In the news

A lot of people on here don't seem to understand how law and order in our society works, or doesn't work in this case.

It works because people consent to be governed, and accept the rule of law. That is why we don't have armed cops, or a particularly large police force.

What we are seeing right now is that a large group of people have withdrawn their consent to be governed, and are not respecting the rule of law. If this group is sufficiently large, as we have seen, the existing forces of law may not have the numbers to restore order.

We can postulate various ways in which the imbalance of forces can be altered in the short-term so that order can be restored (water cannon, more police, paramilitarising the police, using the Army, paramilitarising sections of the civil population), but unless we figure out why such a large group of people have withdrawn (however temporarily, spuriously or irrationally) their consent to be governed, and take steps to remedy it, this will all happen again, and we will be forced to warehouse large numbers of people in prison, rather as the US has done.

Using the prison system to control people who have no stake in main-stream society, as has been shown in the US, does not work on any level, economically, socially or ethically, especially in view of the recidivism rates.

I don't think it's helpful to present the case as either condemn or understand. You can both condemn the actions, and try to understand the circumstances that lead to the actions.

So eloquent, Bill. You're wasted on the smelly couriers ;)

This is key: I don't think it's helpful to present the case as either condemn or understand. You can both condemn the actions, and try to understand the circumstances that lead to the actions.