SimonScans

Neither. The overriding trait of brits is authoritarian. It's one reason why all the leftie brits here moan there's no party for them and all the righties moan their party is a bit shit too.

EVERYTHING in the UK requires a license, is illegal, about to be illegal or is generally just too pointy for any brit to be trusted with. Nanny always knows best, whether is a Labour nanny or a Tory nanny.

The main strategy of the UK is to ban everything or half arse any job or task while going LALALALALA and hoping for the best. It rarely works and is why we have aircraft carriers but no planey type things to go on the top of them.

One of the reasons the riots have got so out of control and so much property damaged is because no one other than the police have the gear or the support in law to actually protect their own stuff. There will be no armed to the teeth Koreans protecting their store fronts, and no looters will get shot. Last night a couple of looters got stuck behind a roller shutter that dropped behind them trapping them in the gap between the glass and the metal. The plod rescued them. Meanwhile, in side streets 90 year olds had their front doors kicked in, and no plod responded.

Ultimately who gives a fuck why rioters riot. As long as I know I can defend my family and property from whatever comes through my front door then I really don't care. That's one for social workers and good luck with that. The problem is I can't. The riots were sparked by a north London bad lad getting shot by the plod. His specific crime was to have a handgun - just having one got him shot and killed. All handguns were banned a few years ago in the UK for the law abiding, and in any event, the most recent case where a remote rural farmer shot and killed an intruder in his farmhouse resulted in his jailing for our equivalent of murder one.

So bad people have guns, good people don't and couldn't use them even if they did. And as we can see, it's only taken three days of DDOS rioting from the flatscreen liberation front for the police to be overwhelmed. And lets be honest here, they totally are.

Trouble has flashed all over the UK and in every case I've seen they've withdrawn or done nothing. Once the police line had failed there was in general nothing to stop rioters doing what they wanted. Except in Kingsland Road the Turkish community got all their blokes on the street and got things under control, no riot, no fire, no looting. Meanwhile the average brits response was to tweet about bringing a broom to todays cleanup. Nothing shows a looter who's boss like a thorough spring clean the morning after. How fucking gay is that?

Everyone is asking today which state run service has failed them. And there's the brit mindset right there - it's YOUR job to look after me. But the real question is why aren't we allowed to take our own precautions? Actual precautions, ones that might stop five people in your hallway, when everything else has failed.

Just for the record, I don't own a gun and don't have a baseball bat under my bed, but then I don't live in a shitty area. I'd just like the option to do so if I chose.