thoughts on the riots

Some interesting observations, I hope, on the immediate political reaction to the rioting :

Interesting that the Government seems to have dumped Theresa May as spokeswoman (she should be out front, after all, she is Home Secretary) and have wheeled out Michael Gove instead. The Government seems to think Gove has a good public image as he is often thrown to the wolves on Newsnight. I rather disagree, he comes across as stiff and patrician.

How long will the Government be able to hold out against charges that it is reducing police expenditure at a critical time ? Police cuts will certainly have to be reduced at some stage.

Ed Miliband is resisting so far trying to make political capital out of it - very sensible. Somebody tell Harriet Harman though.

Nick Clegg - oh dear. he really does look a sorry sight. Out of his depth.

Will somebody please tell various spokepeople to stop saying "this is purely criminal behaviour". We have got the message. Nobody thinks it is political. We knew that by Sunday morning, for God's sake.

Much more will obviously be said and written in the months to come, but I think there are two principal issues her :

1 The frontline 'shock troops' of the riots - those who challenge the police, target and damage property, start fires etc. are part of a new phenomenon - consolidated gang culture. The long term answer lies in challenges to gang culture and all it entails.

2. The second waves - those who are there to loot - reflect a deaper seated fault in our society - that is greed and consumerism fed by excessive inequality. That will require a long term change in the culture and the structure of the economy. It will need generational change on the scale we saw in the 1980s when rampant greed and consumerism rose to new heights, in my view at least.

In short I think this is two problems, not one.




http://www.hoddereducation.co.uk/Colleges/Government---Politics.aspx?mRef=CNM01.