There is a fascinating interactive map on the Guardian website, which compares where last week’s riots took place with where the suspects live. This suggests that there was a fair amount of “commuter rioting”, with people travelling to trouble spots away from where they live. Notably, despite David Cameron’s protestations that the riots had nothing to do with poverty, the suspects tend to come from poorer areas and have been rioting in areas richer than those they live in. That does suggest there may be some causal link.

From a data point of view, it is amazing how quickly these kind of maps can be created; less and less excuse for our leaders to make sweeping statements they can’t back up.