Riots

Sorry throwing books is sacrilege in my eyes.

But as you say arresting them at the time is sometimes difficult so refusing to remove face coverings may be tricky to enforce.
The youths that ride unplated motor bikes round here tend to wear face coverings and no helmets ( as Police have been told not to chase anyone not wearing a helmet )

Solution - allow me to ride my zzr1400 without a helmet as it reasonably impacts nobody else except myself.

I'd not want to spread the location of him and his kids as they are at risk of being attacked.

Which for some reason translates into believing any old rubbish some random person says on social media and acting on it violently without actually checking if any of it is true. Definitely an improvement don't you think?

Michael, thank you for that. It's a lot clearer. I have some sympathy, with some of it, but I disagree with your conclusions.

1. I disagree with you that the BBC is controlled by the government. Influenced? Yes. Controlled? Too strong.
2. ITV is public company.
3. Channel 4 is a publicly owned not-for-profit corporation.

All of the above compete with each other. Were they to be controlled by the government why would they produce so much material that is critical of the government of the day? How often do you see any of them take the others to task for bias in their coverage (which would seem to be a fairly obvious line of attack in a competitive market)? It doesn't happen. Nor are there many (any?) examples of other "mainstream media" taking them to task for bias in their coverage. Ergo... there isn't enough for it to be a material issue.  Unless you're advocating a position that sees all mainstream media, globally, in cahoots? Really?

The BBC is not perfect. It is a large, complex, sprawling organisation. It doesn't (and couldn't) get everything right, all of the time. I'm not a huge fan of the license fee model (though in some ways it helps keep it at some remove from the government). It's had its fair share of scandals, from Jimmy Saville to Huw Edwards (but then what large organisation that's existed for decades hasn't), and I think some of its policies are... unhelpful. The most obvious of which is its attempt to provide "balanced" coverage of the public debate leading up to Brexit (though I imagine some reading this will disagree with me on this issue).

I don't have Sky, and I don't read the Murdoch press. Nor do I read the Evening Standard, and I don't read the Telegraph, so I avoid some of the groups you don't like. You're right, the owners of these news organisations can (though don't always) exert outsize influence on the content they release.

But there are many, many other legitimate news content providers competing for our attention, and for our wallet. Just to name a few, the FT, the Economist (one reason I like the Economist is because they are so fast, and so rigorous in publishing an apology / correction when they get something wrong), the Guardian, New Scientist, Reuters, Nature, Associated Press, industry / issue / interest group specific publications etc, and that's before you look to consume foreign media, whether you're talking Al Jazeera, CNN,  the WSJ, Die Welt, or Le Monde. In today's world it is trivial to take competing coverage of an event and compare the reporting, analysis and opinion offered.

How often do you see eg Al Jazeera or even RT taking the BBC (or the Guardian, or the FT etc) to task for false or biased reporting?  You don't, so...

And you believe in free speech, and freedom of the press, right?

You have a strange blindspot regarding the BBC. Over the years we've inhabited this forum the vast majority (95%?) of your complaints regarding the BBC have been demonstrated to be down to you not reading the article, not understanding the article, not doing your own trivially easy research or a concern over the nuance of presentation or language. And yet you continue to routinely demonise them. Is BBC out of step, or are you?

So a question for you. Do you think the thugs that have been conducting this recent campaign of intimidatory violence would have been better served by reading, and believing, material on the BBC, or reading and believing provably false material spread anonymously on Telegram and Facebook by unknown people with unknown agendas and unknown backing?

(Just for clarity I don't work for any press organisation, and I have no friends or family who do (one son of a friend of mine covers a local business beat for a regional BBC outlet but that's hardly of national significance, let alone international...)).

EDIT: Actually I do consume some Times / Telegraph content.  Sometimes I listen to their Ukraine related podcasts on youtube.  I don't always agree with it but in the main find it to be useful.

Isn't insurance and public money going to pay for this? Relying on charity whilst a nice gesture is a slippery slope IMO.

registerme - thanks for your thoughtful reply and I'll hopefully get a chance to reply properly at a later point.