Riots Revelation - Nick "Nicked" Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister, is an Arsonist (Genuine)

As post-riot punitive sentencing carries on apace, with people jailed for stealing ice cream and bottled water, a radio interview with Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister (who wants rioters to do community work in Lib Dem dayglo orange vests), went badly wrong for the would be crime fighter. After condemning youths who rioted, he stumbled with his words when reminded of his own arsonist past - at the age of 16, while in Germany, he set two greenhouses on fire, brutally slaughtering a number of innocent cacti. He received a sentence of community service, though it is not known what colour of vest he had to wear.

The revelation about Clegg comes hot (literally) on the heels of the vast number of reminders of how Conservative leader David Cameron was a member of Oxford University's Bullingdon Club in his younger days, along with the current London Mayor, Boris Johnson. The Bullingdon was a sort of Hells-Angels-for-Bankers, except that the Angels would probably object to being compared to such badly behaved people. As Cameron himself gleefully recounted in 1986, as well as their regular routine of smashing up restaurants and pulling the trousers off of people they took a dislike to, on one infamous occasion with these oiks "Things got out of hand and we'd been drinking a bit much. We smashed the place up and Boris set fire to the toilets."

It is difficult to see which is worst - that people with such attitudes should now be running our country; or that, having done the things they did when they were youths, they are so utterly condemnatory of young people, mostly from rather less privileged backgrounds than their own, for acts which in many cases are not as serious as their own past crimes and misdemeanors. It's almost like one law for them and another for...

But of course, perhaps that is the entire point.

Go to 4 mins 44 seconds to hear Nicked Nick challenged about his fiery youth.

Lib Dem Activist's Resignation - The Destruction of the Progressive Soul

Lib Dems - The Walking Dead of British Politics? (Article here)

The former Liberal Democrat councillor and Camden Eco Champion, Alexis Rowell, will be the Green Party candidate for the Highgate by-election on Thursday 15th September. He was a councillor until 2010 and left the Lib Dems following the recent volte face by their Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, in support of nuclear power. 

Lib Dem policy, and Huhne himself, had previously been in favour of closing down the UK's nuclear power stations and not replacing them - highlighting both the dangers from accidents and waste and the ludicrous cost of the sector, which draws billions of pounds in subsidies from the taxpayer to keep afloat. Huhne now disingenuously claims that a new generation of nuclear power stations should be counted into the lists in the struggle against global warming, ignoring the evidence that, aside from all the other drawbacks, their manufacture requires massive carbon emissions.

Alexis Rowell also attacked the Lib Dems' record in the Coalition, warning of the dangers to the social fabric of the country and the damage to public services. His defection to the Greens comes only days after the London riots, seen by many as at least in part fuelled by the social exclusion of large swathes of the populace. It also comes during a reactionary backlash led by the Tories and Lib Dem leader Clegg, with barely whispered reservations and perfunctory handwringing from a handful of Lib Dem MPs.

The evidence, last Thursday, in an Edinburgh by-election though is that, while Tory voters are relatively content with the easy-ride being given to their policies by their Coalition partners, the Lib Dems are being deserted in droves - in what had been a rather incredulous five-way marginal, their vote share collapsed from just under 20% and third place to 7% and sixth (and bottom) place (they had come first in the ward in 2007). There may have been a few votes affected (both ways) by some local factors, but this is pretty much in line with the decline in their national poll ratings since the General Election. By contrast, it was the Greens' best ever local by-election performance in Scotland.

So eyes turn now to see how well Alexis Rowell can do in Camden for the Greens, increasingly seen as the genuine progressive alternative voice to the three managerialist mainstream parties, not just on the environment but on social and economic values too. As he left, he delivered a parting broadside to Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrat leadership warning they are destroying the progressive soul of his (and my own) former party - you can read his letter on the "Another Green World" site by clicking HERE.

The Tory Taliban Are Coming...

As the rioters pass from the streets to the courts and jails (and the Premier Inn in one bizarre case), the Government's crackdown continues apace with the absence of a written Constitution and the elasticity of British "justice" increasingly apparent. Excessively heavy sentences have been passed out, not only to those involved in violence, but two men have been jailed for 4 years for posting supposed encouragement to riot on a joke Facebook page, while a young mother who slept through the riots was sent away for 5 months. Her crime? Receipt of stolen goods, when a friend gave her a pair of knickers stolen from a shop.

