Analysis fatigue

Like most people I was glued to the TV on Monday evening watching buildings burning in London feeling emotions of anger and concern and there was great anticipation last night that we would see similar scenes, but in the end it was an anticlimax. The massively increased police presence on the streets extinguished any idea people may have had for a repeat performance, adding weight to the argument of many that the rioting has mainly been about criminality and opportunism.

It's seems clear to me that the underlying reasons for this kind of behaviour are many and complex, there is no "one size fits all" regardless of what lilly livered lefties or frothing hard-liners are saying today. Several pieces of evidence make me think this, firstly there are a small number of people who may have a genuine grievance against the police, the shooting which happened last week and seemed to provide an ignition spark does have a very odd whiff about it and the sooner it can be properly investigated the better. Then we have evidence from the arrest records, many of the people actually collared were not from London at all, some had full-time jobs and some even degree educated, so much for an alienated and unemployed underclass. We also have to ask why some of the rioters were so young and I even read one report of a couple of kids who phoned their mum to come and pick them up at the end of a particularly busy looting session, she even helped them load the booty into the back of her car! Clearly some people need "acceptable behaviour for members of a social species" training (and no, not from a priest!) How can we make any sense of this, indeed should we expect to make any sense of it?

We've only had one calm night out of the last three (in London) and I'm already tired of the post riot "analysis" of these events in the media, the endless interviews with sociology professors from the peoples republic of Tower Hamlets correspondence university, chairmen of the police sub-committee on inappropriate footwear (retired) and Priests from our lady of perverted morality offering their opinions. I'm sure all these people are well meaning and are certainly entitled to their viewpoint, but attempting to tar so many people with a single brush seems doomed to failure to me. Blaming young people or black people or unemployed people or single parents or ill-educated people or immigrants or Government cuts or left wingers or Twitter simply doesn't cover it. Human beings can be born arseholes or made into arseholes and come from any walk of life, they can wear hoodies and steal trainers or suits & ties and wreck our economy. Crime and antisocial behaviour is a constant throughout history as I'm convinced is the proportion of arseholes in any given population. In big cities like London (where the density of arseholes is obviously higher) imbalances in the stasis are more noticeable but regardless, we need to make sure that any disincentives or punishments dished out are proportionate and followed through regardless of the postcode of the offender.

Solving social problems is notoriously difficult because people and societies are very complicated things, as has been seem many times in the past, social programs like marketing campaigns are usually only 50% effective, unfortunately nobody really knows which 50%.