The competing arguments used to explain the riots

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14483149

I'm not sure they're in competition tbh.

It's very easy to pick an issue and pretend it's the dominant one. Much more likely to be near the truth is a range of those causes acting ensemble in a very complex manner.

I doubt those points of view are mutually exclusive.

Exactly my point.

There is, already, a whole host of rabid right- and left- wingers picking one or two of those possible causes and seeking to use them as the sole explanation.

The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom

By Peter Oborne

...There was ... something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.

I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.

It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington...

...Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain. If we are ever to confront the problems which have been exposed in the past week, it is essential to bear in mind that they do not only exist in inner-city housing estates.

The culture of greed and impunity we are witnessing on our TV screens stretches right up into corporate boardrooms and the Cabinet. It embraces the police and large parts of our media. It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.

Top and bottom, quite so.

Are the riots any worse than a bunch of bankers/investors ripping the country of its wealth, police being corrupt and MPs fiddling expenses? How are the masses (of limited intelligence) expected to have any moral compass if those in power/authority have none?

To be honest, I'd lump quite a chunk of the middle in there as well.

I think you will find that there are TWAT5 at all levels of society.

True but I do think that the top and bottom strata twats more than make up than those in the middle, who are probably limited to being twats on a small scale.

Hmmm...

I'm not sure that the twunt density doesn't increase with earnings tbh. I'd venture so far as to suggest it's the visibility of the twuntishness that accounts for the middle looking better.

I like the fact that no-one will be complaining about CCTV Britain when these guys are locked up one by one using CCTV footage. It's also a good example of what happens when the police can't monitor online chatter among criminal communities. These are gangs of street youths being opportunistic and looking towards the drug dealers as being the ones in authority and not the police, kinda like the mafia.