I do enjoy treading pragmatic ground, so this suits my thinking quite well. It also somewhat mitigates the problem I’ve had with profiles of the looters so far, namely that, aside from the initial group at Tottenham perhaps, I’m not sure that we really have a good idea yet of who exactly they are (aside from young and largely male), so it’s difficult to confidently explain their motivations.

Personally, I do not suspect that the majority of looters are actually in the sort of poverty described by Camila Batmanghelidjh (whose narrative falls apart, in my opinion, because she uses ‘community’ and ‘society’ interchangeably, where I see them as interrelated, but distinct concepts). Low income, yes, but they clearly have access to Twitter, computers, mobile phones and enough American TV to confuse themselves that there are ‘Feds’ in Britain.

Regardless, I feel like the liberal camp (of which I suppose I’m more or less a member) has jumped in to defend them based on a raft of society’s shortcomings (which do surely exist, don’t get me wrong) without exploring issues around personal accountability and responsibility. Is it not also insulting to imply the poor just can’t help themselves when faced with bombardment from consumer culture? Very few of us can have everything we’re told we must want, regardless of how much or how little we had to begin with. That doesn’t mean we go out and take it. Just because the government currently lacks moral authority (look at what the banks have gotten away with), doesn’t mean we as individuals have to give up our sense of right and wrong. And while taking a pair of trainers isn’t ‘that big of a deal’, certainly burning down small businesses and homes is.