London riots spread to other cities in England on Mon and Tues, rioters coordinating looting and attacks on police via mobile phones and Twitter

The late Mr Duggan, taxi driver and alleged drug dealer, whose shooting death by police sparked a protest that morphed into the London riots. "He is survived by his fiancée Semone Wilson with whom he had four children (one of whom was a stillborn) and by a child from another relationship."


See also August 8 Guardian report about handgun that Mark Duggan was carrying at the time he was shot. "Ballistics tests on weapon found with dead man in Tottenham indicate firearm had been changed to use live ammunition."

BBC Graphic

"It looks like a war zone - I have never seen anything like it in all my life” -- Christian Potts, Ealing resident

"But eyewitnesses reported as trouble spread across the city, there were often few police officers around when violence flared."

Both quotes from BBC report, below.

From the Guardian's latest report on the rioting -- August 9; no time stamp:

[...] In a bid to contain the trouble, Scotland Yard introduced special powers in four areas – Lambeth, Haringey, Enfield and Waltham Forest, allowing stop and search without reasonable suspicion. The section 60 powers were invoked at midnight on Sunday. One incident of stop and search in Hackney was reportedly the catalyst for violence which erupted in Mare Street shortly after 4pm, and saw local hooded youths battle police.

The Guardian understands senior officers are prepared to add more areas to the list. The special powers have been perceived as targeting certain ethnic groups, thus fuelling tensions.

Meanwhile, the maker of the BlackBerry smartphones, Research in Motion, said it would co-operate with a police investigation into claims its popular BlackBerry Messenger service played a key role in organising the London riots.

Brixton bore the brunt of Sunday's violence. The Lambeth council leader, Steve Reed, said: "We are asking the mayor's office for additional police for tonight and the next few nights."

Condemning the "copycat activity", he said: "Somebody described it as gangs of kids doing Supermarket Sweep. It was Curry's where they were after plasma screen TVs, and H&M and Foot Locker where it was clothes and trainers. It wasn't about social issues, it was an opportunity to go on the rob."
[...]

Glad you could cut short your vacation, Boris

From the Guardian's live blogging on the riots:

5.42pm BST, August 8: The Press Association news agency is reporting that Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, is to return to the capital tomorrow to deal with the growing crisis in the capital.

You might have gotten tennis elbow, anyhow, Mr Prime Minister, if you'd continued with your tennis lessons in Tuscany

"David Cameron broke off his holiday in Italy on Monday to fly home. He was due to chair a meeting of Cobra, the government's crisis committee, at 9 a.m. to work out a strategy to prevent more violence and consider why the riots broke out and spread so fast, taking the authorities by surprise." -- Quote from the following Reuters report via MSNBC, updated around 11:00 PM ET, August 8:

[...] Despite a heavy presence on some streets, police appeared unable to contain the violence as rioters who had initially coordinated through mobile phones and Twitter became increasingly confident.

Monday's looting began long before nightfall when workers were returning home, many of them forced to walk as buses to areas hit by rioting were canceled.
[...]

From BBC report last updated at 11:30 PM ET, August 8:

Rioting has spread across London on a third night of violence, with unrest flaring up in other English cities.

An extra 1,700 police officers were deployed in London, where shops were looted and buildings were set alight.

Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Bristol also experienced disturbance.

The prime minister is returning early from holiday to discuss the unrest, which first flared on Saturday after a peaceful protest in Tottenham over the fatal shooting of a man by police.
[...]
At least 334 people have been arrested and 69 charged following the riots across London over the past three days, Scotland Yard said.

Nine police forces from other parts of the country were assisting in providing support, as well as the City of London Police and British Transport Police.
[...]
Monday's violence started in Hackney after a man was stopped and searched by police but nothing was found.

The trouble spread outside London on Monday evening and early on Tuesday, with police in riot gear being deployed in Birmingham city centre after scores of youths rampaged through the shopping area, smashing windows and looting from shops.

West Midlands Police also confirmed that a police station in Holyhead Road in Handsworth, Birmingham, was on fire.

In Birmingham, police said officers had made 100 arrests.

There were reports of cars being damaged in Manchester and of up to 200 youths with masks roaming through Toxteth in Liverpool.

Merseyside police said they were dealing with a number of incidents in south Liverpool, including cars being set alight.

Police in Bristol said they were dealing with outbreaks of disorder involving about 150 people.

Meanwhile in London:

> Several fires broke out in Croydon, including one at a large sofa factory which spread to neighbouring buildings and tram lines

> In Hackney 200 riot officers with dogs and mounted police were located around Mare Street where police cars were damaged

> Looters raided a Debenhams store and a row of shops in Lavender Hill in Clapham, as well as shops in Stratford High Street

> A Sony warehouse in Solar Way, Enfield, a shopping centre in Woolwich New Road, a timber yard in Plashet Grove, East Ham and a building on Lavender Hill were all on fire

> More than 100 people looted a Tesco store in Bethnal Green, the Met said, and two officers were injured

> Cars were set on fire in Lewisham

> A bus and shop were set alight in Peckham

> Buses were diverted as the violence spread to Bromley High Street

> There were reports of looting of phone shops in Woolwich High Street, in south London, and a torched police car

> Shops and restaurants were damaged in Ealing, west London, and there was a fire in Haven Green park opposite Ealing Broadway Tube

> Football matches at Charlton and West Ham which were due to be played on Tuesday have been postponed at the request of the police

> At Clapham Junction looters stole masks from a fancy dress store to hide their identity

The fresh violence prompted Mr Godwin to call on parents to contact their children and urge the public to clear London's streets.

