Whingeing about the dire state of the economy with a good friend, who is the chairman of a major UK accountancy group, he told me of a recent dinner he and his wife had attended somewhere in the West Country. The property developer sat next to his wife told her, in all seriousness, that he had just bought an estate in the Welsh Marches, to which he was imminently retiring, because he expected social breakdown and riots on the streets of London by Christmas. . . and didn’t think the Metropolitan Police were up to stopping them.
Perhaps that explains what Devon & Cornwall Constabulary were doing in Waitrose car park in Okehampton in the middle of last week, kitted out in full riot gear, and role playing in and among the public. Nonetheless, if you are going to practice how to control food rioting, Waitrose seems an unlikely venue.
