How about we now know a little more about how many kids in London, and Birmingham etc, whose parents exercise no authority over them at all. (I am not a hanger and flogger by the way. )

The end product of 30 years of thatcherite marketeering and brainwash advertising, people who just want widescreens, PS3s, and designer sports gear. I say this not out of contempt but out of despair. The majority of the rioters aint demonstrating or protesting, its just thievery.

Paul-Surely you are not claiming that capitalism is working?

If Osborne can blame the cold weather last December for the slow growth in the economy, then I think it's probably ok to blame the warm weather for the riots.

Excuses, excuses...

In reality it is just criminal behavior by mobs of kids and those not much older, so far we have been lucky that no lives have been lost in the fires...

Most of the youngsters involved and possibly even their parents grew up and went to school under a Labour government. So what went wrong?

I am not aware of any role model in British or American society demonstrating Law and Order for any of us since the invasion of Iraq.--apart from Bradley Manning currently being ignored by the British for his courage, held and psychologically tortured in solitary for over 400 days awaiting trial .He is trying to do the right thing in an noble and gentle way and society ignores him. There has been no UK comment on his case apart from discrediting his background. Along with the costs of reportedly 2 billion a day for the appalling slaughter in the current wars our 'educated' , 'respectable' leaders are feeble-minded and pathetic when dealing with the American gangsters who pull their strings. We continue to preach to the population instead of informing them accurately and honestly. And then the Bankers who bank-roll these excursions ask us to bail them out whilst awarding themselves 42 billion in bonuses in 2010. It will take a big man in Government to stand up and say 'I'm sorry, we have been wrong about everything.' A country gets the leaders it deserves. Unless it complains and tries to wake people up from their stupor. But it takes a little eloquence and finesse, and that is sadly lacking everywhere . One eventually arrives at the conclusion that people today appear to be utterly stupid whether they are in power, in banking, in the media,or rioting in the streets . As usual it is the innocent who get slaughtered or ruined.

While we have praised “revolution” in the Arab world, we condemn our own children’s rebellion, carefully not acknowledging the underlying issues and pretending these children are not ours. The people are rising around the world in different forms but for the very same reason: they want control back over their lives.

In our Western world, politicians are failing us by avoiding the debate about the major challenge that transcends short-term re-elections. We no longer control the planet and cannot help but lose our jobs, one of the last bastions of our social identity, against Chinese factory workers or Indian middle-class techies. We can choose to protect our jobs at whatever cost (protectionism anyone?) and put money and effort in developing new ones. We may also have to accept to redefine the role of paid work in our societies and find more varied ways of integrating ourselves socially. These kids are an extreme symptom of how we all feel. Looting and violence are some of the few remaining things they have got control over, in the same way that never-ending consumerism reassures the middle classes. Our references are challenged and shifting and we, the people, know we’d better try to take part actively in the process of re-inventing our society rather let banks and international organisations rule our lives and decide for us only in terms of numbers and money.

Politicians and media can keep talking about “pure criminality” and “controlling the situation” but the real issue is not going to go away after a few arrests. Our youth needs a vision and a meaningful place in the new emerging world.

Going to give up on the new statesman. It's just another fascist left rag that censors comments it does not deem appropriate. I have posted a few times an all censored when I was just pointing out that the police in scotland have said that they think there were no riots in scotland due to it not having the same ethnic make up as England.We all know what that is code for.

Steven Baxter strikes me, along with Laurie Penny, as one of the two NS columists most in tune with grassroots britain. Therefore I'm not sure whether he is entirely serious in his claim to not know why the London Riots have ocurred.
My view is that the riots were to do with the police killing a young black man and allegedly lying about the circumstances, plus a range of systematic financial attacks by the Coalition government upon the poorest of the poors welfare payments and life chances. This has created a situation where the only realistic chance of the poor unemployed getting consumer goods, other than via a charity shop, is by looting during a riot. What a vile regime!

