Hundreds of pounds worth of damage apparently

that it's the first real manifestation of the economic collapse and consequent breakdown of societal norms into anarchy.

Others might say it's just a load of bored and disaffected teenagers getting carried away on a hot summer night and deciding they wanted a free TV.

There is an interesting blog by Jack of Kent (a lawyer called David Allen Green) suggesting we should be sceptical about any pundits who claim immediately to know the cause:

"The actual riots are rarely predicted; but when they happen, people with political opinions tend to immediately know why they happened - what really caused them."

I think it is an important to understand what caused this riot, but I hope we get some real insight in the media, not simply confirmation, as he suggests, of views that were held already.

Full blog here:

http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2011/08/predicting-riot.html

"Looting in Tottenham after fatal shooting"

Natch, they wished it had been in Tooting.

a tory government, a royal wedding, ecomomy in crisis....

Can someone check on the Cyborg Thatcher project? (TMFTL)

Hope everyone is fine up in Norf Lahndan

.....who marched from the estate to the police station, and were answered by a copper/constable/whoever, and then wanted some one higher up, yadda yadda yadda...........knew exactly what they were doing.

I'm 1 mile from the scene of the original crime and the train of events was laughable in their predictability.

If it is found that this death was a valid exercise by the police (i.e. the guy was a thug, the guy did have a gun, the gun did shoot first etc. etc.) are the 100 'quiet protesters' going to apologise to the 10 million Londoners for sending any progress since the 1980s back to that dire era?

....should be privy to such sensitive info so soon after the event but, hey, that is the 'random' world we live in, I guess!
Makes me feel so safe and happy, not.

If it is a cooked up story then this event is probably the last straw for the Met Police as we've known it and they will never, ever be allowed to forget it, and will probably not exist after it.

But please, if it isn't, I'd rather like at least one statement on camera by one of the original 100 outside the police station, because they're the people who are always let off the hook when, and if, they are proved to be in the wrong.

But OK.........let's wait.

I sat with my wife last year as she cried her heart out watching her home city burn and anarchy subsumed the streets of Bangkok. Now I sit watching my home city burn and although I am not crying I can fully understand the hurt she went through.
I lived and worked in Croydon for ten years and I am shocked by the pictures on TV. My heart is beating slightly faster than usual and that is anger. What the hell is happening in this country right now? How have the morals of a significant minority been so twisted that they think they can destroy innocent people's livelihoods, homes and possessions in the name of a police incident yet to be investigated?
There seems to be a strong undercurrent in certain pockets of society that have been waiting for this opportunity. Has this been inevitable for some time?
I have no answers, only questions, but I needed to write something down. Does anyone have the solution, the causes or share the feelings of anger?

and everything to do with nasty, ignorant, violent little maggots with no sense. It's copycat brainless idiocy. Its all about sheeplike, mob mentality that has not been affected by the government, police, unemplyment etc. These are all purely excuses for lawlessness.

Stop trying to understand why and sympathise with these idiots and take back control. And blaming Twitter and Blackberry - Jesus wept!

.......as Danny Baker used to say: 'FACT'.

Walthamstow had the High Street affected (it was no Tottenham) last night, but the stuff going on in South London is jaw-dropping.

Didn't quite do it as there is nothing happening here at the moment but almost did a 'Absolute Beginners' style rant in the middle of our street along the lines of 'LONDON WHAT ARE YOU DOING?'

If I could get hold of one of these f****** w****** right now, and against my wife's best wishes, I would kill them.
No problem.
I guess that makes me a bad person.

Still going to football tomorrow night.....that ain't being sacrificed for anyone.

it's horrible watching this from a distance and worrying about my friends (including The Massive) in North London.

Just listening to the guy whose shop the news crews have been showing burning for last two hours. "Hope you've got nice pictures, my life has been destroyed". Shop established in 1867. Heartbreaking.

and this is profoundly depressing

From: Cllr Kober Claire (Leader of the Council)

To: Labour Councillors; LibDem Councillors; Independent Councillor

Sent: Monday, August 08, 2011 5:52 PM

Subject: Headline Figures - Briefing Note for Members

I am writing to update you with some headline figures following events in Haringey over the weekend and today. Please note that the information below is based on provisional best-available figures as of 4pm August 8th.

Tottenham update

Our emergency housing team has been working around the clock since the disturbances over the weekend to provide support for people displaced by damage to their homes.

In all 29 people have approached the council for support – either through the emergency rest centre set up over the weekend at Tottenham Green Leisure Centre or by other means – and we have been able to find alternative accommodation for all of those people.

