THERE was a time when media folk regarded August as the “silly season”.

Publications and broadcasters ticked over gently in the absence of any real news.

This year it has been replaced by the “worry season” — a never-ending parade of bleak and gloomy events.

Financial markets are in chaos, suicide bombers, gunmen and repressive governments deal in death and destruction overseas and rioters have run wild in boring England.

History is littered with examples of glorious revolt, including the successful campaign in Egypt recently, but the English version was considerably less highminded.

Opportunists thought it was OK to loot “free stuff”

from shops.

Those who got away with it probably still think it was a good thing to do.

Politicians interrupted their holidays, the police got their act together eventually, the court system worked overtime and there were heartwarming clean-up sessions by appalled locals.

Hopefully, we can expect things to settle down a little as the sociologists go in to overdrive.

Right-wingers who have made the usual calls for rubber bullets, water cannons, floggings and “robust” policing will have little time for the more liberal discussion that is bound to follow.

As usual, I find myself looking both ways at once – it must be part of my Piscean nature.

I can see that it is necessary for the police to have the power and the will to maintain law and order, but it is counter productive when an imaginary line is crossed.

The riots in London, Manchester, Birmingham and elsewhere showed that events moved too quickly for officers to be adequately effective while it was all “kicking off”.

Unfortunately, measures to prevent it happening again are intertwined with the government insistence on severe personnel cuts that it claims, not very convincingly, will have no adverse effect on front line operations.

Prime Minister David Cameron once flirted with sensitivity in comments that became “hug a hoodie” in newspaper terms. Last week he was talking about a “slowmotion moral collapse”

and a “security fightback”

that looks likely to include a big increase in police riot training and clearer guidelines for tackling future explosions of violence.

There is nothing wrong with that or his pledge to implement a “social fightback” concentrating on 120,000 troubled families.

Labour leader, Ed Miliband, who has responded to the crisis in a sober and considered manner, will be pleased that the coalition government has agreed to his demand that there should be a formal commission to investigate the causes of the riots.

Our politicians, for all their faults, are doing their best to make sense of it all.

But it is a pity that the government is wedded to a philosophy that involves massive reductions in the numbers of public servants — police, probation officers, social workers and youth professionals among them — who should be on hand to tackle dramatic social problems with firmness and sympathy.

The move towards state powers being devolved to communities, businesses and charities does not seem to be a great idea at the moment.

UK citizens need a central regime that operates fairly and effectively with the correct number of employees.

On-going spending cuts and an economic crisis that has decimated the traditional jobs market are helping to foster a sense of desperate resignation in poor young people who will simply shrug their shoulders when they hear the words from Whitehall.

That should not be an excuse for smashing shop windows and looting, but some of those involved believe it is.