London Burning

I'm torn about the riots in the UK, on one hand I wholeheartedly believe that they have a lot to be mad as hell about (and so do we in the UK). With the rates of unemployment and high cost of living, I'm honestly surprised that there wasn't rioting during the ridiculous spectacle/waste of taxpayer money that was the royal wedding. And much like the Sean Bell case in New York (which there surprisingly wasn't massive riots over), police shootings or possible police misconduct can be a tipping point especially if there's a larger unrest.

And while it's hard to know what's really going on from 3,000 miles away, it seems that the looting and protests aren't necessarily about government or police mismanagement or crimes, or even bread necessarily from the hopelessness of prolonged unemployment and poverty. While the may have been the catalyst, it seems more like it just about destruction which gets the entire lot labeled as thugs and discredits the real reasons for uprising in the first place.

Two opposing views that both have validity: