The burnt out carcass of a hatchback has been sitting at the end of our street for a few weeks. Not sure what happened to it, but it's not impossible it was the closest example we've had of the car burnings. The headlines have gone, but apparently an average of 112 cars a day have been torched this year. Clichy is only a few miles from where we live, though it might as well be Belgium it for the practical distance. When we've driven through it has felt the same as any other quarter of the banlieu.

An idiot at the fringe lunatic wing of a minor police unit has convinced the Telegraph that the car burnings are an intifada. A competent reporter might have recorded reasons for scepticism, thought here's no evidence that either the Telegraph's sub-sentient cretin nor the foaming police union spokesperson know what an 'intifada' is.

How smug of the English press. We could equally ask how many knifings there are daily in London and conclude there is an undeclared insurgency.

For all that, there isn't anyone in France with much idea how to put out the flames. If you create ghettos, this is what happens. Ghettos take generations to disappear.