Be Excellent To Each Other

No offense Decca, but I wish people would stop saying 'kicking off'. Cretins on twitter we're saying that earlier when fuck all was going on.

IS the Ministry of Sound still based there?

That fire in Croydon has crossed the street.

It's the language of the north.
From the rolling SA thread. which is a good source of information till people's internet go down.
#lastpost">http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... 1#lastpost

Jesus - it looked like it might, and then when I looked again the fire brigade had turned up and I thought it'd all be okay. This is awful.

And yes, MoS is in E&C. I used to live just down the road in Kennington.

I think the metal of the tram rails is also on fire... Looks weird

Brothers are both still stuck. Don't know if they'll actually make it home tonight. Irk.

Fingers crossed, Meems. xx

Simone has set up a brum feed

http://aboutbrum.co.uk/2011/08/08/disor ... -08082011/

It would appear I got out of the centre of Bromley just in time.

"Birmingham New St train station has been closed and the Bus services are about to stop"

I know they'll both be fine. They are the most intelligent, sensible lads I know. But I know they are both cold and tired and I don't like hearing they might be stuck out all night.

Why?

BTW, Mrs K says this is a good opportunity to quit smoking.

Oh, and fret ye not Citizenry, Cameron is coming home! He'll be chairing a Cobra meeting in the morning. Like, too late.

Pazland's protesters have remained in the vicinity of the incinerator. PLPD are standing by.

Fingers Crossed for you, Mimi!

Our friends that live by Wormwood Scrubs are somewhat nervous at present.

So far unconfirmed reports of police lines and fires set.



Don't be silly. This is a good opportunity for a quest!

Can we change the thread title?

Just don't go diving on top of any grenades, eh? This isn't the time to prove yourself correct.

Ah, I see. Hardly surprising, though. I'm amazed the Penge lot haven't invaded Beckenham though.

I paraphrase for the sake of the children, but she says if you leave the house before it all calms down in the morning she'll be cross.

Cras, just get a hanky round your mush and wait outside the offy. They'll be along when the booze runs out.

Putin would have been putting the fires out using a helicopter, before fighting hand to hand with each hooligan, in a survivor series, before going fox hunting without the horse and running it into the ground.

The point is Mali, this is the endgame, this is when a 'civilised society' has broken down to such a degree that you have a minority of people (and yes they are minority but still enough to cause mayhem) who are prepared to do this, the fact its shitting on their own doorstep makes it all the more telling. Because to them, there is no such thing as society - Thatcher's vision has finally come to pass.

This is the result not of the last few weeks or months or years, but fucking decades of impoverishment, exclusion, repression, police brutality and institutional racism, a total lack of prospects and jobs, a life that is largely without hope.

And we're surprised that when they get the chance to fuck some shit up, they take it?

Oh - get this! When I went past JD Sports in Bromley, there was a queue outside! People waiting for it to be smashed in, I can only assume! Surreal. Queueing to loot!

As an aside, and I'd hope it goes without saying, but just in case, I genuinely hope no innocent folks come to any harm whilst all this shit is going on and especially the BEEXers and their friends and family who are down there.

This is all horrible stuff, no question about that, but I stand by my point that as a society we have to stand back and ask how we got here. Happy, healthy people with a decent standard of living and prospects in their life simply don't act like this.

Yeah, it's so yesterday.

Was it a soft, mashy sort of one that disintegrates on impact like a Maris Piper, or one designed for massive blunt trauma, such as a King Edward, or yet again the increasingly popular small calibre yet cheaper and more rapid firing Jersey royal?

Screw the job interview on Wednesday at Awesome Co, I've decided to become a community leader, as the job appears to carry no responsibility and you get on the tellybox a lot.

Just flicking through the news channels, and the cnn reporter is in Peckham wearing a bulet proof vest and helmet, looking like he's come from the front line in Afghanistan or something, and AlJazeera is reporting stuff going on in Leeds now too!

Malc

Some kind soul will take them in, meems, you can be pretty sure of that. Londoners might be reserved, but I'm pretty sure there are shitloads of strangers who'll be helping each other out right now.

So, it's bascially kids smashing Clapham Junction up,judging from sky news.

Whilst finding it hard to wholly disagree (although, not accept the reiteration of a historically misrepresented thatcher quote), the video of clapham junction on Sky News doesn't scream social exclusion. It screams teenagers acting like cunts.

I think we can also conclude that there is no agreed media blackout.

Indeed. Whatever the justification, these are still individuals making their choice to go out and be utter cunts, there may be reasons but there is no excuse.

Certainly. This kind of thing doesn't just happen because some dickheads suddenly materialise. I don't know what the answer is, but I certainly hope we all try to find out what it is, rather than just do our usual stupid kneejerk thing. This can't all be about total cuntbags doing their thing for the hell of it (although they are unquestionably a major part of it).

I basically agree, but then I think, "well, why can't it just be about that?" Although it all started for other reasons (it seems), Saturday and the police's inability to deal with it showed that people could, if they wanted to, run riot and get away with it. Sunday reinforced that. Today it's gone mainstream. Maybe it's as simple as that thin blue line being shown to be utterly porous and Hobbes's state of nature reinforcing itself.

What is annoying me is that the police keep on telling people to go home, but there's no way FOR people to get home.

Test match in Birmingham might be cancelled.

I agree that it's teenagers acting like cunts. I think more troublingly that it isn't entirely reflective of deprivation. I think that maybe we've accidentally created a corporate mentality amongst youths where there is an abdication of responsibility and a shrugging off of fear through seeing themselves as actors in their own YouTube glory. Now that they've found the police are largely powerless to prevent them for creating exciting footage, they're going hog wild. Also, there's nothing really to believe in anymore. Religion has been effectively killed. Celebrity culture is a ghastly, vapid mess. Jobs for life are no more. Where once communities were bound by fathers controlling the jobs that were doled out to sons, now there's no sense of a face to employers or a respected structure to their world. My only consolation is that this is awesomely better than living in Franco's Spain, Nazi Germany or having to send kids off to walk slowly towards barbed wire fortifications under heavy machine gun and artillery fire.

Ironically, this may be worse than the Watt's riots due to people not having guns to shoot rioters threatening their properties. Though I'm against gun culture, so that's leading to a confused face from me.

There is also a danger that rolling news may be fuelling this through adding a sense of longer term epic criminal empowerment to those fucking shit up.

100 youths rioting in Leeds after a man in Chapeltown was shot.

I know how misrepresented that quotation is and I did remind myself of it before I posted I still think it's relevant and telling.

And I've got News 24 on now, and person after person is talking about THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES and THE POLICE WILL FIND YOU and YOU MUST STOP THIS NOW WE HAVE YOUR PICTURE.

They just don't get it, they just don't understand that these people absolutely do not give a fuck because they operate outside the boundaries of what most of us recognise as normal life and relationships and as society, the checks and balances that we apply to every decision we make in our lives simply don't apply.

These are broken people from a broken system and a broken society, taking the piss with jokey comments such as 'LOL they're just nicking trainers!' misses the point by a dangerous, and tragic margin.

Which just goes to show they should bring back the cane in schools and hanging.

I know what you mean, though - I've occasionally whinged on here about the change in attitudes and decline in behaviour that was even apparent between my first year at senior school and the first years when I was in the sixth form. And that was at a grammar school. It's only got worse since. having absolutely no respect for anyone but themselves, no empathy for others, no caring, seems to be de rigeur, these days. It's more prevalent in adults too, to judge by everyday interactions.

If we assume that Lewisham Centre is finished for now, and that those people have gone home and seen Croydon on TV, a sense of oneupmanship will have them back on the street in half an hour.

youfs in Birmingham spotted trying to saw the bulls head off the bull ring, no clue if they have been successful.

Birminham Children's Hispital has been attacked.

I'd like to ask 100 people why they are on the streets, and see what percentage are in it for the trainers

I think it's nothing more mystical than some cuntbags rioting on the back of the shooting excuse, and then some other cuntbags realising that if a lot of them get together and just start causing shit, it's very difficult for the police to act. It's as though it's something they've just realised.

In this scenario, the normal constraints of behavior are removed due to the mob mentality and the notion of safety in numbers. It'll work too. If the aforementioned bags of cuntery melt away from where they are now, chances are they'll live to crime another day.

I really hope you're kidding.

Rumours that stuff is kicking off in Nottingham now.

MrsA's been reading twitter. Trouble in Liverpool and Wolverhampton.

Isn't there an axiom about society being three meals from anarchy? Something over the weekend seems to have provided a short cut to even that brief divide.

Stuff is kicking off in my flat. I just stole my flatmate's trainers.

Didn't they break into the tescos and attack the staff as well in brum?


Naw it's probably just a normal night in shottingham.