Its a terrible affair but sadly I dont find it surprising. This has been festering for quite some time now. These inner city people have nothing, never had anything and seemingly never will have anything in their lives so they dont really care what happens to them if/when they get caught for these offences, in fact a spell in prison would probably give them some pleasures they could never get in their lives at home. I dont want to go into a political argument but I cant help thinking that it has similarities to the Thatcher years when she made her famous statement after the inner-city riots then: 'I cant believe this is Britain'.
It can happen in any country if there is racial unrest and poverty around, and then you get a seemingly totally uncaring Government coming into power pushing your hopes and aspirations down even further with severe economic cuts, that can lead to the final straw.
There is no easy answer or quick fix to this situation I'm afraid, and now that these yobs know what they can get away with, this could keep happening over and over again in the future.
Its not only the Conservatives that are at fault, Labour did little to sort out the situation in their last terms in power either.
So far its not happened up here in Scotland and I hope it stays that way. We do have problems too in our cities but I dont think they come near to the powder kegs that some of the major cities in England have.
Anyway, we dont need 'water cannon' up here, we already have the rain to cool tempers down
