Viddy well, my droogies, as England indulges in a bit of the old ultraviolence:

LONDON (AP) — Thousands of extra police officers on the streets kept a nervous London quiet Wednesday after three nights of rioting, but looting flared in Manchester and Birmingham, where a murder probe was opened when three men were killed after being hit by a car.

An eerie calm prevailed in the capital, where hundreds of shops were shuttered or boarded up as a precaution, but unrest spread across England on a fourth night of violence by brazen crowds of young people.

Scenes of ransacked stores, torched cars and blackened buildings have frightened and outraged Britons just a year before their country is to host next summer’s Olympic Games, bringing demands for a tougher response from law enforcement. Police across the country have made almost 1,200 arrests since the violence broke out over the weekend.

Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well.

A polite request for my British friends: If it’s quite alright, do you think that for the next week or two you could refrain from telling the rest of us we’re doing it all wrong? Especially you, Martin Bashir. That would be just fine.

By the way, if you try to protect yourself in the middle of a riot, you’re a “vigilante.” BBC News:

The Metropolitan Police has warned Londoners against forming “vigilante patrol groups”.

The caution comes after hundreds of residents in Southall, Enfield, Hackney and Eltham patrolled their areas.

On Tuesday night Sikh men in Southall, many with hockey sticks, stood guard outside a Sikh and a Hindu temple and a mosque following Monday’s disorder.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stephen Kavanagh said “vigilantism” could lead to violence and drain Met’s resources…

John Tully, vice chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, added that “individually” people have the right to self defence, “but I wouldn’t go as far as to say that we should form vigilante groups to patrol the streets”.

If you’re not going to let your own officers do their jobs, people have to protect themselves. How long are they supposed to wait for help while their neighborhoods are being smashed up? Are they just supposed to curl up into a ball and hope it all goes away? They don’t really have that luxury, not being politicians.