Neither ism can work while some human beings who crave power and wealth control the thoroughly decent humanitarian.Both systems aim at enslavement and manipulation of the masses whilst hoarding huge fortunes for themselves. Egos are a design fault in some and one can recognize it in a child as early as 4 years old. The West is bankrupt morally, aesthetically and politically. The East is no better. The death of the individual as described in the movie 'Network' is our loss as a species.

Youth clubs shut due to cuts, youth on streets behaving badly, youth harassed by police, cue riots...
See The Guardian video report 31 July 2011 that predicted it.
Clegg, bless him, also predicted it in a speech 16 March 2010.
Going downhill from here.

Enoch was right...
Ah, but, for the NS to admit that would be the end of the NS.
Hence, this will no doubt be edited !
YOU COWARDS.

Blair and Bush claim that God guided them to kill millions of Iraq's and go a-looting . Will this defence stand up in court when the rioters appear?

It's happened because they look for someone to blame.
There will be more, as austerity bites the so called weakest.

I assume Steve Jones hasn't been paid for this blog, if he is on JSA? Or he has been paid and is a benefits cheat?

I think one should state one's own credentials before commenting and this allows others to make better informed responses.I am a white middle aged middle class resident of Ealing who was very briefly caught up in the riots, not as a particpant but passer by. The initial protest was justified but not the looting etc. For those on the left who see some potential revolutionary spark I think they should read Marx on lumpenproletariat.However economic conditions play a part but as with Lenin's analysis of trade unionism which could only reach level of consciousness, pushing for improvements rather than revolutionary change, so the conditions experienced by the looters can only aspire to a form of violent consumerism. Added to which the cultural values as manifest in drug taking, gang loyalties and misogyny and with the only other oppositional ideology being Christianity there is little if any chance of a socialist outlook arising.I susepct C.L.R. James and Fanon are not on the reading lists of the olooters. Do we then write them off as individuals and as a group. Some questions can be posed but not easily answered. My fear is that the extreme right will benefit as sociaety divides along racial rather than class lines and to deny this is to engage in a form of self delusion.

I'm surprised the NS hasn't already dubbed these events as the "Tottenham Spring".

Got it in one crutchbender. And they were only hanging around because it was warm.

Barny: There were night time flashes of minor violence from major marches in the winter .. nothing on this scale. Take a look at the 80s riots ... summer time stuff. Guess what will happen when it turns cold and wet? Nobody will be hanging around.

The vast majority of the world would like to have the free education, free healthcare, free housing and a benefit system which can afford its recipients mobile phones, computers, mp3s, TV's, make-up, jewellery, designer clothes. People are greedy. Let's stop making excuses, they are in charge of their own life. If they want something to do go to school, if they are too old for school go to work, if there are no jobs (which I find it very hard to believe) clean the streets, do volunteer work, visit and help old people. If they expanded the same energy they use to loot and riot on making something of their lives there would be no problem. But unfortunatly that country is full of spoilt children from top to bottom.

or enterprise - ho ho

@ Freeman - 'Mr Divine & his pal' are, on this occasion, correct: it is a well know fact (not just to the Police) that hot summer nights will give rise to more disturbances (from fights outside pubs to domestic violence). So in this respect, yes, you have learned something.
All that said, we are witnessing riots like these because a section of the population clearly believes it is acceptable to smash shop windows & help themselves to goods, because there are many parents who do not seem to care about what their kids are doing at night when they should be at home, because there is a s'system' where perpetrators know full well that they probably won't be prosecuted or convicted as the Police have got 'more serious crimes' to investigate & have to be extremely careful not to 'enflame' race relations....I think that's why...

This sums up the current situation perfectly, and with wit, Superb work!

You're spot on Lox. I think you'll see a movement towards the Conservatives as a result of these riots.

yes Andy, water cannons are the ideal solution because they will cool down the atmosphere.

Do those leftists who oppose the capitalist society and who claim that mindless looting is the result of inequalities really have any other type of society as a solution? Socialism is dead. Communism is dead. What do leftists have to offer other than childish pouting and ideas that history shows are pathetically utopian and usually murderous beyond believe?