We need a riots topic, mainly so I can have a tl;dr version of what is actually going on and whether this will affect me in any way.

Thursday: Police shoot (and kill) a man in Tottingham. Man is reported to be a known criminal (drug dealer, I think) and to have shot a police officer first (bullet hit the radio, so he was fine). Some conflicting reports about whether he did actually shoot and was armed.

Friday or Saturday (I don't know): Large group (100+) of people (headed by family member's of the killed man) go to police station to demand information and stage a (peaceful) protest. Shortly after, opportunistic thugs start causing trouble (similar to the student fees protests).

From there it simply escalated and spread. Make no mistake - the people rioting aren't doing it for a cause, they are doing it because they want to cause wanton damage and steal stuff. The spread was mostly in London (to a lot of the poorer areas), though there was a fair bit in B'Ham with smaller happenings in Liverpool, Bristol, Nottingham and Manchester.

The main issue is that the police haven't been able to respond effectively to it, firstly because they were understaffed for such escalation and secondly because they are afraid of the repercussions of going all out (after all the police hate that's been seen in the past year). The response has been escalated a lot today (10x as many officers, AFAIK), and I think there is a curfew in place, or at least talk of one.

One of the other issues is that it is unheard of in Britain to use water cannons, rubber bullets and army help to deal with riots (which is the common response in many other places, i.e. NI and France), and doing so could be a bad move politically as people may see it as becoming a militaristic state.

It looks like it's calming down now, and there are groups of good civilians out there helping with cleanup atm.

Police shot drug dealer black guy.
Riots for racial hate.

I think.

Seems more like riots for riots sake, sparked by the shooting (there was a peaceful protest related to the lack of info on it, but rioters are just opportunistic scum).

Sorry Schlurbi, I had too

Ah I knew I shouldn't have worked so hard and earned so much money... It's my fault sorry.



In this one... the kids he is questioning contradict themselves several times. LOL.

The reporter in that piece is excellent. He is literally like "Wait what? You don't think its right but you're doing it anyway?"

Upto 1000 + arrests in London alone haha... So ridiculous tbh..

they know it's not right, but of course they are doing it, if shit-flap next door can get himself a free TV though, well why can I?

plus it's a heap of fun.

Two articles that I feel are well worth reading:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8697940/On-the-front-line-of-the-riots-with-the-police.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8698033/New-Labours-toxic-legacy.html

I don't care if the rioters are black, white, asian. They all belong to one race in my opinion: scum.

And whilst they do make a true point that prison is overcrowded so they might not be able to go there, we can at least make their lives difficult for what they've done. Increase their taxes to pay the damage perhaps?

There are actually a few thousand spaces in the prisons atm, prison pop has been decreasing recently.

Also, increasing taxes won't really work - these people can't actually afford it (most are on benefits anyway) and would probably lead to higher crime. Best action, IMO, would be large amounts of community service.