And Are The Children So Very Different From The Adults?

A deep distrust of the police and a lack of youth opportunities fuelled the involvement of hundreds of “disempowered” children in last year’s riots across England, a report has found. Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, said young people were not primarily motivated by “far-right, anti-immigration or racist views” or by online misinformation, contrary to what she called the “prevailing narrative”.

She concentrated on the children because it's her job, but really, if she'd spoken to most of the adults involved in Starmer’s so-called ‘far right riots’, would the results have been any different? 

Instead, she said, many were driven by a hatred of police and saw the riots as a chance to retaliate. Others were “driven by curiosity or the thrill of the moment”.

Probably not. Despite the pontificating by the thin-skinned weirdo in No 10, hardly any of the protesters were 'far right', most of them weren't political at all. 

De Souza told the Guardian she was concerned about the “dangerous” treatment of children who received “unusually severe” punishments as part of the robust crackdown on rioters ordered by Keir Starmer last summer.

Again, she’s concerned about the children because it's her role, but surely the adults received equally harsh and unusually severe punishment too?

“I thought I would hear far more about [far-right influencers like] Andrew Tate. That’s not what I heard at all,” she said. “There was quite a group of the children who were there because they hated the police and they were clear about that.”

No need to wonder why, either. But it doesn't seem to have been the usual disaffected youth, not entirely:

These children – who included “star pupils”, army cadets and trainee electricians – saw the riots as “an opportunity to retaliate against the police” after previous bad experiences with officers and general community distrust, she said. One of the children charged said they joined a riot after hearing that the police would be there. They said: “We went down to see what it was. There’s a tradition in [my city] of people versus police. We had an opportunity.”

One wonders why any city in England would have a tradition of being against the police…