It’s a gloomy sort of morning ritual, posting on the riots of the previous night. I’m sure CoffeeHousers have seen and heard the specifics already: further burning and looting in parts of London such as Ealing, Croydon and Hackney, as well as bursts of violence in Birmingham, Liverpool and elsewhere. Businesses and livelihoods have been obliterated, areas set back years. Among the few mercies is that no-one, so far as we know, has yet been killed as a result.
One thing that’s becoming clearer through the smoke is that the Met Police are overrun, unable to properly deal with criminality at hand. The arrest figures tell a story by themselves. “At least 334 people have been arrested and 69 charged following the riots across London over the past three days,” reports theBBC website. There were often more people in a single frame of last night’s news footage.
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