Matthew's Journal

I think it's fair to say that the causes of the rioting include: the shooting by police of Mark Duggan; the recently-exposed corruption in MPs, journalists, and the police; a feeling that the rich (bankers) caused the current economic woe and yet are escaping the hardships that result; a feeling that the government is systematically undermining the support for the poor; the enormous inequality in British society; herd behaviour; the feeling that the police are powerless to stop one looting shops; warm summer evenings; boredom.

Fine, except I wouldn't call anything that happened after Saturday night a riot. The people who were out on Sunday, last night, and if reports are to be believed, this afternoon in Salford and other places, are not rioters, they are kids who are copying what they've seen on the interwebz.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-14467588
Groups of younger teenagers don't knock over a bottle shop because they are bothered about bankers or MP's expenses or whatever. They do it because they think they're hard. They do it because they think it's cool. They do it because they have no concept of the consequences, either to their own criminal record or someone else's livelihood.

Continuing to call this behaviour rioting is to bestow on it some kind of legitimacy when there is none.

I'm pissed off with the bankers and the MPs and the constant lambasting of public sector workers as being overpaid and having wonderful pensions. I'm sick to the back teeth of being unable to do my job properly because of continuing cuts in public sector spending while the politicians change the goalposts relating to my direct job on an almost weekly basis. But I paid for my new phone and my new telly and can't afford all the other things I want. I know there are jobs for young people who want them because I've put up a dozen vacancies in the last month. I'm constantly giving excuses to employers about why they aren't getting any applicants for these jobs.

So, yes, some people had a right to be hacked off with the police on Saturday, but since then, the people who have been causing willful destruction of property and danger to others are just thugs, whatever their motivation.