Evicting rioters' families from their homes? There's a horrible logic to it | Owen Hatherley

Such collective punishment is part of a comprehensive housing program to push the poor cities profitable domestic

Think for a moment, the second most unequal country in Europe. His prime minister, who could not obtain an absolute majority, led by a government whose cabinet includes several millionaires, and embarked on a policy of economic ideology against almost all the international recommendations and professional. Just face the biggest strike for decades. Their legislators have recently been found to play their mortgages en masse. Their release was taken from listening to hundreds of citizens and politicians, with few barriers to the police.

Meanwhile, the police had killed a spectator in a protest, and have been criticized by violence and intimidation on the other. Then he shot a man falsely claimed he had fired first, mutinied and young people across the country, setting fire to police cars, police stations to attack the main streets looting and shopping centers. After that, the courts have worked through the night in Manchester, a mother of two, five months to accept a pair of shorts looted by a friend and a young man has six months to take a bottle of water. Finally, the families of these young people have begun to issue orders to leave their homes, a form of housing, which said the government has already committed to dismantle. The Prime Minister said it would help break the gangs.

In this way, in the UK about what the world may see us at the moment - like some post-Soviet Republic on the verge of a "revolution colored "may or Mediterranean old dictatorship rocked by civil unrest. Imagine fundraising and statements of solidarity it was Facebook.

• Rather worryingly, these events are inseparable in the minds of many people with pervasive corruption and a very public and violence of recent years, forgotten (or worse, sorry) after four days almost no connection, even incoherent, indiscriminate riots. However, even if we submit to the claim by the government and many other disturbances that last week was that the explosion of a strange and unexplained "pure crime" should be noted that offenders are still subject to rule of law. In a democratic country, if a youth is sentenced (to say nothing of suspicion) burglary of a store, it would be all-but-unprecedented in their families were left homeless as a punishment. But that's what happens with Wandsworth Council, on the advice of another ball, and the promise of many to follow his example.
• one hand, it is a sign that the failure of understanding the most basic social, at least helped trigger the riots. The idea seems to be that public housing could not be found elsewhere, which could enter the private dwelling. Like similar proposals to remove the housing allowance of criminals, which is based on the inability to imagine what poverty is like, one second to think what would happen to a family when you lose your income or your home . Since the disturbances were concentrated mainly in areas where extreme wealth and poverty side by side against each other - in Clapham for the Thames Valley, between Manchester and Bristol - showing ignorance of each other we have for literally our neighbors. On another level, is of dubious legality - a lease is terminated the Council, the tenant must have been convicted of a crime or near the premises, not always in such great mobility disturbances, and since many of the demonstrators were minors, their parents will be those who are expelled. There is a term for it - a collective punishment. It is illegal under international law.

It fits very carefully, however, a broader agenda of public housing, which is a remnant of emergency once-proud institution. The coalition was created in the lease of the Council and the freezing of already low levels of social housing, labor councils to engage in programs of massive demolition of large properties and their replacement by the developer was mixed private property and is affordable. Both have the same effect - the removal of the "undeserving" highly profitable sites in the city

is an intensification of the existing program. Knowing that many thousands of young people living on farms have rebelled, expulsion can release a little more clear that the waiting list for a little overloaded. This will cause even more balkanized our cities and uneven, and make the most deprived and angry. Brutal how are you suggestions may be, are almost incompatible. As long-planned riots themselves, not from scratch.