It's a shame, but yes we must watch out for this - the politics of emotion are always quickly abused by modern western governments to snatch powers away from the individual, and to impinge on their liberties and privacy.

There is a massive majority of people who are rightly keen to see justice done, but knee-jerk legislation and further ramping up of the surveillance state are what will probably huge dangers.

It's the same old process. Give a government a problem, and they will grant themselves some heinous new power over law abiding people. You can vote for people who say they will give those powers back, but whatever they say, they never really will.

How rude and insulting. The voters must be stupid, right?

No. The voters *experienced* the riots and are livid that members of their own communities would betray their own in such a nihilistic orgy of crime costing lives, injuries, homes, at least hundreds of jobs (of people/families in their own communities, not of the banks or politicians) and costing millions upon millions of pounds when the country is facing austerity measures, for entertainment and to put a flat screen tv and an xbox in their front room.

"Told they should be angry". Perhaps if you were injured, or your workplace* and/or home** was burned down, or your community had lots of people hurt, homeless and jobless and was looking down the barrel of rebuilding the town when it was facing cuts in every public service, you might think it warranted a serious deterrent for or at least removal of rioters, for however long is appropriate under the law.

Even if they aren't "mindless zombies controlled by the press".

Perhaps if it was YOU looking at your wrecked community or even life, you might think a little pause for thought was warranted before people labelled you malleable and stupid.

*Lots of places can't afford good insurance now btw
**Nobody can afford home insurance in the kind of deprived areas where homes were burnt down.

This wasn't "people hitting the streets". I am the first person to support direct action and protest, but you really need to go and examine what has gone on before you exhort this - it sounds like these people had a political purpose.

Go, examine the offenses and what happened. I promise you, it was not politicians or political institutions being protested against or smashed, it was not banks, it was not the government, hell it mostly wasn't even the police.

I can tell you how it was, I saw it. It was mostly just shopping with violence instead of cash, lots of poor/working people in their OWN COMMUNITIES getting hurt in a weird sort of hedonistic holiday for violent bastards, where the weak were being feasted upon all over the place.

The geeks on this site who like to rail against global capitalism and so on, and who support political protest/direct action are the sort of people who were getting robbed, assaulted and burned out of their homes in a heartbeat in that environment. Prey of a mob of people who have realised they can get away with whatever the hell they like. No politics necessary.

"civil unrest against a perceived corrupt political system"

Nobody involved cared about that. Seriously - you had to be there, it really was people of various walks of life just grabbing everything out of shops then setting fire to them (then attacking firemen when they tried to rescue the families in the flats above), kicking people half to death, etc. - just going nutz to get stuff and get money and get away with settling scores against specific people or whatever community they disliked.

People being violently and/or sexually assaulted, robbed or even killed in the street. Not bankers, not politicians. Their own.

Not one bank or political institution was touched, only places with Cool Stuff in, and the cars/houses/persons of the working and/or poor people in their own communities.

"a chaotic mess of angry people lashing out"

A chaotic mess of rapturously smiling laughing people taking what they wanted and doing violence to people. Families having their homes torched and their lives endangered, swathes of jobs being ended by businesses being torched when nobody can afford insurance these days.

Killings of people who tried to help the victims, attacks against ambulances trying to treat the victims, attacks against firemen trying to put out fires.

Seriously, I don't know how to explain this convincingly enough without sounding emotive - this is in the place I've grown up in. Don't let people get away with saying it was a political demonstration - I mean you had to be there but seriously it REALLY. WASN'T., I would say what we all saw and endured had no protest component to it whatsoever past about 9pm on the first night - it was just open season for the cannibalistic predators of London to hurt/take from their own.

I'm afraid, having done some work for the police, I can attest to the fact that common car thieves and burglars will often know when the shift changes are at their local police stations (because that's when the police are mostly off the street for 20 minutes), where the police are hanging around this last week or two, where there are known undercover cops, etc. Dealers and other people on the next rung up are more sophisticated again and will find ways to intercept communications and swap lookout information with their "colleagues" and "employees", and further up still you'd be amazed.

This is in a (relatively) low-crime part of the world, not some teeming American metropolis. Don't underestimate the cunning and observational capacity of even quite stupid people - and when it's on a larger scale, well people who put planning and organisation into their money-making are the ones that stay successful at it.

I think there has to be a clear distinction between personal life and professional interaction.

You have a right to privacy when you're going about your personal business, but when you're employed to do someone else's business, they can realistically be expected to control and/or monitor how you do that business itself.

If your employer, wishes to monitor your performance so they can assess it, or install/check CCTV to catch a particular criminal when you know criminal offences are being committed, we don't usually have a problem with it. They obviously have no right to film you changing or using the lavatory, but they can and will monitor your interactions with the public and the company assets if needed.

It's hard to see a logical reason for denying the public the same.

I've never understood the second language "response" to correction.

In languages other than my native one, I'm grateful for correction, because it might help me to be correct more often. I usually respond with "thank you".

Careful. That's a double-edged sword you're brandishing there.

The idiom is "Whooooosh!" ;)

"""Good luck trying to talk your way out of paying part of your check if the waiter made a rude comment or spilled your drink when the tip is built-in."""

I'm not sure either case makes much sense to me, maybe for cultural reasons.

1. In the first case, I would simply not tip them at all - the correct response is to complain and refuse to pay to have your evening ruined, until at the very least you get a revised bill, if that happens a lot, the waiter will be dismissed.

If you *do* feel like paying in polite silence because you don't want to make a fuss, you have simply covered overheads, not tipped.

2. If a waiter spilled my drink, I would expect another drink - I don't see why an accident would affect how much I tipped them, if they were polite and apologetic and corrected it.

I can't honestly *conceive* of wanting to punish a waiter for a genuine accident - that just seems selfish and spoiled.