I'll be quick, as I'm off to work soon. The working class is being punished for the riots, in no uncertain terms:
Anderson Fernandes, 22, was warned by a judge at Manchester Magistrates' Court he may face jail for stealing two scoops of ice cream. He will be sentenced next week after admitting burglary.
Nicolas Robinson, 23, of Borough, south-east London, was jailed for six months for burglary. He took a £3.50 case of water from Lidl supermarket
Mother-of-two Ursula Nevin, from Manchester, was jailed for five months for receiving a pair of shorts given to her after they had been looted from a city centre store.
In addition, there were these sentences:
The state clampdown against working class youth in Britain continues unabated. On Tuesday, crown court judges in England handed down long jail sentences to two young men for posting comments on Facebook.
Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, were not involved in any disturbances. But at Chester Crown Court they were sentenced to four years imprisonment for “intentionally encouraging another to assist the commission of an indictable offence under sections 44 and 46 of the Serious Crime Act 2007”.
Blackshaw was arrested after he set up a Facebook “event” called “Smash Down in Northwich Town”. The court was told that Blackshaw’s event requested that people meet at a local McDonald’s restaurant for the purpose of rioting.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) claimed that notice of the event sparked a wave of panic in Northwich, even though there was no evidence for this assertion and there were no disturbances in the town.
It emerged that police were following Facebook pages when they saw Blackshaw’s posting and went to the restaurant, where he was arrested.
Sutcliffe-Keenan created a Facebook page titled “The Warrington Riots” on August 9. It was claimed that this page also “caused a very real panic”, although again no disturbances resulted from the posting. Sutcliffe-Keenan himself removed the page within 24 hours.
It would be good if someone would take on posting a more comprehensive diary on justice in the UK after the riots, and the further repression of the working class, with additional sources.