So sad and so shocking to watch the capital burn last night. Actually scary to see anarchy live on your tv...all this from a peaceful protest involving an grieving family. Is that what it takes? The police stay at home for 5 minutes and all of a sudden it's time to loot a retail park? Seeing shops set alight and the flames engulfing the surrounding flats just made you feel sick.
You watch with confilcting opinions...the Daily Mail reader inside all of use wants curfews, rubber-bullets, water-cannon and troops on the streets. The Guardian reader in you thinks of the levels of dissaffection, deprivation & anger that must exist for this madness to take hold so quickly. The truth will be much more complex and will almost certainly go back throughout the duration of Operation Trident. For this reason I'm glad Labour haven't jumped up and immediately blamed the cuts.
One thing is for sure this will leave those communities even further in the mire than they were before, there has been a lot of talk from community leaders about staying indoors and clearing the streets and community politicians like Diane Abbott have been talking a lot of sense. I do have to ciriticise Theresa May, just standing in front of the cameras and repeating the words "Sheer criminality" and making vague allusions to how tough the reaction is going to be just made her look horrifically out of her depth.She straight-batted every question with "Let's be clear this is just sheer criminality" and gave no assurances whatsoever to Londoners. She was basically a wind-up toy put out there until the government can chair a COBRA meeting, I don't blame Cameron for going on holiday but there really needed to be a better reaction from those left behind.
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