The total number of badly damaged residential properties is in the region of 45 – so it is likely that a number of people have in addition made their own arrangements for alternative accommodation.

Donations of clothes have been made by local church groups and residents – these are currently at Apex House and are available for collection. Metropolitan Housing are also advising their displaced leaseholders of this.

Offers of accommodation have also been made by landlords – we are contacting them as necessary.

Anyone requiring assistance should call 020 8489 0000 or go to the council’s housing offices at Apex House 820 Seven Sisters Road,Tottenham.

Background information

The full picture of damage along Tottenham High Road resulting from the disturbances is as follows:-

- Five buildings have been assessed by Building Control as having serious structural damage and therefore being dangerous structures – ie:

* 662 High Road (three storey building) – completely burnt out

* Carpet Right Building (commercial premises + 26 flats ‘River Heights’) – completely burnt out and controlled demolition expected to tart today

* ALDI Supermarket and Fitness First – burnt out and roof collapsed

* 530-536 High Road / corner of Dowsett Road – burnt out and with a dangerous flank wall. Associated damage to 14 residential properties in Windsor Parade.

* 436-442 High Road – William Hill premises gutted

In addition three council buildings have been damaged and temporarily closed for business – ie:

* 639 High Road – premises for almost 100 Planning, Building Control and Homes for Haringey staff. Staff being relocated to River Park House.

* 684 High Road – premises for Mental Health services. 8 staff and a number of service users have been moved to Clarendon Day Centre.

* 476 High Road – premises for over 60 Youth Offending Service staff. Staff have been moved to the Council’s Professional Development Centre near Turnpike Lane.

In addition to the major damage mentioned above, it is estimated that at least 100 premises have suffered some form of damage on and around the High Road / Tottenham Hale.

It is expected that Lansdowne Road and Dowsett Road will remain closed until demolition of the burnt out buildings has been completed and safety officials are still assessing how long Tottenham High Road next to the “Carpetright” building needs to remain closed.

The section of High Road between Bruce Grove and Monument Way is a TfL road so they will be assessing the cost of the damage to this.

Yours sincerely

Claire Kober

Leader

Haringey Council

River Park House

The vast majority detest the mindless violence of this group of idiots.

What do we do? Engage with them or try and remove them for good from decent society?

Hence the recent number of petitions regarding the return of the death penalty.

Where are we moving as a society?

according to Newsnight. Stay safe people.

Babylon's Burning: The Ruts (warning, contains traces of Dave Lee Travis)

.......playing s*** music and wearing c*** clothes (actually that bit goes without saying) and staring ominously at our local newsagents.

Looks like I'll be staying up all night.....so I'll finish writing my play and drinking loads of tea.

And, to the guy above, yeah I was toying between West Ham or Charlton tomorrow night for a tenner, both of which are now off, cheers lads, you're real....erm....bricks.

will be called in at this rate - or at least Northern Ireland-style water cannon.
Has blown phone-hacking out of the picture now: Mr and Mrs Average are a lot more bothered about this and will be calling for police resources to be massively increased. Don't think the Liberal wing of the coalition is going to get a look in on what happens now.

...and, of course, its not a competition. That said, I live in Belfast and we've had to put up with similar kind of bollocks and mob thuggery under the thin veneer of some social/cultural(political) justification for decades.

Whether it's a no-hope teenager in Tottenham or a middle-class po faced Orangeman in Belfast, or an I-know-my-rights merchant on the other side of the fence over here (I'm not prejudiced: I think they're ALL a shower), what they ultimately all want - to answer a question put above - is this: they just want their own way.

Society only works when people go about their lives in a consensually agreed way, a large part of which is the law and the rest of which is consideration for others and the greater good.

None of this is, clearly, happening around London and, regrettably, deadlock on consensus in NI - usually over people walking down streets, causing those streets to be closed to normal traffic and celebrating essentially sectarian events 300 years ago, and annoying other people at certain times of the year - has resulted in summer after summer of public order situations. Periodically these break out into people blockading roads and rioting.

Containing the 'status quo' seems to be what the approach is over here, alas (me, I'd like to see ANYBODY who wants to march given their own field away from public roads/non-impressed communities and told to get on with it - seems a common sense solution). But I guess the answer in London must involve, at least in part, a zero tolerance crackdown on criminality and thuggery. Whatever the social issues are, I'm sure there's things to explore and try to improve on, but I don't think right now is the time for a touchy feely approach...

