Damned Guardian.

Last night (7/8/11 - 8/8/11) there was more trouble in London with light rioting, looting and buildings being set on fire in; Enfeild, Ponders End, Chingford Mount, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, Islington, Oxford Circus and Brixton. Although a significant part of the trouble was poor people taking the opportunity to take things from shops they'd never be able to afford otherwise tensions and the number of disturbances increase significantly after an article appeared on the website of the Guardian newspaper at 21:30. This story was featured on the front page of today's newspaper, repeated by other newspapers, featured on the TV news channels and circulated on social networking sites.

The original violence in Tottenham on Saturday (6/8/11) stemmed from the shooting by police of a local man named Mark Duggan. The police's version of events is that as they surrounded Mr Duggan to arrest him he opened fire on them with one of his bullets becoming lodged in a police officers radio/bulletproof vest. They are also many different versions of what happened circulating with many getting more elaborate and dramatic as they get passed around. The most believable one though is that as the police surrounded Mr Duggan one of the officers accidentally fired their weapon hitting the other and causing another to shoot and kill Mr Duggan.

Citing an unnamed source the Guardian reported that the bullet that had been lodged in the police radio was a police issue bullet suggesting that the police were lying about what happened. The only problem is that they can't tell it was a police issue bullet. They can tell that it was a 9mm bullet which the police do use. However 9mm bullets are the standard NATO round for pistols and sub-machine guns and therefore probably the most widely used type of bullet in the world. They're also the type of bullet most easily available on the London black market because they can also be used in guns chambered to use 8mm and 10mm bullets. So unless you definitively know that Mark Duggan's gun didn't also use 9mm bullets or which gun this particular bullet was fired from this little bit of information is next to useless.

I'm not saying the police are telling the truth and I'm not saying that the police are lying. I'm just saying that on it's own this bit of information doesn't prove or disprove either account. So by publishing it the Guardian or more likely their police source were only trying to provoke more trouble.