Friday night on Market Street/Piccadilly Gardens

Still pairs of police every 20 yards, and the occasional moderately senior officer wandering around assessing things, but a distinct lack of vans tonight and the police were looking relaxed and cheerful. Some of the broken windows have already been replaced with new glazing, although there was so much damage it's going to take Manchester Glass a few days to get around them all. The shops with boarding over the windows have large signs saying "we are open", and people are in them. It felt like the usual Friday evening number of shoppers and commuters pottering about, and the mood was back to normal.

This is probably partly due to the fact that the first batch of arrestees were processed early on Wednesday morning on a fast track basis, and ever since the local newspaper has been providing the photos, names (other than minors), ages, localities, occupations, pleas and sentences of each and every person passing through the courts on charges connected with the looting, and has sworn to keep doing so for as long as it takes, right through to any crown court proceedings down the line. Anyone who thought that even if they got caught they wouldn't be seen by the courts for months, and then get an ASBO that nobody would ever hear about, will have had a nasty shock, and a strong incentive to keep their head down.