Fortitude

It is important to learn the lessons that we want to learn, and not those that either the authorities would like or the established political factions will push.

Watch now as the state rolls out the response.

Cameron with his constipated frown, standing in the Downing Street compound, lecturing us sternly, whilst mandarins reach up to the shelf and take down ‘new measures’, lovingly prepared, only waiting for a pretext. Soon will be the Olympics. You may have noticed they are going through the rehearsals, running through various events, for example beach volleyball in Horse Guards Parade. Guess what, they’ve just had a rehearsal for shutting down the city. Return to your homes and remain calm.

I would say the most positive thing in this trouble is the examples of citizens banding together to defend their homes and businesses, and they should be praised. The Sikhs did what you would expect them to do: they stood up and quietly explained that nobody was going to riot where they were. Eltham provided their own version, and in many other places, shopkeepers put on a show of strength. The first reports I saw were from Monday night of Turks and Kurds in Dalston chasing off the looters. Great souls as these turned the tide of the riot. Not the police. Not the Prime Minister flying in from Tuscanny, and a moment should be spared for those who died in Birmingham defending their neighbourhood.

These groups took action because the police could not be counted on. One Enfielder explained on Sky news; the police were just standing around, scratching their arses. He pointed out he’d paid his taxes – i.e. he’d paid the state its protection money, but the state was delivering their side of the bargain. Another explained what they were doing was wholly compliant with the law in these matters. Everyone’s heard of a citizen’s arrest.

This may well concern the authorities more than the rioting and looting. The idea of citizens organising for their own self-defence will terrify them. It threatens their monopoly position. The looters made them look ineffectual. Self-defence committees make them look irrelevant. The latter pricks them harder, and there is nothing the authorities hate more than members of the public ‘taking the law into their own hands’. The authorities will want to nip such things in the bud.

Our poor suffering kids

Two days ago I wanted them shot. I have become more forgiving, but that won’t help them now. The criminal law machine is cranking up, and they’re the feed. The prison unions sense a bargaining position. The politicians get to moralise. We get to jeer at the politicians. If you’re civically-minded you can help sweep up. The police also have started sweeping up.

There’s something sneaky in letting them riot to their heart’s content, and then coming after them. They could almost claim entrapment. If the police had handed them a beating, their crimes would probably have been less. We could have called it quits for the peripherals, and concentrated on the real bastards who were out there, and the police can guess who most of them are already from their many previous dealings. The usual suspects indeed.

The first thing that turned my nose was an officer laying it on thick about parents handing in their miscreant sprogs. And today a Greenwich councillor shrilly declared tenants who are found guilty of involvement will be flung out. When asked the question, what if it’s a kid, do you fling the whole family out? He said, then we take the kid! He sounded like a man who’d never even met a mother with a teenaged son. Some of the mothers of these looters are everything the Daily Mail says of the feckless underclass no doubt, but not all of them. Some of them are good mothers. They try their hardest to be a good influence, but they are not the only influence on the child.

Repeals which would help

Legalise drugs. If you remain to be convinced, I won’t convince you now, but many agree, surveying the subject as a whole, seeing the effects of drugs on society and the effects of drug illegality on society, and we use logic and common sense, drugs will be legalised.

Gun laws (some hope and ditto above about convincing you)

Get rid of minimum wage laws, so young people can get jobs, and revert to 16 every law which was changed to 18. By raising the age limits, they enforce more childhood on a generation who have grown up in some ways faster than it should, whilst in other ways they remain bafflingly naïve. Post-riot, they’re happy to blame the parents, but the state has had the children under their care for much of that time. Could it be that what they learnt in school helped bring about this outbreak of nihilistic hedonism?