The War on Looters

I was intending to try and move away from writing about last week's riots, but hell, the aftermath is turning out to be almost as bizarrely entertaining as the actual events. Cameron's latest explanation for the riots now seems to be that it was all down to gangs. And single mothers. Oh, let's not forget the lack of discipline in schools. In other words, he is as clueless as Dr David Starkey - who thinks that it is all down to rap music, patois and white people behaving as if they are black - as to the causes of these disturbances. Which isn't really surprising as, like most of the people commenting on the riots are middle class, privately educated professionals from comfortable backgrounds. So, instead of seeing any attempt to get to grips with the actual roots of this problem, we're instead subjected to the spectacle of Cameron's equivalent to the 'Bloody Assizes' as Magistrates Courts sit twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, presided over by a series of publicity-hungry District Judges, (note that these aren't real judges, just glorified magistrates), all happy to audition for the part of Judge Jeffries, sending teenagers down for six months for stealing six bottles of water, for instance.

Of course, if I was a conspiracy nut, I'd tell you that it was the government and their shadowy extreme right-wing backers who are actually behind these riots - it's their 9/11 and 7/7 rolled into one: an excuse to impose all sorts of repressive measures in the name of 'freedom'. The 'War on Terror' superseded by a 'War on Looters', and yet more of our civil liberties taken away. Either that, or the police were behind all the mayhem in an attempt to stave off cuts to their budgets. But I'm not a conspiracy theorist. Although both the conspiracies I've outlined present more credible explanations for the riots than any of the cobblers our government are spouting. Quite frankly, they might as well put it all down to demonic possession resulting from our increasingly Godless society. More exorcists - that's what we need! Put more priests on the streets! But enough of my negativity - what can we do to combat this kind of civil unrest in the future? I was watching the film adaptation of Watchmen over the weekend, and it occurred to me that if only Dave had had a superhero like Dr Manhattan to call upon, he would have been able to deploy him against the rioters in much the same way as Nixon deploys Dr Manhattan against the Viet-Cong in order to win the Vietnam war. Indeed, Dr Manhattan would represent an ideal opportunity to save money on defence, foreign policy and the police - they'd all be rendered obsolete by his very existence. And he's blue. So, my advice to Dave is to start irradiating someone - probably Ian Duncan-Smith - right now in order to produce a bald, blue British equivalent to Dr Manhattan - Dr Sizewell B, probably - then blame the next round of riots on the machinations of a super villain, before having the rioters disintegrated.