It's half twelve and I can't turn off the rolling news. I live between lewisham and deptford- I think we got off lightly, though there has been looting in both. Watching the news the horror just builds - new trouble in new places. Upstairs my pregnant wife sleeps. If she goes into labour tonight I don't know if we can get to the hospital. And I keep thinking: What kind of a city am I bringing my new baby into? One where my neighbours break into shoeshops, just because they can? Where the kids have learned that they can do this with impunity?

I'm rambling, sorry. But I'm confused. I'm liberal by nature, I believe that society needs to look after the disenfranchised. But watching these worms crawl over one another to get jeans and tvs just makes me sick. Right now I wish every evil upon them for screwing with my city. I hope they haven't turned me into a string-em-up type...

Not that we'd actually be able to notice the difference, mind.

Very afar.

And this seems, from my limited experience, very different from the riots of the early '80s. I stand to be corrected, but that seemed to be, in large part, an expression of anger driven by a frustrated desire for societal change.

This? Even if you hold that the original 'protest' was valid... this? This is just not that. Opportunistic violence for a large part.

I wonder, after the inevitable public inquiries, what we'll find out. Coordination of riots? Ineffectual policing? Community 'leaders' who like the words but couldn't lead a dog?

Whilst it's nothing compared to what the people of London are going through, this is terribly distressing from afar.

.....and Birmingham on the rolling news is incredible.

Woke up this morning, broadly speaking, left wing.

With each story I'm moving further right.

Isn't there just one good news story out there, like one of these pieces of s*** getting trapped in one of the burning buildings, or something?

Are there now spacecraft hovering over the cities?

I was just wondering...has they're been any bands/"artists" describing the streets beforehand? or is that a thing of the past?

I'm not sure what's more shocking: the riots and looting, or the racist hatred pouring out of the Telegraph's blog. Seems like there's an awful lot of bad vibes in the country tonight. And that won't solve anything.

......but there sure-as-damn-it should be an outpouring of hatred.
Huge great big slabs of it.

Come over to Walthamstow if you want some of mine.

Heard one guy on FiveLive just now give the fact that it's the summer holidays and the kids have 'nothing to do' as a contributory factor!!!!
Have you tried to carry an issue of 'Time Out' (free in all the local libraries) in 2011?!
It's one hundred and fifty pages long!
The guy who delivers ours looks like the Michelin Man!

Nothing to do?
In Napoli!!!!!! ('Absolute Beginners').

Perhaps the racist angle is the fact that in all of this the biggest garbage spouted is by male, aged 25-55, black community leaders.
If they're the ones guiding the black community.....bloody hell!

That said, the most heart-warming and wonderful contribution was on Radio London yesterday morning at about 11.15 by a 17-year-old black girl.

Who'd have thought that the Capital City's biggest enemy would not be a German bomber but a piece of plastic meant for communication first championed by all those city twats in the c*** 1980s?

Today, working at home, I'm avoiding all news media including this site.
I don't care about 'them'.
I don't care about any of 'them'.
If 'they' were deprived (which compared to an 18 year old at the Battle of the Somme) they clearly are not, I sincerely hope that 'their' deprivation gets worse.

Just for my own sanity:
Please, please, please, please, please tell me the Test Match is going to go ahead in Birmingham tomorrow.

I'm saddened and sickened by this. But I'm also angry at our leaders, who don't think it's necessary to cut their holidays short to stand by not just London but the other cities that saw trouble (Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol all saw trouble); the people who think it's necessary to have nearly three times as many police in London for the Royal Wedding as they had for this.

I can't help wondering at the politics at play in the reaction to all of this. A police force who are facing cuts (justified by Theresa May a year ago when she said the British do not riot in times of austerity, bet she's regretting that statement now), it's not entirely unlikely that their response was somewhat restrained, that there may be some faction higher up using this to justify less cuts to the force.

Apparently an extra 300 police were brought in from the Home Counties yesterday. Now you may think that's a lot of bodies, but look at the following link.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23975296-police-go-to-the...

6 days ago the Met carried out dawn raids to target a major London gang. They deployed more than 300 officers to hit an East London estate. The raid resulted in 23 arrests. That's more than 10 officers per person arrested. That makes the extra 300 to deal with riots/looting seem like small potatoes.

Additionally, and this connection doesn't seem to have been made anywhere in the media - the estate that was raided was the Pembury Estate, which just happens to have been at the centre of the trouble in Hackney yesterday. So you do have to wonder about their responses when they deploy more people to the estate for their raids than they did to deal with the trouble...

