[Shaun]

I think it's become difficult to put across exactly what "good parenting" is any more. With more and more traditional methods (particularly in the field of discipline) it's become apparent that parents are ultimately helpless in trying to instil discipline into children. I confess with no sense of bitterness or anger towards my mother, that she did hit me if I did something (very) wrong, and I do stand by the fact that it helps. I never had any bruises or psychological damage from it and I think penalising parents for it because of some extreme cases in the media is absurd.

However, I don't think the riots are down to poor parenting. And even so - the possibility of eviction doesn't just affect the parents, it affects siblings too (who are not "to blame"). For too long people have treated 'chavs' as some kind of subsociety with disdain and snobbery - and whilst I of course agree that rioting, vandalism and theft is by no means acceptable, it was an extreme reaction to gather attention for the amount of discrimination and injustice these people face every single day - by police, by the government and by the media. Time and time again you'll hear these people complain about their voices not being heard and this was the perfect opportunity to hear them.

It's difficult though because some will inevitably have gone along with the looting out of sheer opportunism and it's hard to distinguish these from those rioting out of frustration. And I am so bored of people arguing "oh you don't know real poverty like Ethiopia or Somalia do" - just because poverty isn't the most extreme poverty, does not mean it's not poverty.