It isn't only children doing this, some of the people caught have jobs and one woman looted the shop she worked in, she was still wearing her uniform!

I think what happened was a pretty long delay between the start and the results. The first two days had endless TV news and radio reports of kids carrying items down the street and kicking in shop windows often with only TV crews watching and the police being elsewhere. No reports for the first two days even showed the police doing any more than standing in a row watching the activity from a distance, let alone anyone getting stopped or arrested. I would guess once they got their act together they caught up after a day or two, but at the start they seemed to be scared for their lives as despite the training I don't think they had enough men or were prepared before a lot of the damage had been done.

The next stage will be converting the subsequent arrests into convictions and actual punishments (rather than suspended sentences and community service which is the sort of voluntary work many people choose to do for years and is not exactly suffering) which I am very skeptical of. If the courts or even the government make an official decision to make an example of every single one of them then the message will go to the many more who got away that next time they won't get a slap on the wrist, a caution or a holiday. A youth worker just called the radio and said the punishments were so lenient here compared to many of the countries these kids came from originally they couldn't even care if they get caught sometimes as the prisons are just like a social club for them the very rare times they get sent there. The authorities have been talking big today so let's hope they don't forget in a few months when the cases all come to trial.

The problem with arresting the people as they are committing the crimes is that one arrested person takes two police officers off the streets which is not what was needed. Take one incident, if there were 100 police and they arrested 50 people there would be no police left in that area. That isn't what was needed.

A magistrates' court which sat overnight had most of the people remanded in custody, the offenders are already getting a taste of being locked up only if for a short period of time.

Personally I would like to see them all in prison and sent out on a daily chain gang to clean up the mess they made.

I don't care how disadvantaged they are, how poor and "unrespected" they feel. How poor are you actually when you can afford a Blackberry to plan your riot on with your friends. I don't care if they have "nothing to do". Yes a lot of them are badly edcuated, but perhaps if they had actually tried going to school instead of playing truant to run with the gangs that wouldn't be the case.

Yes, there are social problems in inner city areas, that probably applies in any large city in the world, but please don't let us make that an apology or a reason for this behaviour. After the war people didn't have homes, enough food, running water, even electricity in a lot of houses still - they didn't riot, burn things and take what they wanted. No, they dug in and built a better society. If these thugs don't like their society then work to change it - don't loot it and burn it down. That only makes the social problems in the area even worse. It hasn't all happened in inner city areas incidentally, Ealing is a nice leafy suburb, Gloucester is hardly an inner city.

I was glad to hear the Prime Minister say that nothing was off the table when it came to restoring law and order to the streets - now lets see the Police live up to his words.

Some people make stuff like that a priority, unfortunately. I know a woman who is constantly complaining about being broke, complaining because all her family can afford to live in is a trailer park, she has to work until midnight for crappy pay to make ends meet, etc etc... yet she bought her 8 year old a smartphone.

I see no reason for an eight year old to have a cell phone, period.



Most of the city of Dallas (9th largest in the USA) isn't quite like that, but there are parts (and oddly enough they are on the southwest and southeast corners of the city) that aren't places you'd want to be at night.

Couldn't agree with you more, but I have seen children as young as five or six going into school clutching their cellphone.

Helicopter parenting, a mobile for when the apron strings just won't stretch that far.

I heard an 11 year-old was arrested in these riots...

Cameron has said that if they are old enough to commit the crime then they are old enough to be arrested for it.He is talking tough. Lets hope he follows it up.

Yes and he appeared in front of a magistrate today and I think pled guilty.

According to this report it seems that the rioters and looters may include some young adults with jobs and, apparently, with prospects:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/surprising-picture-emerges-alleged-rioters-142411934.html

I'm not in the least bit surprised there, I remember when they followed the Chelsea football hooligans some years ago and followed up with others most had jobs and were just basically awful people. A psychologist on the radio said they are mentally ill, and the part of the brain which makes decisions had been seen to be smaller in many sociopaths (ie they don't know good and bad) than normal. Others said those who don't work see those who do as mugs as they can make far more more quickly through crime, and again if people have those attitudes then whether they work or not they can never been trusted unless they undergo some kind of change which can happen, but won't affect them until then.

Call in the military. Establish a curfew with shoot-to-kill orders for anyone out after curfew.

What many British people have done is go out and help clean up the mess.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14462058

Which is what will save this country - not shooting to kill.

We are talking about England here. Are you seriously suggesting that law abiding citizens ought to be shot? So take my son, he lives in London and is a recovering heroin addict, he attends several NA meetings each day to help him so you are saying that he cannot leave his home in order to attend a meeting, or if he does he ought to be shot?

You would seriously curfew millions of people for the sake of a matter of thousands?

Curfew wouldn't be a bad idea, for minors anyway. I just can't believe how many young teens, reportedly, were out there in the thick of it after repeated calls for parents to know where their kids are and keep them home.

I was following live updates on the blog The West Londoner (they have a Twitter page as well) and quite a few of the commenters there called for rioters to be shot at, with real bullets, as well. That's not called for, EVER, in my opinion, except maybe for the ones who were shooting guns themselves and shot at police officers.

Quote from a story on this in a small Ottawa paper yesterday, from someone in law enforcement, "Sure, if it could happen in London, it could happen in Ottawa, but don't expect it to. London is a lot bigger on violence than North America is, just look at their hooliganism and soccer games".

What? Yeah, hockey fans don't ever get rowdy.

Shot at police officers? This is the first that I have heard of that, I don't think that happened, they threw bricks at the police, they damaged police vehicles but there was no shooting at police.

The only gun incident that I am aware of is the armed man who was shot dead by the police on Thursday, the incident which started all the trouble. This man didn't discharge a gun, he was shot by them and at this time it isn't confirmed that his gun was visible.

They are certainly getting tough, one person has been sent to prison for six months for stealing £3.50 worth of bottled water!

Police have been busy raiding homes and arresting more and more people.

Some people have given themselves up to the police.

Sue, there was a man shot by rioters in Croydon

I'm not in favour of shooting rioters, but I see no reason why water cannon can't be used. They are used to great effect in other countries and look very effective at dispersing rioters with minimum danger to the operators, ditto tear gas.

One other shooting incident in London - but didn't involve the police.
BBC News
"The announcement came as it was revealed a 26-year-old man who died after being found with bullet wounds in a car in Croydon, south London, on Monday night, was shot in the head.

Police believe Trevor Ellis, of Brixton Hill, and his friends were involved in an altercation with another group of nine people, resulting in a chase involving three cars. Mr Ellis was shot during the chase."

Line from Bloomsby's link:

"But gangs of hooded youths from deprived areas were undoubtedly some of the main participants in the trouble, leading some to conclude that society's failure to integrate poor communities was a long-term cause of the riots."

Society's never gone out of its way to "integrate poor communities" before - why do the chattering classes expect it to now?

GG had referred to people shooting at police, I know about the Croydon shooting but there was nothing there to indicate that it was to do with the riots, unless I missed that bit.

I'm not sure where it was supposed to be, it was reported on the blog I mentioned above - they had eyes and ears all over the city, reported way more and much faster than the major news outlets. I'll see if I can find the mention again, I think it was from Monday night.

The Croydon one, was that the Trevor Ellis death? From what I read it was due to riots. But maybe it was just reported at the same time and I misunderstood.

Edit: never mind, I see more on that above.

Ok having checked the West Londonder blog again, it was a commenter, not the blogger who reported people shooting at police and it was in Birmingham. They also report the Croydon shooting as part of the rioting.

Also is an update from Monday night that someone was shot in the face in Leeds... but nothing else on that at all, so they may have reported a false rumour.