London's Burning
 

I was visiting a friend yesterday and just before leaving his place he heard on the radio news that the riots in London had spread, and the area that I live in was one of the areas that the police expected trouble. I laughed at the idea, in a "nothing happens round here" type of way, and went home.

Got off the train, and the station was full of police "ready for trouble", again I laughed at "police overreaction to rumours".

Then I left the station:

Hundreds of teenagers, possibly thousands (I didn't count), crowding the streets. Most of the shops were closed with their shutters down. As I walked home, even the shops outside the city centre were closing and drawing down the shutters, one restaurant owner was running along the street yelling at any shop still open to close up and screaming "they're coming, they're coming". I'd stopped to get some fresh chilli's to use to make dinner and still thought they were over reacting, the teenagers would probably do a lot of yelling and throwing things at police cars, but that would be all.

Remind me never to go into the prediction business!

Mass rioting. Shops smashed up. Major league looting. And an entire block burned to the ground! All a few minutes from where I live.

I have not been out yet, but the pictures on the news make it look like some post apocalyptic nightmare, and the film of the actual looting looked like something from a movie, the sort of movie where you throw popcorn at the screen because it is too over the top and unbelievable.

Maybe I should move somewhere safer - like Afghanistan!

Cool. In a freaky way.

So why are the kids sayin they are rioting? What's their beef?

And I don't mean the initial impetus, that guy who was shot by the cops, Why is it spreading?

RIM to assist police over use of BBM in London riots

Global capitalism has created a pretty big gap between those that have a lot and those that have a little. A few cracks in the dam?

From what I read over at CNN this is all over a police shooting of a man in a cab.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe...am/index.html?

Absolutely insane. Be safe, though. You don't know what the mob is capable of.

The Arab Spring has demonstrated how, and now started to move to the western countries!

The rich/poor gap has created the same kind of frustration, and time for the autocrats & politicians to go!

This is a real shame that the people act out in this way. It does not change anything in the long term only makes things much worse

Wow insane!

The original riot was sparked by anger at the police, but during the riot there was a lot of opportunistic looting. Watching the reports in TV the following day a lot of people realised that the police were powerless against such a large mob, and that if they organised themselves they could simply raid shops and take what they liked. So that is what they are doing.

Although this started as legitimate protest, what is happening now has nothing to with the original march. It is just organised thieving on a mass scale.

One major factor is that the courts are too lenient on under 18s, and the police know that there is little point in arresting them, so do nothing. Years ago I used to run a video shop in a tough area, we had a lot of trouble with kids either stealing, smashing stuff up, or even beating up younger kids just for the fun of it. The police were worse than useless. A perfect example was when a gang of teenagers seriously beat up a nine year old in the store. I had the whole thing on security video, I even got the name and address of the ringleader, but when I took it to the police, there response was "We don't have time to deal with this". So when kids learn they can get away with anything, some take what they can. On the radio this morning they were interviewing a kid who was not only prepared to talk about it, he was proud and boastful about it. When asked if he was worried about getting caught his reply was "What are they going to do about it? It is my first offence. They will give me an ASBO or community service" (an ASBO is little more than being banned from doing it again, and it being publicly recorded that you were warned).

After I posted yesterday I had to go into town. It was like a war zone (and I am not being dramatic, if you saw photos in the paper without captions, you would have assumed these were photos of a town in Afghanistan). Shop windows smashed in, buildings burnt out (in some cases just a charred frame remained), glass and rubble everywhere. A few streets were so badly damaged that the entire street was closed off because they were not safe to walk down. And the tram system will be out for ages. Not only were parts destroyed by vandalism, but in some places the fires were so hot, the rails melted (and we are talking solid, heavy metal tram rails). And according to the news, the area of London where I lived was not the worst hit area, there is a lot worse elsewhere!

This morning, on the radio, I hear that it is spreading, last night looting and rioting started up all over the country. Living in Britain really is becoming like one of those 70's movies about society breaking down and the gangs taking over!

I got an email from a local politician this morning. Surprisingly he was not trying to make political capital out of it, instead the point of the email was just to try and reassure his constituents. But to me the most poignant and frightening line in it was:

"When I get home tonight, I will have to explain what has happened to my eight year-old son. He will ask why people have done this. What can I tell him?"

It will probably happen here in the states before all that long.

And when it does it won't be so nice. There will be many deaths, not just destruction and looting.

Then, after that, it's going to get really fucking crazy.

The people on top will be SHOCKED, SHOCKED I SAY!

How could the lower classes be such savages, just looting and destroying for no reason?

Baseball in the U.K.
 

should of brought in the water cannon and rubber bullets the 2nd Night .Maggie would have not let this have happened.

"As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood".

Jim and I have discussed this same thing, it would not surprise me at all if this happens here.

It happened here in 1982.

Seems sometimes people don't like people getting killed at the hands of the police.

All of the looters should be arrested and from the number of photos taken it shouldn't be too hard to track them down. They should then be marched to the places they destroyed and publicly flogged. Then they should be prosecuted to the max and made to pay for everything destroyed and stolen no matter how long it takes them. Maybe then people would think twice about trashing the cities they live in and destroying other peoples lives with stupid acts of violence and theft. I would also go so far as to make sure that anyone arrested who was an immigrant still awaiting permission to live in the country permanently, be put on a plane back to where they came from. Its long overdue that someone stood up for the honest man in the streets and said enough is enough.

I am still wondering what the folks doing the rioting and looting were thinking, what kinds of stories they were telling themseves in their heads.

Lore is, england is the most highly surveiled country in the world - did they not know they would be on cameras and likely be tracked down afterwards?

I saw some photos of a boy setting a store on fire, then standing there, face in full view, watching it burn.

What was the culture that made this seem like a good idea? If it was just dumbness, what does that say about the society that produced such dumb people?

The lenient on minors thing explains some of it - but why would kids decide to rampage? (I've watched a few vids, about a 16 year old girl the cops beat up, with commentary suggesting the rapid passing along of that video was a spark. But what poured on the gasoline that the spark ignited?)

I"m still waiting for followup articles that try to explain all this.

During the riots, one radio station interviewed a few kids as they ran off and asked them that question. The replies I can remember were "It's a laugh", "I got a couple of free things", "I want to do this every night" and, probably the most telling reply "We are telling the police that we can do what we want, and they can't stop us".

In answer to this question, one typical reply was "What are they going to do about it? It is my first offence. They will give me an ASBO or community service" (an ASBO is little more than being told not to do it again, and it being publicly recorded that you were warned).