as Vorderman (at our expence)suggests could be better spent making sure that each child can add, subtract, multiply and divide, by the age of eleven, and know enough to run a bank account and mortgage (compound interest) by the time they leave school. We have plenty buildings empty in the evenings so it is time many were allowed to leave school at sixteen, with a job, do two or three nights a week at night-school and have a bit on money in their pocket for the weekend. The thing is Zoe, you don't know. Speaking to academics from business schools and quoting some tweets is all right but surely it's time to turn off the TV and its rolling news coverage? A good journalist needs to get out on to the streets, to interview hundreds of people from looting kids to shopkeepers, police officers to locals. Now that's where you'd get something to write about. It is an article that can almost be applied to the other looting that has gone on unabated since 1979, with the simple psychology and strategy that read "the proles don't know, or deserve, any better". I am touched to think the advertisers and marketeers have so successfully enabled the "mindless" to remember brand names; it must make them feel so richly clever, and successful, to have so many loyal followers. This the smartest and most keenly observed comment I've read on events so far. It's refreshing to be able to read some properly balanced