Oh no. Poor David Cameron. First he had to cut short his vacation at a luxury villa in Tuscany. Then when he thought he could make people forget the News of the World/Con hacking scandal, by posing as a crime fighter.
“There are pockets of our society that are not only broken, but frankly sick it is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society, people allowed to feel that the world owes them something.”
“We needed a fightback, and a fightback is under way.
David Cameron appeared increasingly isolated last night after senior police officers, MPs and even the Conservative Mayor of London united in a call for him to reconsider police cuts in the face of four days of sustained rioting.
It turns out you CAN'T cut services for troubled youth, and the police force at the same time.
'The hoodie is a response to a problem, not a problem in itself. We - the people in suits - often see hoodies as aggressive, the uniform of a rebel army of young gangsters.
'But hoodies are more defensive than offensive. They're a way to stay invisible in the street. In a dangerous environment the best thing to do is keep your head down, blend in.
That's it eh? Keep your head down, blend in, until the London Olympics begin. And then you can go for GOLD.
Blimey. No wonder he's running around pretending to be a yob fighter.
You may have noticed that London is burning. The flames of anger are spreading .
The violence, which began in Tottenham, north London, on Saturday spread south and east to Brixton, Streatham, Walthamstow, Edmonton, Enfield, Oxford Circus and Islington on Sunday.
By last night further outbreaks of disorder involving hundreds of hooded yobs had been reported in Hackney, Clapton, East Ham, Lewisham, Harlesden, Elephant and Castle and Woolwich.
The establishment and the old are panicking, and calling for the army. And almost everybody is missing the big picture.
Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture: a country in which the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country.
It is no coincidence that the worst violence London has seen in many decades takes place against the backdrop of a global economy poised for freefall. The causes of recession set out by J K Galbraith in his book, The Great Crash 1929, were as follows: bad income distribution, a business sector engaged in “corporate larceny”, a weak banking structure and an import/export imbalance. All those factors are again in play.
Although the epicentre of the immediate economic crisis is the eurozone, successive British governments have colluded in incubating the poverty, the inequality and the inhumanity now exacerbated by financial turmoil.
Yup. The bankers are stealing billions, the poor are stealing running shoes. The yobs may be throwing the firebombs, but the anger is real. And it's spreading all over the world.
Or there will be justice. Or there will be trouble.