In the first outbreak of violence on Monday, groups of people began attacking the police in Hackney at about 16:20 BST, throwing rocks and a bin at officers.

Police cars were smashed by youths armed with wooden poles and metal bars.

Looters also smashed their way into shops, including a JD Sports store, before being dispersed by police.

Catherine Holmes, a resident in Hackney, said: "The common feeling in Hackney Central is that our community has been hurt and damaged by causeless violence."

[Report continues with additional eyewitness descriptions of looting/violence]

Met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stephen Kavanagh said there were "significant resources" on the streets, with a third more officers on duty than on Sunday.

He said: "When we have large numbers of criminals intent on that type of violence, we can only do that, get lots of officers there quickly and try to protect local businesses and local people."

But eyewitnesses reported as trouble spread across the city, there were often few police officers around when violence flared.

Just after midnight (Eastern Time) today the Beeb published a roundup/review of U.K. news headlines and photos about the rioters.

Britain's Snowmageddon: No dress rehearsal for the unexpected (REVISED)

UPDATE December 22, 2010 - 3:50 AM ET
I pulled the report Chances of Empty Shelves for Last-Minute Shoppers by Daniel Goode at Financial Feed when I discovered he'd quoted extensively from a Guardian report without crediting the source. I've replaced Goode's report with the Guardian one.
------

Memo to Cameron's government: Assume there is not going to be a letup in the freezing weather and the snow and ice over the next week. So worry less about humiliation on the world stage and about Dubai stealing Heathrow's air passenger traffic, and worry more about what you're going to face, if riots break out over food shortages.

Readers outside the U.K. need to realize that supply shortages there didn't start a couple days ago; the bad weather all this month in northern Europe is having a snowballing effect, if you'll pardon the expression, on disruptions in the supply chain. With more snow and sub-freezing weather in the forecast there's going to be a tipping point where serious shortages of critical supplies emerge for the U.K.

So it's past time for Cameron's government to call up the military and ask every country in Europe with good snow moving equipment to airlift in as many snowplows AND FOOD CONTAINERS as they can. And ask Russia for help. Ask everyone for help.

Below are quotes from a report from the (U.K.) Guardian that confronts the reality of what's happening now in the U.K. regarding shortages. I repeat, "now." Not two days from now.

For readers who don't know what Tesco sells -- it's a global grocery and general merchandising retailer headquartered in the U.K. It's the fourth largest retailer in the world. (Emphasis in the report mine):

Weather chaos: last-minute shoppers may face empty shelves
by Tom Bawden
Guardian, U.K.
Sunday 19 December 2010 18.58 GMT

Fears mount over deliveries as snow closes stores and shoppers shun out-of-town malls in favour of high street

Fears are mounting that Britain's shoppers could find themselves staring at empty shelves if the treacherous weather continues in the run-up to Christmas.

As blocked roads, freezing temperatures and snow hit what is traditionally the busiest shopping weekend of the year, many customers stayed away – especially from shops in less accessible out-of-town centres – and deliveries of stock to the retailers ran into difficulties.
[...]
Apart from the difficulty of getting customers to out-of-town shopping centres, many of which can only be accessed by roads, there is also is an increasing danger that shops may no longer have a full range of stock.

Although there have been no reported cases of shops running out of anything yet, retail analysts said such a scenario was a very real possibility.

Howard Archer, chief UK economist at IHS Global Insight, said: "If this weather persists it is going to be very disruptive to deliveries to supermarkets. Supply chains have been massively hit by the snow and ice this month, with many products being stuck at container ports for an extended period.

"Deliveries are going to be hit by this weekend's weather and a lot is going to depend on the weather in the coming week, which isn't looking good at the moment," he said.

Richard Perks, the director of retail research at the Verdict consultancy, pointed out that Britain's retail distribution system is generally very efficient, but he said that "fresh food stores could suffer" from the weather conditions.

Tesco and Marks & Spencer insisted there were no problems with the delivery of stock to their stores and said they did not anticipate running out of any products in the run-up to Christmas.

John Lewis's retail director, Andrew Murphy, conceded that there had been delays in some areas to deliveries that had been due by Saturday night, but he was confident those supplies would have reached their destination by last night or this morning.

"Obviously the deliveries of some items will be compromised in some areas, but in terms of overall stock levels I'm confident we will be back up to where we would have been by tomorrow morning," he said.

He added, though, that if the retailer was presented with extreme weather conditions in the next few days he could not rule out stock shortages in some areas.
[...]

Got all that? Now go back and read the article on Britian's food security problems that I linked to earlier today and which is titled, The high cost we pay for cheap food.

And if you're reading this outside the U.K. and chortling at the British in another jam -- uh, how's your country's food security situation in an emergency?

The message sent to the human race this year by one natural calamity after another has been "Wake up, fools."

Cameron and Clegg need to recall that the presidencies of Bush and Obama never recovered from slow-footed responses to the Katrina hurricane and the Gulf oil spill crisis. They'd better ask themselves, 'What would Winston Churchill do?' in response to the looming food shortages in Britain, then do it.

There is no dress rehearsal for the unexpected. It's crunch time for Cameron's government: time to pull out all the stops in response to the weather crisis.

And forget about setting off a panic by calling up the military to make food deliveries. The people outside government aren't stupid; they know there's a mega-crisis building. Political opportunists and wet blankets will criticize the government if with hindsight it seems it overreacted by calling up the military. But every sensible person in the U.K. will be greatly relieved to see that the government was thinking ahead by a few days and doing everything within its power to avert a serious shortage of critical supplies.

There's got to be a way that food containers backed up outside the country can be brought in via military transport and delivered to areas that are facing shortages within the next 48 hours. Find the way and find it now.