What I’d do is immediately deport foreigner in our prisons. Because they have reached the situation where the courts have imprisoned them they are not suitable individuals to live here.

Then I’d lock the rioters up in the freed up prison places for a long time to send a message.

Then I’d make anyone in receipt of benefits attend mind numbingly boring 9 ’til 5 courses to drive them into jobs that we give to immigrants such as burger flippers and toilet cleaners. There is nothing wrong with those jobs and people in this country should be forced to do them.

Sorted.

As it happens, I do think the nasty thugs who have been beating people up while thieving etc. should be dealt with very firmly. However, it’s just too easy to rant about such idiots. If we want to live in a better place tomorrow we need to stitch things together not rip bits off (they will still be around, just worse)

I reckon compulsory national service may be one way to help teach the young some social responsibility and make them feel that they are part of something bigger than just them and their mates. It seems to work in places like Finland and, as long as absolutely everyone had to do it, I’d support it.

Inequality increased under Labour because they didn’t do enough, but the Tories are of course working to actively accelerate the rate of inequality. And you’ll blame the poor for that time and time again rather than trying any fixes.

@8 – “Political parties haven’t attacked people for not having jobs.”

What rot. There’s been an endless string of attacks. Over and over. Guess what? If the jobs are not there, it’s punishment plain and simple. Of course, you’ve made it plain you love that.

And of course you have to drive people out of areas rather than take sensible measures, like rent caps. Despite the fact house prices are falling, rents continue to increase above inflation. It’s profiteering, and hurts people who depend on their incomes too. But no, we have to have social cleansing, driving people out to where there are even less jobs, for the SIN of being poor. Never mind we’re one of the world’s richest countries, we have to drive poorer people out of TWO THIRDS of the country, and have many others sit in the cold dark this winter. You’re just DANDY with that.

Never mind that many of those people will previously have had low-paid or part-time jobs, and will lose them. Never mind there’s been a dirth of social housing, never mind the sink towns you’re creating, which will be tinderboxes which will burn on a regular basis, as you blame the inhabitants for the sin, again, of being poor.

The EMA is anything BUT a bribe – it’s a massively effective program, as are others over the world, at keeping children in school. But of course it can’t be had, we can’t have the poor bettering themselves. That’s un-Tory.

There’s truth in some of what you say, but I have to disagree with much of it.

Political parties haven’t attacked people for not having jobs. They’ve collectively mollycoddled them for too long, tolerating idleness while simultaneously making it harder to those who want to work by relentlessly pursuing a policy of mass immigration.

Yes, Labour was too comfortable with rising inequality and the Conservatives show no appetite to reverse the trend. Yet ultimately, if a feral cretin refuses to work and shows no desire to better himself I’m happy for him to be bottom of the pile. He deserves to be there and should have no call on another’s wealth. This isn’t to say that I don’t recognise the wider problem you refer to: the average man works hard and has his wealth eroded by inflation while the CEO gets rewarded handsomely for repeated failure. There has to be something wrong in that.

Lastly, driving people out of an area isn’t wrong if those people can’t afford to be there. Why should someone else pay for them to live somewhere they couldn’t dream of themselves? Were it possible to do so, it’d be a good thing if we could drive these vicious criminals not simply out of Tottenham but out of the country altogether.

You make a fair point that people need to feel part of a community and to forge positive relationships. But do you honestly believe these people were doing so under Labour? Or, for that matter, under administrations from the distant part? A huge problem, as identified by Max Hastings, is that these people exist rather than live. If they don’t show a willingness to engage and apparently don’t know how to behave in a civilised manner, I genuinely don’t believe that chucking more money at them, be it via more youth centres, subsidised bus passes or educational bribes (a.k.a. EMA) is the answer.

Neither. It’s about greed and wanton criminality. It’s about a tolerance and encouragement of endemic worklessness and a complete denial of personal responsibility. It’s about an entitlement culture and widespread acceptance of family breakdown as “the norm”.

‘On the right, the hang’em, flog ‘em brigade are on the move, young people are being described as feral and mindless, Black people accused of not being British.’

Not “all” young people are being described as feral and mindless. All “looting/rioting” young people are being described as feral and mindless, and there’s nothing objectionable about that, since they clearly are (N.B. that said, I would guard against describing them as mindless, since that in some way excuses the perpetrators: they know what they are doing and we shouldn’t forget that). Neither are “black” people being accused of not being British. Instead, “looting/rioting” black people are being accused of not being British, in precisely the same way that white people robbing shops and setting fire to houses are also, rightly, being accused of not being British.

There is nothing wrong with demonising wrongdoers. Quite the reverse. Society should and must condemn these scumbags in the strongest possible terms.

Rioting and economic disruption by bankers have no discernible difference between them in the long term – except that perhaps the public pay a far greater price in the imposition of taxes to provide support through bail-outs. And, of course, rioters do not get paid collosal bonuses as a punishment for anti-social activity. But, in economic terms, what, precisely, is the difference?

Curiouser and curiouse, said Alice.