deserve whilst the morons get more 'entitled'- sick right?
@ Gwynn; you write;"along with the progressive impoverishment of the majority"
Statements like this is why I have started writing age 42- what are you talking about- Do you know what poverty is? Go to an old people's home and talk to them, seriously they like that, just have a cup of tea with them, please do that... watch the international news, or buy an international affairs mag- I' tired of hearing it- I have problems, major ones, fundamentally important ones, and I feel there's a growing realisation by people like me in society that we've had enough of BLATENT INCORRECT STATEMENTS, which are then used as a foundation of some elaborate thesis, forgetting the foundations are rotten. No wonder there is no decent affordable social housing after 14 years of labour, they understand nothing of building- be it a house, argument, school(one that teaches, not a shiny new one), society, armed force, reserve, pension, infrastucture, postoffice, nothing... you're progressive impoverishment of the majority? pffff!! More like another minority group that a generation of MP's has used to get more POWER...
David Allen Green wrote the other day about people changing their minds- well i changed mine after a few days of these riots- yes, seemingly it's bought under control, but guess what, it can start again in a flash, and if the louts come banging on my door, I have only a 3 year old boy to help defend the house and the 3 females in it, cos the police will be snowed when the rioters kick off cos some other piece of free money has neen taken away- and u guessed it, business is going to rank way higher than my problems in the world where big business is King.Nero, burned, fiddled, Rome , while.Could the Lefties start practicing building please??

If you look at a country like dubai, they sell 24 carat gold worth thousands of pounds in open markets - no one would dare steal this.

it breaks my heart to see all these small business owners around west bromwich, wolverhampton being targeted.

the police need to get tough - the way the yobs are using social networks in order to organise violence needs to be addressed - especially in relation to blackberry messenger.

@gwynn: u write" If you are happy to live in the kind of self obsessed, individualistic society and that the middle classes have created in Britain "
the middle classes didn't create squat- they went along with it, gurglin wine at dinner parties talking about property prices.
it's the top guys who mould our society, that's the truth- and in the last 13 years, that means those Labour idiots, who were meant to represent the people... well, some should be in prison.Shaheed u right, they are turncoats. People are calling for heads to roll cos tories went on holiday?- so we going to ban holiday now are we? I've had to cancel mine next week and it's pissed me off, was so looking forward to what the urchins might come up with... what a crass, opprtunistic level of argument, to attack a family holiday.
Oh hang on leftist brothers, why not blame osborne for baby P, the toddler who finally died of a broken back and after doctors had told the social workers SO MANY TIMES there wre problems- 60 visits and no one spotted that the poor, lonely child , unloved and abused , that's all he knew iN his short sad life... u effing moronic tossers... the 100 civil servants that can be placed between Osborne and the child, and your HATRED leads u to one inescapable conclusion- osborne's fault, and pay off the boss- actually she got to sue didn't she?, unfairly dismissed-- that's right, balls coudn't even sack someon properly, he was so keen to get the public sympathy vote, and the disgusting courts, the other tool in the insidious machinery that is designed to undermine the family unit, says she can claim for £2.5 mn. £2.5 million for allowing a toddler to be systematically beaten to death for 2 years, under her own eyes. Civilised society? compared to what? an effing gulag perhaps... Poor rioters and their prospects? F OFF. More money for the lawyers, judge, system, social workers. F OFF.
This is truly a nation that loves not it's children and so it has no future... it loves power and money, and will write and say anything to get it. It condescendingly STILL looks on at the 'other' countries in the world, content that its underclass is one of the smallest. SO WHAT?? it loves not its own children, it loves not itself.
THE LIONHEART IS DEAD.
The idiots in the street? they're the prisoners off tomorrow, that's all..there is ALWAYS a fringe, and it is a trick of the mind and its ever attendant ego to think SOCIETY can fix it... we can only HELP the following generation though if we put our minds to it now. After all, the prison wardens need a job too. Plato wrote 2500 YEARS ago about how to fix this, and his principles would apply today, so if u really want to fix the riots...
Yes mr Allen Green -I've changed my mind since the beginning of these lootings. i have bigger fish to fry then worrying about the looters. Don't really care what it takes to clear the streets, seriously, i'm not bovvered-I'll pay for it, just get it done

Bang on about this not being a spike in the number of crimes comitted, they're just being focused under the media spotlight. From where I'm sat the danger is that ignoring the causes of these problems will mean that when the riots are stamped out (probably through force) those involved will just skulk back to their ghettos and continue to make lives miserable for people on a low-key level for the forseeable future (emboldened by having evaded justice here).