Heros and Villains

Amateur psychologists will be having a field day today following an increase in the looting and rioting which is affecting London, and now, other parts of the Country.

There always seems to be a backlash from the black community whenever their brothers and the police are involved in arms related confrontations, particularly when one of their own ends up dead. Events in Tottenham which led to the death are still subject to the two sides of a story principal, but with the Broadwater Farm estate being a tinder box ready to ignite, it is no surprise that N1 felt the first tremors of unrest.

Should the police have seen it coming, well probably yes, and they probably did, but not to the extent that it flared up there, and then spread like wildfire through most of the deprived boroughs of London.

The looting portfolio surprised me though. Times are hard, and people in these run down areas are affected more than most, so I would have expected most of the looting to be centred on Tesco or Sainsburys to allow them to stock pile food and drink . interestingly it was the electrical stores and clothing outlets which people were filmed targeting, with JD Sports in particular being stripped of clothing fit for a riot!!

The fact that the usual suspects were listed on the news bulletins as being affected by rioting was again a sad indictment of the progress, or lack of it, being made in the inner city areas like Brixton, Toxteth, St Pauls, MossSide and the Bullring area of Birmingham in the thirty years or so since the last great uprising. It is interesting that the youths at the vanguard of those riots are now probably parents in their own right. I wonder whether they fell responsible or let down?

There seems a great will on behalf of the man and woman in the street to not allow these riots to devastate their own neighbourhood. The social networks which are thought to have allowed mobs to congregate in the first place are now being used equally effectively by the Joe Public clean up squads which are being formed in Croydon, Hackney, Bethnal Green and other areas to minimise the damage and debris.

With the police now assessing the use of rubber bullets as a deterrent, I would rather see the Cheshire Regiment or a few Para's just back from Afghanistan let loose on the so called British citizens whose freedom they have been six months protecting. That would clear the streets pretty quickly.