No. People are, and people always have. Politicians, like police, are now so scared to make any major decisions because they're so afraid of upsetting groups from all around society that nothing ever really gets done.
It's the people who have been shaping decisions for good or bad for a long time now, and that to me absolves the government of responsibility in situations like this. They have responsibility to help bring it under control, but the cause of the riots wasn't of their doing.
It's absolutely no different from much of the root cause behind the credit crisis. The banks were borrowing more than they could afford, but so were the individuals.
There's one thing losing your job and finding yourself in financial problems, it's another thing living beyond your means, getting into massive debt and then complaining at the government that they should have done more to stop it being so easy to get into debt. There's an underlying stupidity to much of our society and a belief that the state should sort all of their problems out, rather than individuals shutting up, stopping being stupid and becoming accountable for their own actions.
Nah the laws are still in the law, but have been nullified by later law.
