Is he sure?

London riots: police debate how far they should go to regain control | UK news | The Guardian

The biggest outbreak of rioting to hit Britain in living memory has led to debates within the police service about how far forces should go to regain control of the streets. Pictures of police officers standing and watching as youths smashed and looted shops have puzzled the public.

But Steven Kavanagh, the Metropolitan police deputy assistant commissioner, denied those images were a sign of the force being soft on rioters: "The Met is not namby pamby," he told the Guardian.

He added: "The face of policing has changed, 25-30 years ago it would have been a different response, we'd have gone to baton rounds and water cannon straight away. Now we are more measured."

Yes, and it's working a treat isn't it?

One thing I have been thinking about as a result of this is why Australia has never (as far as I can recall) ever had similar widespread rioting and looting from our (for want of a better term) underclass.

Also, on some of the video from England, I have noticed that streets full of shopfronts with full metal shutters down at night. As far as I know, there are few Australia city shopping streets that look like that, in fact the only similar "lock down" looking street I can recall seeing was Wilcannia, where (at least when I went through there in the late 1980's) the motel tells you to go no where near the centre of town at night, as it will be left to the local aborigines. But maybe there are parts of Sydney or Melbourne that look like that at night, and I have missed them.

And you always have to careful about the impressions you can get from TV, and I have heard residents interviewed who have said that many of the suburbs being looted are really quite pleasant and (relatively) up market.

Anyway, it's all a very curious phenomena, including the question as to how easily stupid Twitter and its ilk makes it for looting to be coordinated.