Daily View: What are the reasons for continued rioting?
Commentators try to find reasons for the violence and looting spreading across England.
Journalist that the riots are empowering:
"People riot because it makes them feel powerful, even if only for a night. People riot because they have spent their whole lives being told that they are good for nothing, and they realise that together they can do anything - literally, anything at all."
that the global economic context has to be considered:
"It is no coincidence that the worst violence London has seen in many decades takes place against the backdrop of a global economy poised for freefall...
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"Although the epicentre of the immediate economic crisis is the eurozone, successive British governments have colluded in incubating the poverty, the inequality and the inhumanity now exacerbated by financial turmoil.
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"Britain's lack of growth is not an economic debating point or a stick with which to beat George Osborne, any more than our deskilled, demotivated, under-educated non-workforce is simply a blot on the national balance sheet. Watch the juvenile wrecking crews on the city streets and weep for all our futures. The 'lost generation' is mustering for war."
structural inequality in the UK cannot be ignored:
"Decades of individualism, competition and state-encouraged selfishness - combined with a systematic crushing of unions and the ever-increasing criminalisation of dissent - have made Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world.
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"Images of burning buildings, cars aflame and stripped-out shops may provide spectacular fodder for a restless media, ever hungry for new stories and fresh groups to demonise, but we will understand nothing of these events if we ignore the history and the context in which they occur."
In contrast, on the the idea that there are genuine grievances when discussing the issue with Jerry Blackett, chief executive of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce:
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"This is people who are observing crimes taking place in other parts of the country who decide that they can take advantage of the opportunity to commit copycat crimes themselves, this is nothing short of pure criminality."
seeing others getting away with it can be enough reason for more:
"The proximate causes of disorder can rarely be determined with any degree of certainty. They emerge almost out of nowhere. But they can spread like wild fires once they have been triggered. Cyclically, an outbreak of aggression makes potential offenders realise they are unlikely, as individuals, to get caught while the police are swamped. So they join in the looting and vandalism - thus making yet more potential offenders confident enough to have a go. Frighteningly, given the right context, a riot can almost become its own cause."
