British riots

Photo : Lindsay Parnaby The Guardian

The Department of Youth needs to be shut down and shut up. The service is being hammered from all sides and we need to get behind the police and support them in any  positive way we can because they are out there in the front line dealing with what is open warfare. This is not just a riot. Buildings are being torched. People are being stripped, bashed and stolen from, shops are being pillaged and no one is safe from harm. There is a trail of destruction, fear and havoc. War has been declared and the warriors are out to get what they can. They are very well organised. They are using the means at their disposal and the rest of Britain is getting out their brooms and cleaning up after them. The police are the police. They are doing their best and they are fairly skilled at managing mayhem and dangerous situations but this is bigger than that. So blaming the police is just a decoy tactic. Blaming the government is the same. The government is elected from within the society which has now gone to war on itself. Rebellions are always about limiting authority , undermining it and destroying it where they can. Sometimes it can be for a just cause when the consensus of opinion is settled upon. I doubt anyone is going to say this is just. They are attacking their own neighbourhoods. They are making places unliveable for people. They are burning their bridges as they burn everything else. 

"The events this week will undo years of work to regenerate the estate and restore the confidence of residents in their safety. Early on Tuesday morning, the estate resembled a desolate wasteland."

Pembury Estate

Some people are sitting there as I am in the safety of their country and home thinking this is Britain. Is it? How many people are actually responsible for this? How many people are actually creating hazardous and vile conditions for their neighbours? You just have to give me your best guess. This is not England. This is a group of well organised people who maybe should go to Afghanistan if they really want to go battle but I doubt the Army would take them. So it must be the fault of the police. Must be the fault of the government. Must be the fault of the welfare state. Must be someone's fault. What about theirs? I listened to two 14 year old girls on the news saying they were having a good day and had lots of things they had taken from the shops and they'd probably go back tomorrow. Pays to advertise, but not on national and international news if you are breaking the law and ought to be in school. Then I had to wonder how this was "good" and what kind of values they had come by.

Where there really is social injustice and horribly difficult living conditions, where there really is a deep concern in people about their lives and their future, there is silence. Look at Somalia and Japan. Those people have real issues to deal with and they are of mindboggling proportions. They are going from one hour to the next and one day to the next and they are doing whatever they can to make things better for themselves and their community.

We can thank England for showing us what the Department of Youth can do. Right now it's in Britain. Are you sure it would not be anywhere else? The masked gangs are always there. The G20 the G this or that...out come the masks, the mayhem and the blind violence. Whatever their reason , whatever their cause, they need to be shut down and shut up. We cannot live like this.