London Riots: Who Picks up the Bill?

I felt like a ghoul when I stayed up until the early hours of Monday morning watching the live news coverage of the riots in London. It was almost addictive watching it as streams of breaking news rolled slowly along the bottom of the screen to reveal where the violence had spread to. The urge I had to avoid sleep to keep up to date was fueled by the hope that the next update from the terrified and bewildered reporters on the streets would be a positive one - they never were. Monday night produced pictures that will be burned into the memories of millions of people, especially the ones that were there and (more specifically) the ones that have been affected so terribly by the criminality of mindless youths. The harrowing stories that have emerged over the last few days have hit home harder than any of those pictures ever could. They provide a background to the smoldering buildings and ransacked shops and tell of the prevalent fear that London is currently awash with. Those pictures and stories, however, are not able to explain to us how things are going to be fixed. Will insurance policies provide the necessary payouts to get home and shop owners back on their feet? Do the police have a duty to compensate those who have lost so much? Can those people's lives ever be the same again?