Neo Conservative= Facist, simples

There is already a law on the books allow police to require faces to be uncovered.

Hopefully it will mean the end of liberalism, a political view that seeks to explain & understand disgraceful behaviour whilst doing nothing constructive to address it.

It's time we returned to the values we know worked, and ignore the blandishments of the outraged liberal left whose main hatred is of anyone who dares to dissagree with them.

Bring back the judgmental attitudes such as if you have a child that you cannot afford to support, you have poor moral standards, bring back the cane in schools and the birch for adults, teach that there are boundaries and crossing them has unpleasant consequences. House criminals & their families in poorer grade housing and rid what could be nicer social housing estates of problem families and criminal elements.

Above all ignore the protestations and look to recent history to find just how bad society has become as a result of listening to the lunatic left, who largely don't live in the areas or amongst the people they poltificate to the rest of us about.

I should have thought the events of the last few days blew liberalism out of the water - in both its social (bourgeois soft-leftism) and its economic (western capitalism) guises. Both depend on an (in the long term) unsustainable, consumerist individualism, and this has, to a greater or lesser extent, been embraced by both the main parties.

At root is the rejection of due authority and the downplaying of those traits (values?) associated with it, such as received tradition, obedience, conformity and self-denial, in favour of innovation, assertiveness, individualism and self-expression. Now we are regularly reminded of the negative side of the first four - 20th century history, repression, etc. The negative aspects of the latter four are rarely given an airing. They may move society forward, but the first lot hold it together. Perhaps it's time for a little more balance?

People looted because they thought they could get away with it. Sadly, this is human nature when unconstrained by any internalized authority. More were encouraged to join in because, in the early stages, they saw that nothing was being done to stop it. Many of those involved were indeed those we might (like the poor maligned Victorians you mention) have expected, but quite a lot were not.

I'm not sure "forgiveness" has anything to do with this - unless you are of the ultra-liberal school who think that "forgiveness" means that actions shall have no consequences at all.

it is the failure of governments left and right that have brought us to where we are , the reasons are numerous and many are to blame - but whist we have left & right political numpties arguing and bickering the solution will be as far away as ever ?

The sad thing is that our civilisation is based on exploitation, greed and dishonesty. These are the foundations of our societies, and until we face up to this reality and challenge assumptions and preconditioned notions of our purpose on this planet we will never change anything. History tells us this, riots are not new and in the past they have been seen as necessary for change. We celebrate the ethos of the protestors killed at Peterloo in Manchester and condemn the state for sending the troops in to quell the disorder. We have existing laws that are effective when applied, by changing our laws and rights and removing liberties for the sake of a myth of security is a dangerous shift towards totalitarianism.

No, I think you need breast feeding males to represent the soft underbelly of society. Otherwise to much of black and white politics can ruin a country. Better to circle the maelstrom of lettuce wearing and their vacuum led ideas and pick out the good from the bad. Sadly today society is to big for this land and inevitable flare ups will happen, a sort of shuffling to wake people up from a foggy haze we live in.

Paul - what is your point? I read your entire piece and didn't get your point? Are you trying, without really wanting to come right out and say it, that all this hysterical nonsense about kicking people out of their homes and denying them benefits when they have nothing already, is a really bad thing?

Are you saying that this myth the Tories and the rest of the mainstream press are putting out - that everybody who happened to be in the city centre and under 50 years old that day was a rioter, and therefore are motivated by some kind of pure evil and nothing else - is just a load of old b*llox, and that this was really about the fact that the gap between the haves and have nots is so massive now that the rage has finally boiled over?

If this is what you are getting at, for god sake have some professional integrity and just say it man!! It is no good pussy footing about the truth.

The fact is, riots do not take place among the rich en masse. Are we suggesting then the very rich are somehow morally better people? Or could it be that poor people always eventually riot because, as one famous commenter said "riot is the final voice of the oppressed" ?

The non thinking, knee jerk right is desperately trying to pass the buck here. Cameran wouldnt cut short his incredibly expensive tax payer funded holiday to deal with this, nor would most of his colleagues. At the end of the day, very few people are simply greedy or 'evil'. Poor people are fed up, simple.

Personally I think the state / law should be liberal and that communities should be morally strong enough to largely self police, unfortunately, this country is dominated by the 'nothing to do with me' brigade and those who should provide community leadership do nothing of the sort but are in fact morally corrupt, greedy self-obsessed and self serving.
I wish that US charity that was over here paying people like drug addicts to be sterilised would come back and extend their work to criminals and other no-hopers of no use to our gene pool, who would society's snobs and smuggos have to look down on then though?!!

Do it and receive no punishment (community service orders, asbos etc etc) and they will do it again. Bring back the birch - they will not like it.
I got belted at school (in the 1940s) and it did me no harm - probably the opposite.
Today they do what they like because they no they can get away with it.

In a distinct change for this newspaper, this is a well written, well thought-out article. Hopefully the rioting and looting of the last few weeks has made this country wake up to the fact that hand-wringing liberalism hasn't worked for the last 30 years, and that a tougher line against criminality is needed.
However, the one thing missing from this debate is the fairer treatment of people in this country, and bringing those who rake billions off the economy and kill the "little man" should be made to pay their fair share.

Apart from the cause of all evils what is liberalism? Does anyone know?

On the front page of The People yesterday there was a picture of an armed man in riot gear pointing a gun at a man on the ground. It was labelled 3.30pm Manchester. I take it 'enough is enough' means that is what people want on the street, and some here would have liked the trigger pulled. Certainly it was the view of the newsagent.

I don't see why we need to become a less liberal society beocause of these riots.

