more on riots

Melanie Phillips from Quadrant has a great article.

-quote:

(...) Harriet Harman, was on TV last night preposterously blaming cuts in educational allowances, of all things, for the fact that teenagers and pre-pubescent children have been torching and looting shops and robbing and murdering people in the streets. It was Harman, of course, who was one of the principal forces behind the promotion of lone parenthood and the marginalisation of fathers as the only progressive position.

short break, then back to wood carrying

tsunami --> polar ice cap

From Bad Astronomy:

Image of icebergs broken off the Antarctic ice shelf after the March 2011 tsunami. Apparently the large rectangular bit is about 11km across.

good article at The Last Psychiatrist on internal validity. Internal validity means perpetuation.

Brits get some exercise and try their hand at a barbeque or two

In response to

we get

Levelheadedness as always from Harry Hutton

I propose the SCARECHAV:

original content

Photoshop looter is quite funny.

There have been increases in funding for social services over the last few years. However, social workers report that 75% of their time is spent in filling in paperwork. Is this partially a sartorial phenomenon? A rioter in a mob wearing a mask and a hoodie is afforded a high degree of anonymity. Anonymity absolves one of responsibility. Interestingly, most people are being caught by being identified by CCTV footage. Your thoughts, Banksy?

I propose that large Police vans with big speakers on the roof that play some Vivaldi or Bach will do more to disperse the looters than using water cannons. See Footscray. My girlfriend disagrees, and cites the fact that her cats stop their naughty behaviour and disperse very quickly when she sets upon them with a water pistol. Strange days indeed when South Africa issues travel warnings for people heading to the UK.

I suppose the problem with being a journalist is that you constantly have to have a ready opinion on whatever. Explanations range from welfare dependence, social exclusion (whatever that means. Socially deprived? Deprived of society?), lack of positive male role models, spending cuts (wrong. £8 billion worth of wrong), weak policing, racism (No. seven of the last eight people shot by British police were white), consumerism, opportunism, and social networking. To me, the strongest facet here is opportunism. Afforded by anonymity (see hoodie facial coverings, crowds, and untraceable Blackberry messages)

Girlfriend asked 'does this happen is Australia?'

'Not really. But when it does, it happens in Cronulla. It is racially motivated, and the Anglos throw sausages at the Lebanese'.

This is a piece of footage that I found odd. Is she advocating a monetary increase in benefits such that a family (second parent present or absent.. not clarified) can live in comfort thanks to the grace of the government purely through the virtue of bearing x amount of offspring? Sounds like well, what else do you expect from a  family of people who can't live in comfort purely on the government's benefits scheme? Riot ransom? 'Give me the benefits or I'll smash the windows of the electrical goods store!?'

Oh oh It's a very hostile environment around here

Oh oh It's the government's fault. It was good though.

I am tempted to draw false equivalences between Duggan's death and the woman who was shot in Victoria recently. 'Buildings in Tottenham and Croydon on fire? Ineffective police conduct? We're in the clear!' The more I think about it the more I get the notion that it was mostly opportunism that perpetuated the nights of crime. Not grievance.

Sunderland

No riots here

Durham

Picture is clickable for better resolution. No riots here.

Angel of the North

Other signs that teh Donalde has misread

ys ys ys

This is what is must be like to be Donald 'can't read signs' Douglas

Some croquet in Ewhurst Green