So yes, I am sickened and angered and saddened by all of this, and I hope the full weight of the law lands on the idiotic heads of the people who took part, but good God, where are our bloody leaders? What with police response and hardly a whisper on the wind of a politician the last few days I think a lot of people felt unprotected, uncared for and left in the shit together.

will end it all.

Never seen anyone here able to express their socio/political dissatisfaction outdoors in inclement weather.

from in front of my house last night. In Ealing!! Why don't they fuck off down to the city and take things out on RSB, Soc Gen and Citi?

I arrived at work this morning to see the place now behind metal grills. It's really quite chilling.

I live quite near Clapham Junction and had endless texts from people telling me that Debenhams was being looted, etc, while watching it all unfold on Sky News.

It's terrifying, horrifying, heartbreaking, making me rapidly fall out of love with London, worrying for mine and my family's safety and like the start of some awful apocalypse film that you'd think too far-fetched to be true.

The government are hopeless, the police are powerless - where will it all end?

I don't really want to be around to find out.

SKY reporter in Clapham reporting from high street post devestation.

"Currys Digital has been ransacked as has the Carphone Warehouse.

Waterstones remains untouched"

No shit Sherlock......

"Hey bruv, bollocks to the plasma, I'm gonna get me dat new Dickens anthology our teacher told us about, innit?"

To quote Alan Gordon Partridge - "these people are scum, subhuman scum"

on the news last night said 'we is just taking back our taxes'. There aren't enough punches in the world

Is this what Daily Mail readers feel like all the time? I must get some work done just to ease my blood pressure

20 year old, gang related shooting in the heat of all the stuff last night, presumably a black-on-black crime.

Unsurprisingly England v Holland fixture is off.

Both first world countries signed up to the same European legislation as we are....hey and if the scarves worn over their faces were in the colours of a football club, the police might not have been so stand offish...

Tear gas, big sticks, aggressive dogs, mounted police and water cannon. Over in 2 hours.

Simplistic I know but sure as hell they'd think twice about doing it again.

Sorry - feeling reactionary this morning after walking down Tottenham High Road from Seven Sisters station

or playing them at their own game. Social media to organise the riot, social media to bring to justice:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metropolitanpolice/6025489254/in/photostrea...

...and a heart-felt desire to see:

- a rigorously-enforced curfew - if you're on the streets after-hours, be prepared to take the consequences;
- a ban on hoodies and face masks - if you're not up to no-good, there's no reason to hide your face;
- compelling the parents of every juvenile involved to take their share of the responsibility - could someone please explain why we need formal training to drive a vehicle, but not to raise a child? (And please spare me any anti-eugenics lectures, as that's not what I'm talking about!)

It's all just a bit of a laugh for these girls

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14458424

Isn't it?

I read that in the style of The Fast Show's Ron Manager

ooh Riots thou. Wasn't like in our day, small boys in the park, jumpers for goalposts. oooh Terry's found a milkbottle, lets put a spider in it with a cherry bomb, arrggh glass hit me on the knee, run all the way home to loving arms of mother, make it all better....where do they go those innocent years? Marvellous.

.....the scummers have made it a virtual borough of London in the last ten/fifteen years.
Perhaps that's where all the absent fathers live?

Glad to see the Forest-County game went ahead.

There's a long way to go but the East Londoners near me are pulling together and hopefully it will turn out like the Leyton Orient-Droylsden game last season.

Dreadful start.....0-2.
Clawed back near the end.....2-2.
Complete and utter stuffing at the final whistle......8-2.

London 8 Scummers 2?
Nah.....I think we'll win by more.

Brain dead, inarticulate gobshite Mancs loot clothes shop owned by brain-dead, inarticulate gobshite Manc.

Liam Gallagher's clothes shop in Manchester's King Street has fallen victim to the looters.

I'm surprised no one talked to them. They predicted it...

OK, I'll get my coat. Again.
And yes it probably is unreasonable to crack jokes, because there is no disturbance near me. Probably because it is Ramadan. It won't be so funny if it reaches Bradford. I do understand.

.....I'll definitely be going to my very rough and ready local in E17 in the next day or two (cricket permitting) to hear the sarky comments/jokes.

One thing's for sure, Junior won't have to spend any money for an Absent Father's Day present this year.

Etc. etc. etc.

outside his restaurant in Ealing I half expected Ester Rantzen to pop up and say 'We phoned Mr Cameron and he said "this has absolutely nothing to do with us"'

Just heard him condemning "mindless selfishness"
Lucky his banker mates aren't guilty of that.