London’s burning and Birmingham has fallen into mayhem. There is anarchy in the UK and arson attacks on the streets; what is happening to our cities in Britain?
On Saturday August 6th, a peaceful protest turned into a war zone with hell-bent riots where businesses such as Currys, Comet, Poundstretcher and JD Sport were all ransacked and looted.
On the following Monday, two girls who took part in more riots in Croydon boasted to the BBC World Service they ‘were showing the police and the rich that we can do what we want’.
Is this the mentality of the youth of today? Many buildings have been burnt down, such as a carpet shop in Croydon, one which provided a service for over 100 years was left to burn with no police or fire service present. A listed building dating back to the 1930s was burnt to the ground in Tottenham Hale as well as a Sony warehouse in Enfield. It’s London destroyed by thugs.
Other TV and Internet images appeared through the week, such as a woman calmly walking across the street with a shopping basket full of stuff she’s just looted, as if she was in a supermarket. Kids as young as 8 were acting as look-outs for their thuggish order siblings, parents actually collecting their darling offspring in car parks, in their people carriers, knowing they’d just looted a store and were ready to fill up the cars with the stolen goods.
The rioters targeted businesses and residential properties. People were left helpless and running for their lives and were forced to jump from burning buildings to escape the fires. Scenes of the rioting varied from cars set alight, shops looted with thugs ripping TVs off betting shops walls, to an empty, looted Currys on Sunday night.
The four nights of mayhem in London were repeated in other cities throughout Britain. Are the children out of control and why are they doing this to our communities? Is it just because they come from deprived areas, poor communities, dysfunctional families with high unemployment? Does this instill thoughts of little or no opportunities for their future? Or is it because of a more straight forward reason: sinister, selfish, gluttonous opportunistic greed? Because the scum appear to have absolutely no regard for others in any of the communities targeted.
The country has been complaining for some time about gang warfare and out of control teenagers, so why has it taken so long for the government to see that this is a real problem? Is it because now, finally, it’s affecting the functioning of London and other major cities in Britain?
The problem stems from the peer pressure gangs use against young children and power that they have. Adults have been powerless for years; rights taken away from teachers and the police that have allowed teenagers to develop gang cultures uninhibited and enforce this way of thinking. They have lost all sense of respect, community, family, while the concept of law and order doesn’t seem to exist in their culture or upbringing. Thanks to social networking, like Blackberry phones, communicating with each other is easy; they can organise their crimes and cause disruption to the lives of ordinary people and say ‘stuff you’ in the process.
They called the police “feds” and while wearing their “ballys” (balaclavas) brought vans, hampers, the lot; it’s the swagger language they use to communicate to each other. Then, armed with their ghetto gear, hoodies and, in some cases, knives, they headed to the nearest city/town to terrorise and bully communities regardless of colour or beliefs.
However, it’s not just the typical swaggering yobs that have been dragged into this mayhem, it’s since emerged the people that have so far been arrested since Monday night have ranged from a millionaire’s daughter, age 19, a graduate, aged 24, and teacher, aged 31, who, ironically, works with unprivileged kids. There were also a pair of twins, Icha and Micha Livingstone, both age 19, teenage students. Their mother claimed, “They were just in the area and police rounded everyone up and this will kill them.” Yeah, well, I’m not convinced by these reasons! Excuses are pouring in and some are as flippant as, “I got caught up in the anarchy mindset” or that “I didn’t intend to cause any trouble and I am a good person, I don’t like crime or stealing.” These are not excuses.
I believe these responses are lame and that some parents are defending their children by claiming they are good people.
Good people don’t go around venting revenge on people’s lives, burning cars and destroying businesses for the fun of it, all whilst looking for opportunities to rob businesses blind. These are ordinary folk who have done nothing wrong no matter how angry you are at society.
Even more shocking is that fact that half the people that have been arrested for rioting and looting shops are old enough to know better and have decent jobs and careers.
You can’t go around blaming Facebook and Twitter social networking sites either, it just doesn’t convince me. It is down to the people who use their services, not the service itself. People using the sites could have said no to the planned looting and rioting in the streets. The accused even seem to have the front to demand privacy from being identified outside the Courts; it’s just laughable. Well, I hope they enjoy their stolen HDTVs, Adidas trainers, new PlayStations and thousands of pounds of food. You wanted to cause mayhem and go on the rampage at all hours of the night, so when you lose your job, you’ve no one to blame but yourself – so well done.
The problem with English law is it’s too soft. As the girls from Croydon said, “We can do want we like” getting nothing more than a light ASBO order. This has to change and it has to change NOW. There should be no more freebies for rioting opportunists or soft sentences for these low life cretins, who think it’s their God-given right to go around destroying properties, businesses and homes.
The government has to start using hard punishments that demonstrate that this kind of aggressive, violent, thuggish, criminal behaviour will not be tolerated in a way that will make possible perpetrators stop and think; is having a criminal record, ruining my career prospects and losing a perfectly good job really worth a stolen £300 HDTV?
You can’t tell me that an 11-year-old does not know the difference between right and wrong! Especially when we all know that they should have been at home in their beds during the riots but instead they were out at all hours causing criminal damage and looking to smash in the next JD Sport shop window for those must-have trainers.
Rioting is not normal and I certainly don’t want it to become a way of life in the UK.
The fight back has begun.
