09 August 2011   Sheer criminality? Seriously, that's the best
England's political class could come up with? Prime Minister
David Cameron even went so far as to reject outright the
possibility that the rioting going on in the UK might be due to
any underlying systemic problems. Say, perhaps, the institution
of austerity measures on the backs of the working class and
poor? Chronic poverty and underemployment, maybe? A legacy of
Thatcherite economic policies which continue to widen the gap
between rich and poor, much as Reaganomics continues to do here
in the US?  Nope, it's just people spontaneously being bad. End
of story. Send in the the riot police with truncheons and rubber
bullets so we can all go back to cosying up to media tycoons.
Which, of course, just begs the question of who, exactly, he was
vacationing with in Italy. Bashir al-Assad?  Which is not to say
there's no reason for the average Londoner to be scared. I'd be
freaked out of my mind. But until the UK political élite remove
their collective