let's be rational here!

The media frenzy into the unrest continues. Question Time last night raised some interesting points, but often sensible debate was depressingly stifled by the 'string em up' brigade. People were coming out with emotive responses such as the rioters should not only have all benefits stopped, but also have all their private property confiscated and given out to victims of the riots! I'm no bleeding heart liberal, but if you confiscate all the posessions of a convicted looter, won't that encourage them to turn back to crime to get the material goods that our consumerist society is increasingly obsessed with? I'm no fan of David Davies (Tory MP & former shadow Home Secretary), but he did make a valid point in that laws rushed through in the heat of the moment (such as the new ones being suggested now) tend to be bad laws that we later regret in years to come.
  
My experiences with the media continue, and seem to be better than those of some of my colleagues. I understand that Cliff Stott (crowd psychology expert at Liverpool Uni) got a bit of a hard time on Radio 5 Live last night when he did a phone-in show on the riots. I turned down doing an interview on the James Whale show on LBC on Wednesday as I worried that his ranting/populist style would just become a shouting match and preclude any sensible debate. But I did agree to be on the Nick Ferrari breakfast show at 8.05 am today (12/8/2011), which went OK, although I did worry that my points were a little oblique to the angle that they seemed to want to take. Link to the show is on;
 http://www.lbc.co.uk/nick-ferr​ari-3466/?CMP=KNC&cmpid=DJs+&+​Shows1-PPC