here come the politicians...

so now the fires are out and the rioting has stopped [for the mo]
here in leeds there were a couple of half-hearted attempts to get some aggro going, but thankfully nothing really developed.

and now that things have calmed, out come our elected representatives to explain it all to us...
last nite i watched sayeeda warsi and diane abbott bickering on newsnight, and it was an unedifying sight.

the established tactics seem to be - for the tories: state and re-state that the rioters are criminals and scumbags and need locking up, if anyone tries to talk about the underlying reasons for the mayhem accuse them of making excuses for it and condoning criminality, unless the reasons are poor parenting, years of political correctness and the policies of new labour, in which case those are all good reasons and let's discuss those at great length.

for labour: talk about how this sort of thing only ever happens under the tories, talk about the cuts as much as possible, state and restate that the rioters are criminals and not to be condoned then re-state it, then talk about the cuts again.

and so it'll go on. it's hard to escape the conclusion that our mp's first instinct is to work an angle, to try and manipulate the debate to the best advantage of their party and to discredit their opponents, rather than to genuinely engage with the issues and work together to sort things out and make things better. so many of them seem to serve their party first and us a distant second...
this morning a tory mp on the tv talked about the extra officers on duty in the capital "that david cameron organised". it's all just PR and spin...


meanwhile, as the politicians bicker and point the finger teams of local people are coming together with brooms to sweep up and try and put things back together again...