Horror viewing as London riots erupted

As a life long supporter of Tottenham Hotspur football club I have happily walked up and down the Tottenham High road many, many times.

Watching events unfold in North London last week on television from the safety of my Highland home was a particularly sad sight.

I watched in horror as its iconic buildings burnt to the ground and its shops and pubs were looted.

I moved to the Highlands from Peckham in South London, yet another deprived area of our capital city caught up in last weeks events.

A quick call to our friends still living there confirmed their safety but didn’t stop the sorrow of seeing Peckham High Street ablaze too.

Long before the smoke had cleared politicians began to fill our screens expressing their horror or in the case of Alex Salmond completely misjudging the mood of the nation by trying to make a cheap Nationalist point ensuring the riots should be referred to as ‘English’ Riots not UK riots in case foreign tourists should mistake Tottenham for Edinburgh.

It was good to see that the Northern Constabulary took a more sensible view and sent Scottish coppers down south to help their neighbours.

The First Minister crowing that ‘We wouldn’t allow such things to happen in Scotland’ was hardly helpful though lets hope it’s not words he will live to regret.

I don’t suppose anyone in England was aware of Salmond’s silly statement anyway but they were aware of the reaction of the Tory Prime Minister who spent the first few days of the riots sunning himself in Tuscany and posing with a young waitress who he had failed to tip.

Why he didn’t catch the first flight home as soon as the scale of the rioting was evident shows just how out of touch with ordinary folk he is.

When the PM did eventually make it back to Downing Street he tired to claim credit for the riots ending and in doing so infuriated the Met Police Commissioner.

David Cameron’s next instinct was to come up with a PR gimmick to show he was in charge. That’s the problem with Cameron as a former PR man he very rarely has anything sensible to suggest.

Having come up with ‘Hug a Hoodie’ when he wanted to change the Tory image form the nasty party he now needed to change course.

Inevitably we had talk of tear gas, baton rounds and water cannon from the Tory leader even though the police said they didn’t want to use them.

Cameron wanted Robo Cop too but in inviting a US chief officer over to give his advice he not only completely failed to understand the problems facing urban Britain he upset our police even more.

No wonder then that the polls show Cameron has come out of the crisis badly though probably not as badly as the Liberal leader Nick Clegg who got shouted off the streets by local people fed up with the Liberals propping up a Tory government.

When Parliament was recalled the one thing we could be sure of was that all the politicians would agree with each other on how terrible the riots were even though we all know that they completely disagree on the reasons and the solutions. Only now are we seeing a slightly more sensible debate taking place.

When all the dust has settled and the Tories have notched up yet another U turn by scrapping plans to cut police numbers we will still be facing all the problems of the economic downturn. How long though before Liberals and our own MP Danny Alexander realise the error of their ways and ditch the Tories for good?

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