But it is not just in the courts we see the authoritarian kickback - egged on by Housing Minister Grant Shapps, one council has begun proceedings to evict a woman her jailed son was involved: she and her daughter, who had nothing to do with the trouble, now face homelessness. Quite aside from the rank injustice of it, how on earth can anyone think for a moment that anything will be achieved by putting people convicted of rioting in the streets out on the streets?

But of course it is vengeance rather than justice that the Coalition appear hellbent on - including Nick Clegg's wheeze to have work gangs of convicts in orange jackets visibly undertaking community service. Creating a a magnet for the same crowds of thugs who used to go on News of the World "nonce-hunts", what impact will it have on those dressed like that, paraded and humiliated in public? Will it make them suddenly want to embrace society? Or will it simply alienate them further? What happens when the first Orange Riot occurs between one of these chain-less groups and the local vigilantes?

As with 9/11, the State is using this opportunity to bring forward ever new powers of control over all of us. Social network bans are to be introduced for those deemed to be a threat to public order (a heading the police increasingly place the most innocuously peaceful environmental protests under) - watch out for surprise "Friend" invites from people with the names Nick, George or Dave: they might be going to report you for more than spam. But at least the Con Dems have been praised by the Chinese Government.

Swept up in part of this, slightly un-noticed last weekend, two young men who were organising a summer "water fight" were arrested and their gathering banned under the Serious Crimes Act. Although these have happened before without being licensed, they have never led to any significant trouble or damage and have provided an ideal way for young people to have some fun and maybe even let off some steam on hot days. They are very popular in Iran - the authorities there have tended to tolerate them; not so here.

Mr Cameron is starting to show his true colours. He spent years trying to claim that the Tory Party was no longer the nasty party of the 1980s, that it wanted to embrace a new social agreement, to seek to mend what he and Mr Duncan-Smith patronisingly refer to as "Broken Britain". They have estimated that about 5% of the population - part of the underclass so skillfully created by Thatcher and Major in return for people buying into the prosperity myth of the last 20 years - are completely detached from society. Marginalised, poor, with no prospects and no stake in society. So what is to be done for this dangerous untermensch? Well, Cameron is going to appoint some sort of Moral Mentor, to come round and tell off the worst families in the country. These people will supposedly give assistance while goading them into turning off all that loud music, cutting the grass and getting one of the thousands of vacant jobs going for the asking in Tory Britain.

That is, of course, as long as the Moral Mentor can reach the door having queued behind the officials that Ian Duncan-Smith plans send round to knock on the doors of convicted people each day, in order, it would seem, pretty much just to annoy them. I do hope this most odiously sanctimonious of Ministers includes himself in the line of people harassing these people - the "Quiet man" clearly hasn't ever had to work in such an environment and his ideas betray the total, crass ignorance of this self-appointed social guru.

However, some of the most worrying moments for the longer term have not been heard from Government members lips - but in the media. One BBC News journalist took the cameras round Tottenham as people were clearing up. He talked about how greed among bankers and politicians had infused society, and then bracketed the rioters with them - so far, so good, until he declared that this showed the appalling levels of greed among the richest and poorest in society ("middle Britain" was conveniently exempted). People, he declared, wanted this immoral lack of respect sorted out.

As well as clearly confusing reportage with editorial, this presented a rather chilling piece of disinformation.. As has been pointed out, the cost of the riots, unjustifiable and awful as they undoubtedly were for the innocent victims of the trouble, is tiny by comparison to the tens of billions effectively stolen by the richest in society. With the wealth of the richest 1% continuing to grow very substantially throughout the recession, who is committing the real violence?

What a bunch of bankers...

By virtue of their favoured position, our elite don't need to break shop windows to get anything; but by their thieving our common wealth in the shape of our planet and the labour of our people, it is quite frankly staggering to draw any comparison between the rich and the poor. There is a huge difference between the chronic grasping of the rich and the desperate attempts of some among the poorest in society to steal things which either provide them with the very basics of life or, on another level, allow them to momentarily possess some item which our consumer society says represents success and makes them someone worthwhile.

But of course, the BBC will never provide such a challenging analysis as suggesting the new morality needs to be one that changes the value base of our economic and social systems. Rather, the morality that is being harped on about here is of the "doff-your-cap-and-know-your-place" variety. Duncan Smith has threateningly promised that the response to the riots will be "the making" of David Cameron and already the objective is clearly to contain the disaffected rather to tackle the root causes of disaffection. Repression will be the true watchword - as was plainly evidenced one morning on Radio 4 as a vicar intoned his horror about the riots before saying mournfully that punishment was important, and for now all he could think about was the phrase "I am my brother's keeper..." 

