From a column by Tory Charles Moore on the riots and the police:
The heroes of recent days for many (including, I must admit, me) are the Turkish shopkeepers patrolling Green Lanes, Hackney, with baseball bats to protect their businesses (and being threatened with arrest for doing so). If the police are so hemmed in that they have to act like a sluggish nationalised industry, private enterprise will step into the breach.
Of course, the police are a sluggish nationalized industry, attacking the competition but otherwise concentrating on how to work less for more money. Right now, they zoom up and down the street in their armored cars, sirens screaming, avoiding dangerous situation but busting the peaceful. Private enterprise is the only solution.
6:38 pm on August 9, 2011
