from my point of view, I think it's been building up for over a decade (from 97 to present). The credit boom where people were encouraged to spend and spend and not really worry about the consequences. Therefore a materialistic society grew up wanting the next shiny thing however not everyone could afford to buy the shiny thing so they decided to steal them. An example of this is the ipod boom. When they first became popular around 2003/2004 there were numerous reports of kids mugging people for the stupid things. There are still reports of kids mugging people for their iphones.
This materialistic culture then hits the rocks with the credit crunch (2007/2008) and alot of people are up sh!t creek with shed load of debt/negative equity. Then comes the increases in prices for gas, electricity, water, bread, milk, the basic stuff that you need to live on.
People feel like they are being robbed by the big conglomerates who keep posting multi-billion pound profits but still increase the price of their products (yes I am looking at you Shell, BP and British Gas).
And the government then announces the "austerity" measures where taxes go up, services are cut and again people feel robbed by the government.
Any wonder why there are riots?
