To our British friends...

I was watching it all on the TV last night and it was obvious that the police were overwhelmed by the extent and speed of things. They were also poorly equipped for dealing with the crowds of youths (which numbered in the hundreds) as all that they had were shield, body armour and batons. In some cases it was up to two hours before they could respond to a call from the public about trouble breaking out. It also seemed that all of the episodes of violence were organised and co-ordinated via mobile phones texts. The government is far to soft in dealing with criminals, the police should have been able to deploy tear gas and baton rounds (rubber bullets) to break up crowds of youths and they should also have had access to water cannon which would not only be able to easily (and literally) hose these criminals off the street, but also deal with the fires that they have been starting before they got out of hand. However, the London police do dot have access to such equipment. The bottom line is that there are a large number of unemployed (and in many cases unemployable) youths who have time on their hands and who have jumped at the chance of filling their empty lives with a bit of violence and looting. Now they think that they can do so with impunity, they will continue to do this. In short, expect to see more of this in the days to come.

A "konspiracist" friend of mine has suggested more sinister things behind this. After all, if people are afraid that their homes or businesses are going to be burned, they aren't going to squawk as loudly about the police being given better weapons.

there seems to be trouble all over the world these days. i hope things settle down for you all there.

Hi eileenleyva, I too find it hard to believe that this is happening in Britain and hope that it will be over soon. I too think that most of the world holds Britain on a pedestal. There is much happening everywhere today that is alarming. Blessings.

I love London, it's a beautiful and very progressive place indeed. Many of my cousins are in London and I do have many friends who are either studying and working in that beautiful place. So I am so worried when I saw in the news about this riot and I could not help but hate these rioters who are looting and burning and causing so much trouble in that city. I pray they could be immediately apprehended so that peace could be finally restored. Let's pray for London!

Will people ever have peace and mutual friendly relationship in between in every country. There are always many troubles going on somewhere in the world. It seems when one country has calmed down another starts its blow. Everything is forever changing. Have a wonderful day!

Wow. I didn't hear one speck of "I hope you all stay safe" or "Be careful" in that. I don't mean to be picky, but despite all of the problems we have in the States (not counting global warming, as I believe that that's a bunch of garbage), we should at least send some sympathy across the pond. Be safe, Brit friends, and Godspeed. I hope all of that garbage will be over soon.

Are you a writer? UK recent riots reminded me of a riot that occured in LA (Los Angeles) back in the 90s. I'm not sure if both are the same and it doesn't seem the UK riot is as big as the one in LA. Somehow, I was misguided with the idea that riot like this is developing in UK. I could be wrong.

hope it does not go out of hand, I'm very confident their government is very capable of handling the situation. I was just wondering why so many protests and riots are going on everywhere around the world and for various reasons but I was not expecting the same thing would happen in the U.K.

I have not encountered that quite yet and I hope not too. I respect each culture the best ways I can and to my knowlege and I would like it to be recipicated. Thank you and God Bless America!