Now that the riots are over, we can get down to the real business of apportioning blame. Unlike the riots themselves, this will run for weeks. It’s Right vs. Left, Cameron vs. Milliband, Conservatives vs. Liberal Democrats, Government Ministers vs. The Police. A couple of recent articles set out the battleground; Max Hastings in the Daily Mail taking a predictable stance, and Peter Oborne in the Daily Telegraph offering a rather less predictable view for the Torygraph. The tricky thing is that everybody with an opinion on who is to blame will have an opinion on how to put things right, and nobody will agree – it should be a riot!
Cameron has ‘fixing our broken society’ top of his agenda – all out war on gangs and gang culture; sorting out children without fathers, schools without discipline and communities without control in a list of what he believed has gone wrong in parts of the country and said people were “crying out” for the government to act. Hmmm….. I think we’ve been crying out for government to act for some while over those other broken elements of our society, expense fiddling MPs, obscene greed in the financial community, lack of any moral code amongst overpaid sports stars and other ‘celebrities’, gutter journalism where anything goes when it comes to getting a story, and a media generally serving up a diet of celebrity-obsessed nonsense that continually challenges accepted standards and values.
What chance, Mt Fixit? Don’t worry, the football season has just started, we can forget about the riots now.