Not wishing to get involved but from and observers point of view Smokey TA is romping to victory on this debate. Cronus, you have been comprehensively out debated in a rational and (ironically since you attempted to use the term in a demeaning context in your argument) mature fashion.

I would summerise the debate as Smokey addressing the issue with the view to representing and considering societies needs as a whole, while you seem to be advocating turning the police into the meanest gang on the streets, capable of "dishing it out" to those who step out of line.

It is not the police' role to punish those breaking the law.

Finally I would say that the length of civil disorder such as this is not generally governed by the response of the police but by the strength of feeling of those involved in the disorder. It may be there are lessons to be learned from Northern Ireland.

Regarding the riots, have you ever thought that events can run unconnected in parallel?
Or that there can be strands in events, like rope laid out in series on the ground in a time line, but they may not all be connected up. Pull one end and you see that it doesn't affect the extreme other end.
That's how things can happen, yet appear to have some loose connection.
People in London to a large degree and certainly people in other cities didn't come into the fray because of Duggan, they looked via the media and saw unchecked rioting and thought chavishly, we'll have some of that. So for them alone that was the cause.

Right. The thread has been cleaned.

Continue the discussion by all means – but if it goes off topic in the same manner again, then I will hand out bans.

I'll add ...

I locked this thread overnight a few days ago because of bickering but was persuaded to re-open. I asked for it to be kept civil at that point. I have read the posts which have been removed and have to say as well as being disappointed by them, had I have been around last night or first thing this morning the thread would have been locked.

Final warning on this topic ... Keep it civil or the thread goes.

I'm tempted to suggest that you need to grow up and get some.

But okay – I'm going to be more subtle, even in closing this thread.

Strange as it may seem, we – that's the mods – do not conspire against anyone else. We do not sit down and discuss who we 'like' and who we do not 'like'. We do not discuss what threads we 'like' and do not.

I am getting pretty ed off with the paranoid brigade, who appear to believe in conspiracy theories, regardless of the facts.

Now – that's a personal thing. So deal with it or not.

But hey - feel proud: you've finished off this thread.