Riots don't happen without underlying causes

The events that took place earlier this week should not be dismissed only as the actions of mindless people out on the thieve. The riots and looting that erupted after the peaceful protest outside Tottenham police station last Saturday night were a reaction to a society in trouble.

A number of factors brought about these outbursts of violence. Bad policing, where police action disproportionately targets black boys and men from the ages of ten or eleven through to early to mid-forties.

Pretty much every time I go out either in my chair or driving I witness the police questioning either a black male pedestrian or they'll have stopped a car with a black driver. Yes, there are a lot of black people living where I live. Nonetheless, they are not the majority of the local population; and, they're definitely in a minority of motorists.

Most of these kids have been disadvantaged in their schooling; and yet, when they do, against the odds, shine through at school and gain the qualifications they need to progress to university a privileged bunch of yahoo Tories price tertiary education out of their reach; EMA, an essential funding, allowing council estate kids the opportunity to stay longer at school and set their targets at university, closed to 16-19 year-olds from last January.

Next a majority of projects aimed at youths have been cut back or closed down. Most people coming from poor working class backgrounds can't send their kids on expensive activity holidays anywhere. Youth clubs closed down throwing kids onto the very street corners where idle time and boredom breeds discontent.

A massive hike in youth unemployment due, directly and indirectly, to public sector cuts. Where is the promised programme of salvation from the private sector? There is none. You know why? Because, as everyone warned the private sector has a huge dependence on the public sector. Indeed, some 40% of public sector contracts are farmed-out to the private sector.

And, when contracts such as the manufacture of the Crossrail rolling stock are lost to the country, it pretty much sums up this government's commitment to the manufacturing industry, getting youngsters into work and the economy as a whole.

Government is betraying large swathes of the population. People are left to rot from sink estates to poor schools through miserable consumer-driven lifetimes through to a terrifyingly unsure retirement. It isn't only disabled people being demonised. Many from the poorer sections of the working classes are also being held up by the right wing media as scum, an underclass (chavs) unworthy of any consideration.