When Boris and Cameron didnt know right from wrong.

Above is the infamous photo of the Bullington club  Class of 1987, members of an exclusive dining society whose raison d'être has for more than 150 years been to afford tailcoat-clad aristocrats a termly opportunity to behave very badly indeed. amongst these toffs were current Prime Minister David Cameron  and London Mayor Boris Johnson.

According to the Independent   (13 February 2007)

On the day The club's notorious dinners typically involve members booking a private dining room (under an assumed name) and drinking themselves silly before destroying it elaborately. They wear royal blue tailcoats with ivory lapels, and - having made merry - pride themselves in politely paying the restaurant's owners compensation in high-denomination banknotes. One former Bullingdon member, the journalist Harry Mount, has recalled "being rolled down a hill by a Hungarian count". Boris Johnson once admitted to "dark deeds involving plastic cones and letterboxes".

Yet the "high jinks" that took place on the night the photo was taken (at Canterbury Quad, Christchurch) are up there with the best of them. At some point after the dinner, the group walked through Oxford when one (thought to be Ewen Fergusson, though exact recollections differ) threw a plant pot through the window of a restaurant.

The burglar alarm was activated and police descended with sniffer dogs. Six of the group were collared and spent the night at Cowley police station before being released without charge.

"David Cameron was one of the four people who escaped," a witness says. "If it wasn't for his foresight, he'd have spent a night in the clink. Generally, though, the Bullingdon has been totally misrepresented. We weren't tearaways who did no work. I mean, David Cameron still got his first. Buller was a drinking club. It wasn't about taking drugs. At least not in 1987." And the picture? "A lot of people feel it's frightfully embarrassing. But the more I look at it, the more I start to think it's charming and quaint. We look like schoolchildren. It's like a sort of page out of a high-school yearbook."

You can't compare these actions with the rioting in English cities but illustrates a difference in attitude between the how society  reacts between behavior of the different classes .

If you are rich and behave in the way Cameron and Johnson  did as undergraduates then you just young men up to high jinks and letting of steam  If you area teenager on deprived housing estate and behave in a similar s manner like breaking a window when inebriated  then you are a mindless Yob who doesn't know right from wrong nd whose parents are to blame because they did control you..

There is a huge degree of difference between throwing a plant pot through a window and what has been happening  on our streets . But it shows that all  young people are capable of anti social behavior but in some cases it is written of whilst in others the lives of young people are ruined by a criminal record.


In the last few days after the appalling scenes an in particular the deaths of people who were defending their property there has been a understandable  call from the ordinary member of the public for retribution  and we are seeing swift trials and sentences on those accused in taking part. However we must be careful that this does not become a case where people end up with a criminal record simply because they were on the streets at the time.

It is never easy when faced with what we have been seeing and hearing the sort of behavior on the streets displayed  on our media  not to join in the call for harsh measures to be taken against those involved in the riots and arson. But we must be very careful in taken actions that we may well regret even in a few months time.