Britain: Her Majesty’s Government surrenders to the rioters

**Posted by Phineas

Just unbelievable fecklessness:

The Home Secretary [Theresa May] appeared to rule out sending water cannon or the Army onto the streets of the capital, despite a third night of violence.

Speaking on Sky News, she said that police intelligence and the support of local communities would help quell the disturbances.

“The way we police in Britain is not through use of water cannon,” she said. “The way we police in Britain is through consent of communities.”

WTF??

Since when do the police need “consent” to enforce the law? And what about citizens whose properties are being burned to the ground, or the workers who no longer have jobs to go to because their workplaces are in ashes? What about law-abiding Britons too frightened to go out into their own neighborhoods to buy food?

Are they not part of the community, Madame Home Secretary? Perhaps you have their “consent” to defend their lives and livelihoods without having to ask “Mother, may I?”

I’m probably just overreacting because I’m one of those “Cowboy Americans” who doesn’t understand the subtleties and nuances of “sophisticated” Euro-policing. I should have guessed that Secretary May had the perfect solution:

As those charged with offences appear in court today, “people will start to see the consequences of their actions”, Mrs May added.

“There are many who are easily identified through CCTV cameras.”

She also told BBC Breakfast that “parents need to be asking themselves where were their children, what were their children doing in the evening.”

She added: “There are longer-term questions about when we see parents letting their children as young as that sort of age be out on the streets in this way.”

So, there you go. The perfect nanny-state answer to an uprising by vandals: passively watching and then threatening to tell their mothers. Excuse me while I go hurl.

And you can bet that the fascists of the British National Party are rubbing their hands with glee, knowing that this nerveless, cringing, emasculated, pathetic excuse of a government whose only response is a scolding will just drive more and more people their way out of desperation.

Alfred the Great, Edward I, Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, Canning, Disraeli, Churchill… They’re all spinning in their graves now.

via Bryan Preston

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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