England riots

I have been cracking head trying to figure out what actually caused the rioting in England for the past few days but there is still no answer to it. Was it purely a senseless violence or senseless criminality as their prime minister put it? Or is it a social problems evolving form the polarization of the rich and poor?

In a BBC interview to one of the rioting youngsters, he responded: “Why are you going to miss the opportunity to get free stuff that’s worth a lot of money? How many people have the police arrested? I’m not really bothered. I will keep doing this until I get caught.” If the youngsters are having such mentality, thinking of taking the opportunity of public unrest to get expensive stuff for free until they get caught, then the rioting would not stop, as the young people are not respecting laws anymore.

It is such a shame that a senseless rioting can evolve into such a worrying scale that spreading fast to major cities such as Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham and Birmingham. Shops were looted and cars were set fire and even police stations were thrown with firebombs. Three youngsters which were standing again the rioters and looters in protecting their neighborhood were reportedly killed when they were hit by a car of the rioters. If such things happen in the third nations nobody will give a damn, but England, a country of “Ladies and Gentlemen”? It goes to show how complicated a social problem can be.

The question is with such a big scale of rioting, how many people the police need to arrest to restore peace and order, hundred, thousand or more? Now that the police is considering using the plastic bullets which had never before used to deal with riot in England, it goes to show that the police may be running out of idea and resources to restore order quickly. What I hope is that they would not deploy army to handle the riots or else it will be such a shame for a developed country such as England.