Fuel to the Fire

Listening to David Cameron answer questions for over two hours in the Commons this afternoon was a sadly repetitive, turgid and wholly predictable affair. "Criminals", "No excuses", "Water cannon", "full force of the law", "baton rounds" (notably not called by their more common name of plastic bullets), all the cliches were there. He huffed and puffed his way through the usual rightwing knee-jerk stuff about discipline, bad parents and lack of respect - an entirely partial agenda. He paused only momentarily to reject the more outlandish suggestions, such as the one that Wembley stadium should be used as an internment camp for tens of thousands of suspected rioters who should be "rounded up" by the military - though who knows how tempted he was by the prospect?

Lib Dems, Tories and Labour were frequently indistinguishable in seeking solely an authoritarian response, ignoring the fact that if anything has proven this does not work, the riots and looting of the last week show it: where there are too many rioters in too many places at the same time, the police cannot cope. Sure, you can deploy or employ more and maybe you could bring in soldiers - a tactic pioneered in mainland Britain by Winston Churchill in Llanelli in Wales when troops machine-gunned strikers - but such a step would not be a sign of strength , but rather the last refuge of the truly desperate. All it would do would delay the start of the next round of riots, and crank up the level of dissonance and violence when they finally erupt.

A few saner voices urged some calm reflection rather than diving into the raft of new laws and harsh actions welcomed by Cameron today. Caroline Lucas called for an examination of the impact of inequality and a tempering of Government policy in the light of all the evidence that this significantly contributes to crime and violence; Labour's John McDonnell had earlier argued similarly in the Guardian; and a number of other Labour MPs called for a wide ranging public enquiry.

But Cameron has already decided on the authoritarian option, and new laws are to be rushed in, notably somewhat after the event. It is to be strongly suspected that they will be both a huge over-reaction to the events of this week and that before long they will be being used to stifle dissent rather than riots. Once the police can demand that people remove face masks, how long will it be before costumed protester posing in Cameron or Clegg masks are being arrested for intent to riot? If Twitter can lead to people being arrested for false rumours of riots, how long before the interpretation of messages leads to legitimate demonstrators being seized ahead of perfectly lawful protest?

And how long before the police - or army - are indeed deployed to shoot at British citizens rather than anyone in authority taking a serious look at why so many people so willingly engaged in criminal activity this week? It is not a question of excusing people - it is a matter of understanding why something so awful has happened in order to reduce the chances of it happening again.

Criminologists, people who have spent years investigating the motives and behaviour of people who take part in criminal activity and so somewhat more acquainted with these matters than your average Shire Squire Tory MP, have repeatedly explained that most of those looting this week are people who feel they have nothing to lose, that, for whatever reason, they feel they have no stake in society and consequently feel utter contempt for society. The comfort of gangs can be a cold substitute, but many do not even enjoy such camaraderie.

In such a context, the common sense response would be certainly to contain the current round of trouble - although a good dose of British Summer rain appears to have done so for free tonight - but to then work hard to understand and remove the causes of such behaviour. Yet what is the Government's plan? Grant Shapps, Housing Minister, declared today that it would be to empower councils and housing associations to evict tenants found to be involved in the riots. The definition of anti-social behaviour is to be extended from the immediate vicinity of their houses to almost anywhere.

What vituperative petty, small-minded, short-sighted brain, for want of a better word, comes up with such a solution?

You have nothing and feel no connection with society and have been rioting on the streets. What are we going to do? Well, we are going to take away your home and put you out...on the streets! Nursing an even greater set of grievances...

Such are the men who run our country in the Cabinet of Millionaires, 
including the one who claimed £7,000 of our money for soft furnishings. Who is looting who?

Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. (Matthew 13:12)

Faces Off!: How soon before genuine protest like this is banned for potentially fomenting potential riot?

From Bullingdon to Brixton: Rulers & Rioters, and Broken Glass

The feral elite and London rioters - how our rich have built a society defined by greed and loot.

There have been many unsurprising commentaries written about the riots engulfing English cities since the weekend - the rightwing press and politicians have predictably trotted out their condemnation of "scum", "riff raff", "feckless" rioters. There have been calls for water cannon to be deployed and the police have menacingly "refused to rule out" the use of baton rounds.

There is no doubt that social tensions sparked the round of violence: the police, having shot a Tottenham man dead in unclear circumstances , refused to talk with his family or a crowd who went to a police station to stage a silent protest on Saturday evening. As tempers flared, a young girl was allegedly attacked by six policemen and from there the rest, as they say, is history. Tottenham town centre was in flames by the early hours of Sunday and from there disturbances have spread around the country, reaching Salford in Greater Manchester this evening and Leeds last night.

