Utter tosh

The current level of lawlessness is caused by a break down of society in certain parts of this country.

Children are left to fend for themselves by parents who are too stoned / drunk / bone idle to raise their kids.

These kids have terrorised estates for years without a care, because the justice system doesn't have any effective way to handle them.

All that's been needed for the current riots to start is a single catalyst. What that catalyst was I don't know, but I'm damn sure it wasn't a PS3 game.

After the riots started other groups have joined in, it looks like the squatter group who attached the Tesco in Bristol have kicked off again, and the lad who was shot and killed in Croydon last night is probably a targeted attack that'll be blamed on the riots. More scores will be settled in a similar manner before this dies down...

fourm member

No argument from me. I'm sure lots of people had fathers like yours.

A computer game is just that - a game - and a normal person is quite capable of creating a separation between what he or she does in a virtual world and what goes on in real life.

I don't believe that computer games influence the way that people behave in real life, but I do think that some films and TV programmes may do so. A film depicting real-life people carrying out acts of considerable violence without any apparent physical ill-effects might lead impressionable people to think they can behave in the same way on the streets.

That said, I don't for a moment think that the recent nights of sheer vandalism and looting have been motivated by anything more complex than a hatred of authority and unmitigated greed.

"If violent games of mayhem and anarchy is one's only diet, then one's fantasy and reality merges."

Violence and mayhem and anarchy was the only diet for tens of thousands of young people, on both sides, between 1939 and 1945.

Most of them managed to separate their real lives from it when they got back home.

What ever the cause it does not excuse what these people are doing to our city and our country, they don't riot when one of the gangs kill a member of another gang or some inoccent person. I would suggest we have a National Guard that can be called out in emergencies like this, like they do in America and give them the authority to shoot looters and fire bugs. Some time soon we have got to stand up and do the right thing, for too long we have shied away from upsetting the young dissaffected people of this country and allowed them to riot freely. It is sad to see my country setting such a poor example, I thought we were civilised.