on the riots
First off, thanks to all the friends & fam who have checked in to make sure me and the boycreature are A-OK. It was a bit unsettling getting off a long dinner-shift at work to see a handful of panicked texts from my housemate warning me not to try and get home because there were looters down the road from our house. But the area around Covent Garden & Bloomsbury seemed pretty calm, and I bussed it to the boycreature's hideaway without incident. Today the expected fear-mongering has been going on, but I don't expect our area to get hit twice in a row. Honestly once was shocking, as it is pretty much the safest town ever excluding Tinytowne, Kansai, and probably most of Sweden.
Moving on... R, the man whose apartment I have been regularly dusting to help ameliorate the effects of his lung problems, always greets me and sends me off with what many would identify as a leftist political rant. One of the first talking-points we both went off over was the Americanization of the UK's education system, to which R responded swiftly that the Powers That Be want to do what America did to its poor, its tired, its hungry and unwashed masses: to dumbify them so that they won't realize until too late how corrupt things in Westminster are. How effed up it is that the fat cats who pal around with the people on Downing Street get tax cuts so they can then send millions of British pounds offshore instead of back into the economy; or how the police force is allowed to surreptitiously post tiny exclusion orders on the gates of community parks or lamp posts and count them as "notice" that they will harrass any number of youths exceeding two until they leave the area or talk back enough to be thrown in the back of a cop car. And when the masses do realize it, they will be incapable of forming a reasoned response due to the now captial-driven education "reforms."
I enjoy talking with R because he is impassioned about his community and country, and admittedly because often his diatribes verge on the amusing intrigue of the more rational conspiracy theories out there. He also sometimes tells me real gems like the time he was busted coming back from Thailand with a suitcase fulla weed.
Having seen a bit of the news coverage of the riots, and especially after having heard commentary from both parties involved in the violence and those who have thus far remained comfortably insulated from it, I have to say, I am dismayed and ashamed to conclude that Mr. R called this one picture-perfect.
What we're seeing in my fair adoptacity and temporary country of residence is a whole lot of angry people, a considerable minority of unscrupulous opportunists, and damn near every one of them stone-cold ignorant about either why exactly it is they are smashing up their own communities, or the wider impact their actions have beyond just themselves & the police. Also appalling numbers of kids under 18, and I am just about ready to haul off and smack the parents / guardians of the kids my housemate not two hours ago saw leaving OUR community to turn over the small businesses and livelihoods of another. But more than anything I want a fuck-ton more voices like the Hackney woman laying it out in a way that no one but the criminally negligent can fail to understand.
This kind of mindless mobbing is exactly the thing government big-wigs love, because it is playing to their expectations of the poor and under-educated created by their own policies. When you set fire to the cafe down the main street and loot liquor from some family-run newsagent, you're not sticking it to "the rich" and demonstrating your freedom from "the Man" - you're doing what corrupt legislators and lawmen want you to do, proving to them that you're incapable of controlling yourself and thus ought to be controlled by any means necessary. Dogs, gasses, prisons, executions by police in the streets that are cheered by the people you hurt because you were too damn busy playing rebel without a cause to realize that's exactly the role you're meant for in the society you say puts you down. STOP acting put-down and start acting constructively. I'm glad the prisons are already overfull here, because what really ought to happen to the looters & arsonists is being rounded up and penned into the areas they hit until they clean up their fucking messes. The "fightback" clean-up actions in my and other areas is already looking pretty impressive; hopefully THIS will be the lasting image of the riots for most people, rather than burnt-out buildings.
Moving on... R, the man whose apartment I have been regularly dusting to help ameliorate the effects of his lung problems, always greets me and sends me off with what many would identify as a leftist political rant. One of the first talking-points we both went off over was the Americanization of the UK's education system, to which R responded swiftly that the Powers That Be want to do what America did to its poor, its tired, its hungry and unwashed masses: to dumbify them so that they won't realize until too late how corrupt things in Westminster are. How effed up it is that the fat cats who pal around with the people on Downing Street get tax cuts so they can then send millions of British pounds offshore instead of back into the economy; or how the police force is allowed to surreptitiously post tiny exclusion orders on the gates of community parks or lamp posts and count them as "notice" that they will harrass any number of youths exceeding two until they leave the area or talk back enough to be thrown in the back of a cop car. And when the masses do realize it, they will be incapable of forming a reasoned response due to the now captial-driven education "reforms."
I enjoy talking with R because he is impassioned about his community and country, and admittedly because often his diatribes verge on the amusing intrigue of the more rational conspiracy theories out there. He also sometimes tells me real gems like the time he was busted coming back from Thailand with a suitcase fulla weed.
Having seen a bit of the news coverage of the riots, and especially after having heard commentary from both parties involved in the violence and those who have thus far remained comfortably insulated from it, I have to say, I am dismayed and ashamed to conclude that Mr. R called this one picture-perfect.
What we're seeing in my fair adoptacity and temporary country of residence is a whole lot of angry people, a considerable minority of unscrupulous opportunists, and damn near every one of them stone-cold ignorant about either why exactly it is they are smashing up their own communities, or the wider impact their actions have beyond just themselves & the police. Also appalling numbers of kids under 18, and I am just about ready to haul off and smack the parents / guardians of the kids my housemate not two hours ago saw leaving OUR community to turn over the small businesses and livelihoods of another. But more than anything I want a fuck-ton more voices like the Hackney woman laying it out in a way that no one but the criminally negligent can fail to understand.
This kind of mindless mobbing is exactly the thing government big-wigs love, because it is playing to their expectations of the poor and under-educated created by their own policies. When you set fire to the cafe down the main street and loot liquor from some family-run newsagent, you're not sticking it to "the rich" and demonstrating your freedom from "the Man" - you're doing what corrupt legislators and lawmen want you to do, proving to them that you're incapable of controlling yourself and thus ought to be controlled by any means necessary. Dogs, gasses, prisons, executions by police in the streets that are cheered by the people you hurt because you were too damn busy playing rebel without a cause to realize that's exactly the role you're meant for in the society you say puts you down. STOP acting put-down and start acting constructively. I'm glad the prisons are already overfull here, because what really ought to happen to the looters & arsonists is being rounded up and penned into the areas they hit until they clean up their fucking messes. The "fightback" clean-up actions in my and other areas is already looking pretty impressive; hopefully THIS will be the lasting image of the riots for most people, rather than burnt-out buildings.