Former Sex Pistols star John Lydon insists U.K. officials only have themselves to blame for the riots that erupted in major cities across Britain last summer (11) - because they shut down all the places where disenfranchised youths could hang out and unwind.
He says, "You gotta bear in mind, the youth - and this is just in Britain alone - have nowhere to go in the evenings. They've closed all the social centres. There's not even a patch of grass to kick a ball on."
And Lydon suggests the four-day riots would not have become uncontrollable if London's leaders had not been on vacation.
He tells Spin magazine, "It was terrible. Nobody seemed to be able to control them, because all the alleged leaders - the head of police, the mayor of London, and all the top political wigs - were all on holiday. No one was in charge of anything, so you had a pretty damned-near aimless police force out there wandering around, not knowing what they're doing.
"It just ended up with kids trying to nick TVs and sneakers. The disenfranchised going, 'Oh, I'll use this as an opportunity...'"