As no-one else has started a thread yet...

Been a very strange past few days. Saturday night watching the events unfolding on TV and then looking out the bedroom window to see the smoke plumes picked out by the police helicopter's searchlight in the distance over Tottenham. Yesterday walking up Walthamstow High St, packed out with police while glaziers patched up jewellers, banks and a mobile phone shop where the overnight cleaners came under attack. Then the amazing scenes from Hackney in the evening, with the news copters zooming in live on people attacking buses. All with a constant backchannel from Twitter, following the reports and wild rumours as different places kicked off and The Guardian's Paul Lewis jumping across town in response to electronic chatter like a real-life Max Headroom. Lately it seems like the future from my youth has actually arrived.

I'll leave the political analysis to those who can do it better than me.

Oh, and the music angle - a whole bunch of independent music and film companies hit by the burning down of the Sony warehouse with all their stock: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/aug/09/independent-record-labels-stock-london-riots.

Hope you're all okay.