red_bus wrote:Hey everyone -- thanks for the messages of support over the last few days.

Happily things have calmed down quite a bit now -- and the courts are working 24 hours to prosecute everyone who has been or is being charged.  And fortunately no-one I know was harmed (although quite a few were pretty scared).

As you can imagine, there is a lot of discussion in the press, well in fact actually amongst basically everyone in London and elsewhere, over here, along similar lines to this discussion.  That is, alternating between on the one hand: the role of individual moral character (i.e. greedy, lazy, morally-bankrupt, lacking discipline, or evil) and on the other hand, reasons based upon social/economic factors (i.e. no jobs, breakdown of the family, welfare-culture, the example displayed by a consumer society). One thing that is I think more interesting is why did this suddenly happen?

The original flashpoint was a protest about a police shooting in Tottenham (north London) which was handled badly and escalated into a minor riot.  Uncommon and unpleasant but not that unexpected. But why a few hours later did large scale looting start up in Wood Green (two miles away)?  And why did the rioting and looting continue over the next few days to pop up again and again and spread to different regions all across London and again spread again (e.g. to parts of Manchester, Birmingham  etc…)?  

In part the answer lies in a clash between technology and the policing structure in the UK.  There isn't actually a ‘british police' there are 40+ regional police forces, and further, within each region policing resources are allocated on a detailed local analysis of the area and crime patterns.  A few years ago if there was a civil disturbance some distance away from you it would be several hours (or even the next day) before you became aware of it on the TV news. But now people can spread that kind of news in minutes - and more importantly they can get their friends involved just as fast.  There have been a couple of amusing instances in the press in the last two or three years where a teenager has accidentally invited a thousand+ people to a party in their parents house -- trashing the place -- because facebook, twitter, and texts mean that an invitation for 50 or so spirals way out of control. This is a similar kind of thing.  When the kids were looting a particular high street they could tell their mates to come because the police hadn't enough officers there (yet) and when the police chased them away, they could arrange where next to go within minutes.  But riot police move around London streets (relatively) slowly because they are set up to protect areas not to chase down mobile groups.  And they were suddenly stretched so thin -- because the rioters weren't staying in one area, like they used to, but moving quickly and other groups were springing up because they could see through news on the web, through twitter, facebook and through their mates' messages that this tactic meant they could get away with it. Even if the police had used water cannon or baton rounds it probably would not have made any difference -- as with a few exceptions -- most of the looters weren't that interested in direct confrontation, but in getting stuff from shops.  New social media has empowered the potential looter to know very quickly where to go in a group, where looting will likely take place, and also where not to go (as it has jsut been been looted already, or there are too many police etc..)

In urban areas where small groups can move quickly and coordinate using smartphones my suspicion is that this may well happen again, so in response the police here will probably have to adopt some new tactics specifically to address it.  There may also be a move to modernise the police here which is probably a good idea.

Kingofpain89 wrote:http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20 ... igilantism



Looks like more than a few residents are fed up.

benjoshua wrote:
The UK blackberry/cellphone has certainly seen lots of press lately.  First there was the Murdoch hacking scandal where reporters were hacking into people's phones, and now these electronic devices are being used to loot and burn businesses.  Maybe the police should hire some laid off News of the World reporters to figure out what's going on.  

Kingofpain89 wrote:Vote for your favorite sci-fi/fantasy books:

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/138894873 ... ence-ficti on-fantasy-titles

Woefully inadequate list.  No Gregory Benford, Fred Saberhagen, or Charles Stross...and no Jack Vance.  And The Legend of Drizzt series makes the list but neither of the first two Dragonlance trilogies?