And yet, this is no Tahrir Square, nor is it an echo or amplification of the student demonstrations in London last autumn. Whilst undoubtedly many who have taken part in the riots and looting are socially excluded, others are clearly not - and obtaining goods such as X-Boxes, perfume, rucksacks and designer clothing appears much higher up the agenda than protesting about cuts in social care and eduction services. Likewise, some incidents, including forcing passers-by to strip naked, go far beyond any political protest. Small, local shops have been destroyed alongside the chain stores in clearly indiscriminate attacks. So is there anything more than criminal greed?

The BBC interviewed two girls this morning, drinking stolen wine at 9.30 am, laughing about the fun they had had and eagerly anticipating another night "showing the rich" they could do what they wanted. As one commentator noted, "Where we used to be defined by what we did, now we are defined by what we buy. These big stores are in the business of tempting [the consumer] and then suddenly these people find they can just walk into the shop and have it all."

Our society has shaped the pent up desires for the luxury goods being targeted - jewellery shops and electrical stores are prime targets. With the recession making many of these out of bounds for so many, the denial being expected of generations raised on aspirational acquisition is simply too great to be sustainable, especially in a society as characterised by extremes of wealth as ours. As "The Spirit Level" by Wilkinson and Pickett so powerfully explained last year, unequal societies are not only less happy ones, they are also more troubled, crime-ridden and violent. The actors do not personally need social or political objectives for such a drama to unfold.

But more than just stoking the demand for these possessions, our society has now also created the permission required to take what you can. We live in a country with a ruling elite now exposed as being utterly mired in greed and corruption - and rewarded for being so. It is a genie that once out the bottle is returned with great difficulty.

Our Members of Parliament have been exposed for their greed and gluttony over the expenses scandal. With Government leaders claiming for cleaning septic tanks, the Deputy Prime Minister getting his lawn cut at taxpayers expense and MPs "forgetting" to stop claiming for redeemed mortgages, our representatives punished barely a handful of scapegoats and are now back to claiming more than they were before the scandal erupted in 2008.

Our bankers, exposed for their ineptitude and greedy speculation, have been bailed out to the tune of nearly £40,000,000,000 of taxpayers' money - over £1,000 per British adult - yet continue to receive tens of billions in bonuses. The richest dodge their taxes, with the authorities writing off billions, like Vodaphone (£6 billions excused). Public services are being closed to keep our rich elite in champers.

Some of our police, the London Met most of all, have been shown to be riddled with corrupt practices - with cops receiving payments from newspapers for confidential information; investigations tainted by officers receiving gifts, lunches and even jobs from the people under suspicion; and just last week a Chief Constable and his deputy suspended for alleged fraud.

And of course, we have our Prime Minister, David Cameron. In his own youth, Cameron was, along with London Mayor Boris Johnson, a member of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford University (see picture on left above; Cameron is second from left at back; Johnson is on the right, sitting). This society of toffs was known for its practices of pot-smoking, drinking and eating to excess before carrying out some "robust" redecoration of the restaurants they used for their revelry, the main difference with this week's rioters being that Mr Cameron's associates had their Daddies' money to pay for the damage they wrecked. Indeed, Boris Johnson's biographer notes:

"I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men."  And Cameron himself has reminisced fondly that,“Things got out of hand and we'd had a few drinks. We smashed the place up and Boris set fire to the toilets.”

And so, as we fumble forward to find the motives for the riots - so presciently predicted last year and then helped along by the policies of Nick Clegg and his confederates - there is no doubt that we live in a country where any moral compass is gone. Our "feral elite", as Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has described them, are out of control.

What is the real difference between our grasping rich, ripping off employees and consumers and dodging tens of billions in tax, and the kids nicking £300 sound systems from Currys? Perhaps not even a sheet of broken glass...

London riots: terrified woman jumps from burning building - mirror.co.uk

London riots: terrified woman jumps from burning building - mirror.co.uk

Tory Britain, 2011
The carnage and mayhem of the last week has subsided, but as our Government begins a wide sweeping crackdown, including uniquely punishing the uninvolved relatives of rioters and threatening some sort of action against social networks, how credibly can the Conservatives condemn young people who damage property and threaten people?

Read about the violent and disrepectful past of Prime Minister David Cameron and Mayor Boris Johnson by clicking here.