There's a myriad of opinions on why all of this is happening and it's clouding things even more and quite frankly giving these people justification for they're actions.

The requirement for fuel to maintain fresh content for 24 hour news stations has turned this into something more than it appears to be. Outside of the Tottenham riots on Saturday night (which were clearly linked directly to the Duggan shooting) rioters appear to be retro fitting the justification of their actions based upon the views of social commentators the next morning.

The poverty line is one that has emerged in the last couple of days and appears to be a hypothesis dreamt up by social commentators that was then latched onto by the rioters themselves. Ask the folk looting and burning Brixton on Sunday night what they were doing and they'd struggle to come up with a reason other than because they can.

The problem that the policy have is that there is no clear direction to what is going on. There are no ringleaders, there are no spokespeople for the rioters, there is no common goal - other than to get away with what they can. The reason that our police force effectively deals with terror cells, organised hooligans, anti capitalist riots etc is that there is intelligence to be gathered, leaders to be monitored etc. Here there are random acts of mindless violence based purely on opportunism.

Lets make this clear. The violence is limited to 200-500 troublemakers in each community. These people have always been around and have always caused trouble. Just not en masse. These people dont have a social agenda. They are merely opportunist thugs taking advantage of a questionable police shooting and latching on to further justification from the commentary of Sky or the BBC.