More Punishing the Innocent and Protecting the Guilty (Or "More Sack of Rome")

Lotsa commentary out there abut the meaning of the London riots and the government's Honorius-like response thereto.

Max Hastings, always an enjoyable and interesting, if not always accurate, writer, nails the societal issues:

A few weeks after the U.S. city of Detroit was ravaged by 1967 race riots in which 43 people died, I was shown around the wrecked areas by a black reporter named Joe Strickland.
He said: ‘Don’t you believe all that stuff people here are giving media folk about how sorry they are about what happened. When they talk to each other, they say: “It was a great fire, man!” ’
I am sure that is what many of the young rioters, black and white, who have burned and looted in England through the past few shocking nights think today.

It was fun. It made life interesting. It got people to notice them. As a girl looter told a BBC reporter, it showed ‘the rich’ and the police that ‘we can do what we like’.

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