Conservative columnist Dr Frank Shizenhausen with his take on the UK riots.

So what is really behind the UK riots? It is just too simplistic to blame poverty, social dislocation, misery, unemployment and a sense of hopelessness in the young. Because were those things even remotely to blame for the events of the last few days, the only solution would be tackle those things head-on in a complex way. It would probably require more spending and tax increases.

I’m a strong believer in KISS (keep it simple stupid), so why bother ourselves with such complexity? Simple solutions are always the best. And if we get it hopelessly wrong the generation behind us will just pick up the pieces. 

Thankfully for the well to do in the nicer suburbs of West London, most of the chaos is occurring in the grubbier side of town, and in those distant northern places. It’s not a real crisis.

We ought to dismiss outright the merest possibility that decades of neoliberal policies have gutted entire communities and led to an underclass of people who have never known steady work and for whom the police and other authorities are a hostile force, or that in praising the acquisition of wealth over all other things we have in fact sent a perverse message to the young that it’s okay to have cool stuff, and it doesn’t really matter how you get it.

Isn’t the answer likely to be a lot more simple? These people are all just bad. We’ll just lock them all up and the problem will disappear.

Yes, that ought to work a treat.

And this shit couldn’t happen here, right? Well, provided they don’t raise the price of a certain piece of sportswear.

And if an English referee lets some other rugby team knock out the ABs in the World Cup due to a forward pass, I will personally set fire my to my local shopping block. Again.