Phone Hacking's Back (again).

It must be time to change the subject.

After being recalled due to the riots and spending most of the week running around like headless chickens Britain's politicians have started to try to stamp their authority on the crisis. First up was the Prime Minister David Cameron (Conservative) who promised to tackle the gang culture that has gripped so many young people in Britain's tough inner cities and was totally, utterly and completely the cause of all the rioting. To drive home his point the Prime Minister spoke in front of an audience of young people in the notoriously tough inner-city area of south Oxfordshire(!)

Then the Labour run Hackney council held a "Tea Party" in the streets to peacefully bring together the community. This was clearly a dig at the American Tea Party movement. Next the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat) announced a consultation exercise "to allow the victims of the riots to join in a dialogue with the leaders of the three main political parties" before wandering off the stage looking lost and mumbling something about making offenders wear orange.

Bizarrely the party leader who came up with the strongest response was Labour's Ed Miliband who called for a full public inquiry into the riots. Normally I'm not a fan of public inquiries because they're usually just a way of making a lot of noise without getting anything done. However I did see the British TV schedules for Sunday (14/8/11) night.

On ITV1 at 21:00 there was a brand new episode of the UK version of Law & Order. I won't spoil it for you but the story centred on a gang related murder on a Tottenham housing estate. The murder weapon was a converted Bruni 8mm Olympic 6 starting pistol. At the same time on BBC2 there was a British film called Glorious '39. This thriller centred around a gang of British spies, aristocrats and church leaders killing people in order to keep Britain out of the second world war and help Nazi Germany conquer Europe. This was followed by another British film called FishTank which hopes to solve all the problems of Britain's inner-cities through the medium of dance. About six hours earlier firefighters in Croydon had been called to deal with a fire caused by a faulty Fish Tank. Channel 4 is also running a special season of programs dedicated to exploring British urban youth culture including street dance. You can join in the debate at a number of specially dedicated websites.

Of course all of these programs were made and scheduled at least a week before the rioting broke out. So I think there should be a public inquiry into the riots. That inquiry should focus mainly on the events that led to the police shooting dead Mark Duggan on Ferry Road in Tottenham on August 4th