Let’s imagine that you have to look after ten big dogs. They’re Rottweilers – big, healthy, robust animals that needs lots of food and exercise. Taking care of ten such animals would be a big responsibility, and require a lot of time, effort and resources. So you get stuck in as best you can. Unfortunately, you soon discover that your resources aren’t quite up to the job.

There’s not quite enough food to go round, so when you put it down for the dogs, only 9 of them get fed, and one of them – a smaller, runtier, rather uglier looking dog, gets pushed to the back. Then you realise that you haven’t got time to walk them all either. Perhaps you can only walk nine out of ten of them. The other one – the smaller, runtier, uglier one – you just let run around the garden a bit. You kid yourself that this is okay, but it isn’t. That dog is getting frustrated by his lack of exercise, and he knows that you prefer the others.

What happens if this goes on? What happens if you continue to fail to provide for that tenth dog’s basic needs? If, because your resources are stretched, you don’t give him proper food, proper exercise, proper attention or proper affection? If instead, you leave him penned up on a council sink estate… I mean… in your back garden?

People aren’t dogs of course, but there’s a good bit of dog in them. You can’t deny any creature its basic needs and expect it to be happy. You can argue that a person should be better able to control their anger, frustration, isolation and hurt than a dog. The question is – is it right to put them in that position in the first place?

Is it right to dehumanise people into ‘chavs’, and thus justify leaving them with poor opportunities and poor services? With few jobs, bad housing and little education? To close down the Social Exclusion Task Force that would have tackled these issues, and leave it up to the ‘Big Society’ to deal with the problem?

I don’t think it is. I think we have to accept that as long as we allow some people in our society to be that tenth dog, we will increase the risk of some very angry and dangerous dogs getting loose from time to time.

It is reported that in parliament “parties are anxious that they cannot be portrayed as apologists for the rioting.” Am I an apologist for the people who rioted? No. I don’t like rioting, but I hope we can have an adult discussion of the factors that may have caused it. That means worrying less about your party’s image, and more about governing the country in a wise and just way. It means understanding that real issues are rarely black and white, but many shades of grey.

Apparently, the Prime Minister suggested yesterday that the riots are the result of “a complete lack of responsibility, a lack of proper parenting, a lack of proper upbringing, a lack of proper ethics, a lack of proper morals.”

That seems like a reasonable point, and I hope the Prime Minister will provide a subsequent good example of proper upbringing, ethics and morals. He might like to consider the four cardinal virtues:

1. Courage. It takes courage to tell those who believe that rioters’ benefits should be withdrawn that just because 100,000 people agree on a thing, it doesn’t make it right. I would suggest that sentencing every rioter to 200 hours improving their basic literacy, numeracy and employable skills might be more constructive.

2. Temperance, or self-control. It takes temperance to keep your head when all around you are baying for blood, and to mark out a middle way which holds people to account without punishing them excessively. It also takes temperance to avoid a hasty, simplistic removal of individual liberties and freedoms like social media.

3. Prudence, or rationality. Again, the recent events arouse strong passions. Lots of people are angry, and few can see the irrationality of demanding an eye for an eye. If you take away a person’s benefits, what do you expect them or their children to eat? Are you really happy to see people starving on Britain’s streets? Would you want to employ or be served by an angry, desperate ex-rioter? We complain that the rioters didn’t stop and think about the consequences of their actions, but are many of us any better?

4. Justice. The virtue of justice is a little to the concept of justice, being a golden mean between selfishness and selflessness. In other words, it means striking a balance between one’s own needs, feelings and rights, and those of others. That usually means the most constructive, humane and dignified response to the problem – which is rarely one that involves chopping anything off.

Morality doesn’t just mean refraining from arson and theft. It is much more complex and demanding than that, and includes mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and patience. As Jesus, were he alive today, would undoubtedly have said, let he who is without sin make the first tweet.