What the looters are suffering from

What are the looters suffering from?

Government spending cuts? What spending cuts are those? Government spending is going up.

What they are suffering from is impunity. The police are too constrained, the courts are weak, the professional middle class whingers keep making excuses for looters. In Tottenham the self important Widow Grant was issuing demands on Radio 4 for the police to jump to her bidding.

So the looters go on their sprees, confidently expecting no consequences.

The government will probably try to get away with the minimum it thinks it can do. Probably it won't be enough.

Follow Inspector Gadget.

I have spoken to many law-abiding members of the public. Feelings are running very high against local youths. People are displaying hatred and frustration, flavoured by a fair amount of racism. I don’t think there is an appetite for funding any further assistance to the part of the community which caused this.

The overwhelming feeling is that major force should be used now, before things get completely out of hand. People are worried they will die in their houses. The arson threat is everywhere. There is a lot of frustration about lack of police attendance until we tell them we are from Ruralshire, then they are just silent as the implications of this sink in.

We have heard about the armoured vehicles in Clapham, which cleared the street in minutes. We want to carry out a baton charge at a line of angry youths who are setting fire to a huge wheelie bin in the doorway of a post office, but we are told to ‘hold the line’.

This has to stop. Gadget says police on the front line are worried about the Tomlinson case. It seemed there that someone harmless was struck viciously out of sheer vindictiveness. But a genuine melée is different. Stuff happens, and the community has to live with that.

The army is no answer, for what happens when they withdraw? The police need riot control tools, and maybe more discretion for the front line.

These have to be permanent changes, so that rioters know the police will always be able to deploy resources instantly.

Gadget is obviously right in saying that we need more support from the courts. Sentencing is unacceptably namby pamby. Is 16 months in jail too long for Charlie Gilmour? No.

Repeated community sentences are unacceptable. The country needs harsh prisons which criminals don't want to go back to.

After the last few nights the country has changed. If we can't afford proper policing and enough prisons, why are we shelling out to the EU and the IMF? Can we afford foreign adventures any more?

The country needs greater toughness and a dramatic realignment of resources. Impunity is not acceptable.