We could become a more liberal one. For example, instead of giving benefits to teenage unmarried mums to raise their kids we could free these women from the benefit system, enabling them to freely pursue a job so they can raise their kids using their own money, not anyone else's.

That would be one sure way of reducing the number of children brought up in a house without a father, one of the alleged causes of the riots.

We would do well to study history. I have always marvelled we can still read ancient history even though the culture that created it has lain in ruins for 2,000 years. Much was handed down orally for 1,000s of years.All the myths legends nursery rhymes we should all know.
Engels said the liberals represented the industrialists who exploited the workers,and the conservatives the landed gentry who he claimed meanly supported the workers in their struggles against the liberals.
What we call liberals were known as the do-gooders and despised by all correct thinking citzens.
Let us put it like this. Consevatives don't have any problems they can't sort out for themselves. I don't have any problems because I sorted it all out for myself,and made up my own rules. the only people who have problems are those who slavishly follow this left wing twaddle either because they were brought up to hate. [Prescot exemplified this on question time. He seemed moderate and sensible until someone mentioned something he disagreed with. His nostril flared and he was off on the same outdated rant that has got the labour party in trouble for the whole of its existence.]
Or because they have a vested interest in repeating twaddle.
Life is far too complicated to get bogged down in mindless rhetoric.
People need to understand their history.
Plato invented ideas or concepts we have been arguing ever since whether god created us,or we him whether socialism fascism are concepts that have powers outside our conscious or something someone cobbled together.Aristotle invented logic base on deductive reasoning, and Roger Bacon an English priest working in Paris invented inductive reasoning for which he was imprisoned.
Nevertheless The English developed his theory to produce the scientific method based on experiment. The English became empirical in contrast to others who were bound by the limits of rationalism, or just chaotic,and superstitious.
The modern 'liberalism' is just plain mumbo jumbo.
The industrial revolution and britain's rise as a world power were based on pragmatism and empiticalism. When the liberals,or do gooders undermined this in the 60s they sowed the seeds of the present chaos.
We used to think they were destroying society deliberately to further the cause of world communism. Once we realised in the 80s they genuinely thought they had been working for the common good. History became farce.

Will the law on masks face coverings etc apply to the Burqa too perhaps?

we should be looking into the cause of anger, and why people riot and loot.
remember someone saying 'there is no such thing as society, just individuals' well this is what happens, when so many people feel they have no share of the 'good' life, they then go out and grab a piece of it.
stop the kneejerk reactions, think of the causes, then lets start creating a society that includes as many of the people as possible, not only the top 1% who enjoy all the best in life and completely ignore the rest!

Do the riots mark the death of liberalism?
A question to which the answer is no!
Its just that at the moment the social democrats are staying quiet, but they will start to regain their voice as time passes by.You can see the start of this with Ed Milibands wibbly wobbly speech today.
Normal service will soon be resumed

I agree for once, a well written report. I am middle class - I have a good job. But I have lived in some of the most deprived areas of manchester and dare I say it I am a liberal
but I know that we have let things go to far one way. I have known this for a long time simply because I have lived (and still do) in areas where gangs / yobs / feral youths rule the neihgbourhoods and streets. Where people are to scared to open there front dood at night.

So whatever I am I know that that common sense dictates that we cannot let things continue as they are. So my simple thiking is that we need to start making things swing back the other way and put adults and the rule of law back in charge.

As far as I'm concerned this was a reality check for alot of people.

I have mentioned this before so at the cost of sounding like a broken record...

There are neighbourhoods and estates where yobs / gangs / feral youths rule the streets. The adults in these places do not bother to call the police anymore for the simple reason the police do not come.

The adults in these places have been living with this nightmare of yobs / thugs / gangs for decades - but untill now the upper and middle classes have been none the wiser that these places exist. Well now you do.

It goes without saying that we need to tackle the root causes of these issues.
We ned to tackle an education system that has let down a generation or two of kids.
We need to tackle the poverty thet plagues these estates and find jobs for the kids as they leave school.
We need to make sure that kids have a proper upbringing in the home with there parents and have things to do outside of school , they need activities.

But what about right now.

Right now we need to to get things in order and the only way to do that is to come down hard on thess yobs / thugs / feral youths / gangs..

We need the police and social services to get tough.
We nee the police to tackle the kids and teenagers who can be saved and hand them over to social services to work with there families and schools.
But we also need the police to crack down hard on the ones that cannot be saved, the ones to old to be dealt with in a civilised way.

We first need to take back control and put Adults and the law back in charge.

To this end the first thing we need is local policing. The centralises police foces was a massive mistake. We need local police houses / boxes / units (whatever you want to call them on out corneres in our neighbourhoods where they used to be.

then we can start to tackle these issues - we need a de-centralised police force, working with the communities and social services and the schools- and right now we need a police 'force' not a police service.

Could we at least try liberalism first?
After suffering what must be one of the most illiberal governments the UK has ever known under nu-Labour it might be worth a go.

With 3000+ new laws, cctv on every street, untold databases and surveilence to track every citizen, powers for councils to launch covert operations agaisnt their own electors, the highest prison population ever, unmanned spy planes taking to the skys, the power to demand access to any electronic documents citizens own, people dragged through the courts for writing poetry and one women, who after campaigning for a law to protect people from violent stalkers (after 17 years of harrasement) speaking out about the ""perversion of its intentions" when it was actually used to prosecute someone holding a placard reading "George W Bush? Oh dear!" and police arrest a man for taking a picture of a fish and chip shop calling society Liberal must surely be an achievement Winston Smith's masters would have been proud of.