England's Riots - Justice Must Be Done

I remember last Tuesday, I felt totally exhausted and sick at the events that had happened over those few mad days, that I could not understand why so many people were rioting and looting and as is gained momentum, the whole country was on edge as we didn't know where it was going to happen next and what would happen as there seemed to be no end in sight.

I am not going to give my definitive views on whether it was the shooting of Mark Duggan or poverty or just pure greed, or the use of modern social network sites or smartphones. I feel there are just so many reasons, including possible organised anarchy by some obscure political groups.

I dont think poverty was a major reason, but it was not helped by the fact that there appeared to be a lack of political leadership at Government level. For the Prime Minister to be on holiday at the same time as his Deputy, was complete stupidity.

This was compounded by other Government ministers also being on holiday as well as Boris Johnston, the Mayor of London. The first political voice to speak out on TV was a junior Home Office Minister, Lynne Featherstone. I have always admired her on Question Time, but her press conference was not exactly confident and I felt she said things that made me squirm.

ANY business/organisation relies on holiday cover to ensure holidays are staggered and you do not have all the top people out at the same time. Surely Dave and Nick can sort their holidays out between them?

Maybe things would have been somewhat different had there been comment from day one from Dave or Nick and the Police might have handled things somewhat differently.

So many things do need to be resolved in the UK and I do believe that there are some things that are sick, as Dave said.

Also, the courts do have to do their job, but I do find that there are certain cases that are questionnable.

Is it right to give a 6 month sentence to the lad who took £3.50 of water from Lidl? The sentence is like the modern day version of transporting or hanging someone for steealing a loaf of bread in Georgian England.

Then there is the 4 year jail term for the Facebook 2. They tried to incite a riot of Facebook, but no one took them up. Yes, I can imagine the authorities were really worried at the time, but those lads did it for a joke and they now have 4 years learning how to be a criminal at my expense, in prison.

Those who stole TV sets etc, burnt down properties and endangered human life deserve what they get thrown at them, but there appears to be a desire to throw common sense out of the window and throw them all in prison.

Maybe we need to sit back and take a few deep breaths before throwing a lad in prison for 6 months for stealing £3.50 worth of water. Yes, a punishment is in order, but surely the sentence should be more appropriate for the crime. Hitting EVERYONE hard is not justice, but revenge.

I am not proposing that we need to be lax, its just that some of the sentences will send the wrong message. Prison should be there for those who are most deserving and are a danger to the rest of us. Indeed, just today, one of the sentences handed out last week has been overturned for the woman who accepted a pair of shorts that has been looted and she accepted them. She was asleep when the riots were taking place.

As so many people were involved in the looting and rioting, I now wonder how many people will be charged and imprisoned after all the thousands of hours of CCTV film is processed.

Bur most importantly, we need to have a sensible debate on what caused it. I would even say it goes back to the time of Thatcher in the 1980's and probably even before then.

Unfortunately, the policies of recent decades has created a Frankenstein monster and it all blew up in London and elsewhere across the UK. So how do we put the genie back into the bottle. That won't be easy to put right. We were lucky they didn't take place in wales, but there were several arrests, including a person in Pembroke Dock, who allegedly tried to incite trouble on Facebook.

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