Oh Dear.
A collective insanity has simultaneously struck Britain's youth ensuring that August 2011 will go down in the world's eyes as the moment Britain lost its genteel, civilised image once and for all. Liverpool, Nottingham, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, London. There is carnage everywhere you look.
The scenes unfolding are just the type I'd expect to see if a nuclear bomb dropped and people had to fight for food in the apocalyptic aftermath. Marauding gangs smashing and stealing everything in their path dispels the cliché of Brits sipping tea with the Queen and wearing their bowler hats around London.
Foreign press are describing these riots to be race-related. On the face of it the rioters motivation seems to be little more then opportunism, to make a few quid whilst spicing up their dreary lives. There is an elephant in the room though. Whisper it, but from the footage I have seen there seems to be a disproportional amount of black or Asian looters. Are black people living in poor areas more disaffected then whites? Or are all the poor areas full of minorities? Is Clapham a poor area? I'm just putting this out there.
Personally I think it has nothing to do with race. What started off as having potential racial overtones has escalated. Now it is just kids who have seen their peers get away with wanton destruction and want a piece of it themselves. On Five Live I heard an interview with some kids who have never been trouble before, openly admit they are looting because they know they can get away with it.
"The police can't do nothing and the prisons are full so if I get an ASBO..well..I can live with that"
What is scary is that many of looters didn't even bother to hide their faces such is their disregard for the law. Some of them were looting because they could. Others we just looting for the fun of it. Whatever the motivation they have made thousands of hard working lives a misery and have cost tax payers tens of millions of pounds.
You might be forgiven for thinking that he rioters were just a bunch of mindless thugs. Firstly the UK's high streets are crawling with CCTV. There is plenty of footage that the police will pour over, it will take time but a lot of these plums will be behind bars before long.
Secondly, why smash up the areas you have to live in? To shit where you eat is truly the product of a twisted mind.
Amazingly, it turns out that out of the 32 that have appeared in court so far some of them are university graduates, college students, army recruits, youth workers and graphic designers. So it seems many of the rioters are intelligent people. Are these the disaffected or has their moral compass broken? It seems the kids just don't give a fuck.
If anything this disaster has shown that the police are unable to handle public uprising to any great degree. Health and safety laws combined with cuts mean that the police did nothing but stand and watch as looters helped themselves. Houses were allowed to burn as the police couldn't protect fire-fighters preparing to go into the thick of it. You would expect this in some war-torn African backwater, not the 6th richest country in the world.
There has been suggestions that the army should be called out. Tonight in London 16,000 cops have been deployed in order to put a lid on the unrest. If this doesn't work then there is talk of a curfew and sending in the Army. This is never going to happen. First of all our army is already stretched to breaking and their involvement would show up the police and embarrass Cameron who graced us with is presence. Fresh from his Tuscan hideaway, no doubt he came back early to check if his moat was on fire.
What must the world think of us? In Libya they protest in order to in the remove a dictator. In Egypt they protest in order to remove a regime. In Bahrain they protest for freedom of speech. In the U.K. we riot in order to get more Reebok Classics.
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