Harrying

Winter rioting is unusual, but if you could live on two thirds of the minimum wage, then that would be the minimum wage. And if Greater Manchester is going to get only £22 million, then where is the other £38 million going to go? It was offered, so clearly it exists. In fact, a sovereign state with its own free floating, fiat currency has as much of that currency as it chooses to issue to itself. It then has the fiscal and monetary means to control any inflationary effect.

The only point of Tier Two is as a holding centre for Tier Three. And unless it wanted to lose the Red Wall and thus its majority, then the Government could not now allow itself anything more than two thirds anywhere south of Manchester. For example, in London, which is already in Tier Two. So, yes. Even in the winter, get ready for the riots.

This particular winter is going to resemble that of 1069-70, perhaps even including the removal and replacement of the Northern magnates. No MP or local council has broken ranks in Greater Manchester, where the Conservatives hold one third of the parliamentary seats. In a few days' time, no MP or local council is going to break ranks here in the North East, either. Again, though, one third of our MPs are Conservatives. Very slightly more than that, in fact. 

What are the great symbols of provincial England, and perhaps especially of the North? By and large, they are castles, or similar constructions, put up by the Normans of expressions of their well-founded paranoia, if there can be such a thing, about the dispossessed and restless people who were living round about them. 

England is still that country, and a Norman monarch's Prime Minister can still override any lingering expression of the relatively, and it was only relatively, more libertarian, egalitarian, participatory and decentralised political culture of the Anglo-Saxons. That was what happened today. It is going to happen several more times in the very near future. But after that, all bets will be off.