12th August 2011

We popped into Carlisle today.

Turning the corner we were surprised to see that Top Shop was windowless and was being boarded up.

Surely not we thought? Then we gave it a second chance.

Aah, its OK, Top Shop was being re-fitted.

So it's business as usual for Mr Green making even more money to salt away in his Tax Haven.

I guess that the weather was enough to stop rioting in Carlisle, it hasn't stopped raining all summer.

The Cumberland Show was rained out if not off. It rained on just about every parade that has been planned and it is still raining.

So that's a solution, the natural water canonry of the North of England designed to cool the ardour and leave Botchergate to the party goers after the clubs shut and give the shop fitters a chance to get Top Shop open in time for folk to buy their clubbing gear for another night out on the rain soaked Town.

Morality has been called into play.

Parent's, if there are any, simply don't know or care where their children are asserts Mr Cameron.

Society is morally corrupt.

Well that of course is true, with MP's, some of whose expenses claims were eye wateringly generous awarding themselves lap tops and colour TV's to the tune of thousands of pounds (ring any bells?).

Does anyone know whether the holidays that have been cut short so that MP's could return for yesterdays debate, mean that expenses were claimed for the flights and railway journeys and car journeys involved and the overnight accommodation and the return flights to the Algarve or wherever?

I somehow suspect that individual MP's didn't just say, 'Oh well its our choice to go back and undertake an exercise in moral posturing so we'll pay for our own flights'.

But the message was clear, we are living in a safe haven, strange choice of words for the Chancellor, I'll bet folk in Tottenham or Hackney or Croydon didn't think that they were in a safe haven a couple of nights ago?

Overall the debate in parliament was poor.

Mr Cameron's speech was unedifying. No acknowledgement of the responsibility for the social unrest and the general divisiveness of coalition policies which can only rest with the Government.

No plea to bear with us, no suggestion that, honestly, gratification has simply been deferred not abandoned, just the iteration of the same message, that the deficit must be reduced and all must bear a share of the pain unless they can afford to avoid it altogether of course.

The Chancellor's speech simply reiterated the same old cliches.

Mr Milliband raised the the issue of equality, having asked his parties MP's to read 'The Spirit Level' over the summer it might have been expected that there could have been some engagement with the equality argument, but it was left to Jack Straw to sound like a Labour Party member.

If Labour is going to form a credible opposition it really needs to launch a strong and well argued political and moral counter argument to the sheer unfairness of the con dem policies, the rise of a deeply unequal and increasingly divided society and to make it clear that these events could have been foreseen and indeed have been forecast. No one should have been surprised.

But surely nobody could think that we really are all in it together? It must be clear that the tax dodgers and the dodgy claims for MP's expenses mean that some of us are out of it altogether, whilst some of us are stuck with it.

Now the courts are working overtime right throughout the night to ensure that no-one involved in the troubles escapes without punishment.

All night sittings with Magistrates refusing bail and remanding folk into custody to await trial by Crown Court because they can't impose sufficiently severe punishments.

Incarcerating folk unnecessarily in an overcrowded prison system.

What was Mr Cameron's comment about his Press Secretary?

'Everyone deserves a second chance'.

Well I guess an ex editor of the News of the World does in Mr Cameron's view, but not the looters and rioters who will be pursued and punished with the full weight of the law.

Because according to Mr Cameron  “If you are old enough to commit these crimes you are old enough to face the punishment.”

'Everyone deserves a second chance'?