A hard rain's gonna fall.

It's over! For now at least. Now for the reckoning and I don't just mean the long procession of accused through the courts. Many people are pleading guilty and hoping for the best but early signs suggest that we can expect some draconian sentences to be handed out. In the media every expert under the sun will be wheeled out to give their views. Some of them, like Camila Batmanghelidjh, will be worth listening to - others less so. Parliament has been recalled and the political class will unite in their condemnation of looting and arson while doing there best to score party political points at the same time. The calls for every kind of retribution and social engineering will stretch credulity. The Speaker, John Berkow, went up in my estimation when in a recent interview he said that the people he disliked the most were snobs and bigots but that of the two snobs were worst because a bigot could change. He knew this because he had once been a bigot himself. Well he will be hearing plenty from both snobs and bigots in the House this afternoon as the political elite compete with each other to pour scorn on the "feral underclass".

To listen to David Cameron yesterday was to hear the worst kind of hypocrisy . Born to a level of wealth and privilege beyond the comprehension of most of us and part of a corrupt clique who can have literally anything they desire, he gives lectures on morals to people who have the audacity to wear a pair of trainers they have not paid for. To me. one of the most striking images to appear in the media over the past few days was not the harrowing footage of a distressed and injured boy having his belongings stolen, or parts of London looking like the blitz, nor even the wonderful lady haranguing the mob about "fighting for a cause" but yesterday's Guardian centre spread of an army of smug, self satisfied white middle class big society street cleaners. Armed with their brooms and their moral certainty, the long march of the bland and well off is just beginning.