NO ANSWERS

I don't claim to have any answers to whatever it is that is currently happening in London and the various cities around the UK currently suffering from rioting and looting, nor do I have much in the way of understanding to offer, but it does strike me that if you create an entire culture that has the acquisition and having of "stuff" as its only widely recognised value system, and then you create a society of joblessness and poverty, where a large proportion of that society feels unable to actually afford to get that same "stuff" because of a lack of opportunity to "join in" then, eventually, this is very probably the kind of result you are going to get.

This is not, of course, to condone any of these acts of street crime, or to defend the serious danger that ordinary people have been put in because of someone else's greed, or need to simply go out and have a bit of a fight, but just to try and understand what frustrations or boredom or simply not really giving much of a toss might lead to this kind of flashpoint being reached. Was it really the shooting incident that put a spark to the fire, or was that just the excuse needed and all of this stuff was already bubbling up and ready to boil over at some point?

It's been seen as being "unusual" this time around because the perpetrators seem to be seeing the whole thing as being a bit of "fun" and there are reports of gangs of rioters and looters laughing as they go about the "business" of anarchy, although I'm pretty sure that this has always been the case when the mob get together en masse and try to stick it to whoever they think the "man" is this time. All the jollity only really stops when the serious business of not getting caught sets in, and then, of course, it's everyone for themselves and that's when the trouble really begins.

This whole notion of the "haves" and the "have nots" is always more difficult to comprehend if you happen to be someone who might be considered amongst the "haves", no matter how hard a time you might think you are having during this downturn. I remember seeing a news piece about the top 10% of earners at about the time of the last election and it was really strange to see a family complaining about how they are struggling to get by on £70,000 a year and how they "couldn't possibly" be amongst the top 10% of earners in that town (they were) because everybody they knew seemed to be much better off than them. It's tricky to get across to anyone in that situation how someone struggling along on a tenth of that or less might feel when they are continually being bombarded by images of people carrying more expensive and ultimately rather pointless "stuff" on them than they could afford to buy in a year or more, and driving around in cars that are possibly worth more than all the contents of all the homes on the street they live on. Losing a few dividends and not being able to afford the latest iPad does rather pale into insignificance to someone who's scrabbling around trying to find a couple of quid to feed the meter so they can cook some food and feed their kids.

Mind you, kicking in the windows of most of the small businesses providing many of the jobs in your area during a time of economic difficulties is hardly likely to boost the local economy and provide much in the way of long-term prospects, is it? Then again, many of the riot areas back in the 1980s did get targeted for oodles of "urban renewal" cash once it had all blown over, so you never know...

In the meantime, possibly due to the more interconnected webwise culture we all inhabit, these incidents do seem to be becoming a bit of "trendy fun" for some of the more impressionable of society, and the problem with anything following the pattern of being a "trend" is that it's bound to get worse before it gets any better, simply because those disaffected people living in other urban centres are bound to see what's going on, think to themselves that there's "free stuff" to be had (although we all pay eventually) and join in on the opportunistic bandwagon and naturally coming to the conclusion that "I'll have some of that for myself!"

The media response in London especially has been interesting at least, presumably because a lot of the staff have a very personal stake in the story by the very fact that they happen to live in these boroughs. When they sit around their offices wondering what it is that affects people, it's usually their own little lives that they seem to turn to. Their kids are having trouble at school so they'll write a piece on trouble at school. London's burning, so that must affect everyone, mustn't it? Sometimes there is also a sort of bewilderment that passes across the eyes of the young metropolitan when they can't understand quite why their nice little life is being targeted in this way, failing naturally to realise that being one of the "haves" means that you will never really get the point.

It's also very interesting to study the human nature on display on both sides. Both the looters and potential looters stand at the kerbside, eyeing up the possibilities of what they might be able to nick once someone else has smashed in the windows of whichever store they've got their eye on (and - unbelievably - filming it), and the kind of people who "heard there was something going on" and went to have a look, not realising that this probably doesn't help much, but does at least get them "on the telly", too. Presumably there's good money to be made from decent footage of the anarchy. A nice, juicy "eyewitness" piece is always meat and drink to the reporters even if they've got nothing helpful to actually say.

Meanwhile, to my mind at least, it's possibly unwise to let a former TV presenter comment at length about the trashing of his restaurant on the very morning after it happened when he's still pondering upon the problems of refurbishment, insurance claims and whether to bother to reopen at all. It's hardly the calmest or most rational (or indeed unbiased) time to be broadcasting your thoughts to the nation. The general air of shock and disbelief amongst many of the urban sophisticates of the media establishment that the nice little idea of the world that they manufacture for us has been tainted by people not working to their script is quite bizarre to behold. Still, "Jus wait til you get to Salford, bro..."

One predictable technique has been to try and "guilt" the youngsters by playing the "London Olympics" card, which probably does more than anything else to prove how far removed from the problems real people actually have they are as they sit in their offices planning the news agenda and telling us what they think we need or deserve to know. Whilst the games might be high up on their own agenda, whether its because they've got their tickets or they're going to be among the staff covering the event, there's a seething mass of resentment amongst many, many ordinary people who see these games as a huge drain on resources and a bit of a pointless and minority activity that really doesn't relate to them, their lives and their problems.

Ah well, perhaps if we're lucky, a bout of torrential rain will come along tonight and cool things off in the nation's capital at least. It's not for nothing that it used to be known as "God's policeman" because, whilst it might be tempting to go out and grab yourself a bit of the "free stuff" that's going around, it's much nicer to stay inside in the warm on a cold, wet and miserable night.

From this morning's BBC website ©BBC