My first thought on reading After the Riots, the newly published UK government report on the riots of 2011, was that it was written by The Onion. It could certainly use as a subheading the title of one of John Cage’s brief essays, ‘How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)’.

The royal family is an institutional codification of your worthlessness. No matter how you slice and dice it, an aristocracy, by definition, rests on the brute fact that they are royal and you are common, and that, therefore, their DNA entitles them to privileges and honours from which you will always and forever be excluded. […]