LetterL Riot reaction

WALTER J Allan (Letters, 16 August) rightly wants to see those responsible for last week's riots properly punished, but some of the sentences handed down over the past few days by English courts to those only marginally involved might have come from the works of Charles Dickens.

He was constantly appalled at the draconian jail sentences given to those from the Victorian underclass and frequently featured such examples in his novels.

We have, for example, seen a youth who stole a single bottle of water sentenced to six months' imprisonment, the same term given to a woman who stole a pack of chewing gum and an entire family facing eviction from their council home despite only one of their number being involved in minor theft.

Some of those who allowed themselves to get caught up in the "excitement" have no criminal records and did not indulge in fire-raising or violence yet find themselves facing a jail sentence. This is excessive.

Middle England appears to be in one of its periodic states of self-righteous vengeance and it is not a pretty sight, particularly as David Cameron's hitherto "nice guy" persona is starting to dissolve into something altogether more sinister and authoritarian than anything even the Thatcher era could muster.

Gavin Fleming

Grassmarket

Edinburgh

DAVID Cameron is very vocal about the situation at the bottom of society, and is lashing out indiscriminately, producing policies almost by the hour.

However much he tries to clean up the lawlessness and corruption there, he will never cure society's problems (if they can be cured, that is), unless he tackles the corruption and lawlessness from top to bottom throughout society. That includes dubious business practices, bankers lining their own pockets, and a press with no morals.

Why has all this come about? I suggest we need look no further than the Thatcher era, where the rich and powerful were encouraged in their exploitation of ordinary people.

Thanks to the famous "trickle down" effect, much lauded by the Conservatives, we are reaping what was sown then.

LW Thorne

Chatton Walk

Coatbridge

REPORTS of the outburst against the historian Dr David Starkey by the liberal/left mouthpieces Piers Morgan and Robert Peston just because Dr Starkey had the frankness to say that our disillusioned English, feral youth were imitating our disillusioned, Caribbean feral youth, indicates just how brainwashed our ruling class has become.

The broadcast evidence of the riots leaves us in no doubt that the mayhem was started by criminally inclined second and third generation Caribbean, black youths. This initiative was quickly exploited by legions of white, layabout wasters who abound in rotting, urban English society. However, what should alarm us most into immediate action is that a third wave of previously criminally uninvolved white young males and females joined in what to them was a liberating festivity.Of course, the moralists and the drivelling politicians are hypocritically foaming at the mouth but the truth is that it has been their ideology of liberalising everything that has led to the abandonment of civilised values.

Alastair Harper

Lathalmond

by Dunfermline