Regarding earlier posts about race - race has zero to do with this.
It's to do with 'hoodies', 'yobs', and 'chavs'. Those who have not lived in London/UK cannot possibly understand this mindset and subculture. Everywhere you see these punks in tracksuits. Sometimes you see them bullying other people, sometimes you see them walking around with rottweilers, sometimes you see them causing havoc on buses or on the London tube and robbing/intimidating people, etc. They ride around on BMX bikes looking for other postcode gangs to fight exactly as gangs ride around US cities with cars. The yell at adults passing by just to see if they will respond so they can beat them in a gang. This non-sense happens every day, and normal hardworking UK people are much more exposed to it than they are in N.America as the UK is much less of a car culture. In a car you can hide, walking on Ken High Street at night or taking the bus to work you just can't hide from it.
Why do you think sweatshirts with hoods as well as baseball caps have been banned for many years at many/most drinking establishments in the UK? It’s not anything new. Everyone knows these cowardly gangs of teens are a threat to people, and they always operate in gangs. This time the gangs turned into mobs. These riots and mayhem should not come as a surprise to anyone, especially the UK government, but yet again they were completely overwhelmed by the scale of the violence and destruction. You put hardened angry UK teenagers born into much sadder, or should I say born into much more violent estates than places like Tin Shui Wai here in HK, against a weak and broke government and a police force that clearly has no idea on how to police a protest, well the youth win every time. It’s all a real joke and all sad to see, especially a less than a year before the London Olympics.