The riots over last week have taken a lot of people by surprise, but not everyone. People in the Youth workers, Youth Offending teams, Teachers, the police will have seen something of the chaos that we saw on the street on a day to day basis. The riots throw up many questions, but not many people in authority want to hear the answers.
We`re a capitalistic society, and what we saw this week was the feedback from the obession we have with material things and the status that they give us. But it isn`t the full picture. We have a underclass of people who dont belong, and don`t care what happens to them, that isn`t the full picture either. We have another instance of a black person killed by the police, with misinformation and legal procedures not fully adhered to inflaming communities, that isn`t the full picture either.
It`s all of them.
Not all the rioters were unemployed, not were all of them were in gangs, not all were kids, not all of them lived on estates some were graduates, professionals, students, they were all different colours but they loved the arse off JD sports.
It`s been rollercoaster for myself watching the events unfold this week. When the riots came to my town, and I was a hundred miles away it really got me very, very f**kin angry. I hated the comedy texts I got, and just felt embarrassed that it was my people doing this to their own town. Twats.
Watching the politicians fight for capital over this thing is disheartening. Hearing the Prime Minister describe social housing as "a privilege" that could be taken away I find alarming. (I`m not overly keen on evicting people over this because if things go horribly wrong for the evicted, then the council will still have to step in anyway) The rolling news, with it`s talking heads and pumped up, pompous politicians, have been more interested in displaying mugshots and addresses of the convicted has been more or less been dismissive of any kind of deep exploration into why this happened in 21st century Britain. Last night, on a phone in show, someone made a good point. Psychologists study murderers and other serious convictions to find out more about the causes behind the behaviour - not because they agree with it - they do it to understand it, in the hope that preventative measures can be taken if those same patterns are observed again and crucially, to share that knowledge with other professionals who may be better placed to see the early signs.
The cuts to youth provision through activities, youth centres and the EMA`s play their part.It just adds to the landscape of hopelessness that young people are surrounded by today.But it isn`t the reason behind the riots - its just one of them.
People are going to get locked up, people are going to get evicted and that`s the price they`re going to have to pay. I don`t agree with evicting parents when it`s their kids that have done the looting - that`s incredibly unfair. But to quote Weller,"the public wants what the public gets" and I don`t see many people being sympathetic about this.
If we as a country want to not have these things come around again, then we need to rethink the way WE live our lives. We focus on money and celebrity, we build people up to knock down in our media, our politicians were on the take, which they went to great pains to cover up, we have an organisation that bribed, blackmailed and illegally listened to conversations from the monarchy, heads of state and the police to murder victims and their families, obstructing murder cases and yet heads never roll, we have a police force who at the top were having dinner with people they were investigating and getting kickbacks in terms of gifts and jobs after retirement from the force, we have a prime minister who in his youth was in a gang who would trash peoples businesses, only to throw a wad of money afterwards to show their superiority.
This is what our kids see. They didn`t fill their heads with brands and x-factor, we did.
You buy a 12 year old a £300 smartphone or £100 trainers then wonder why you struggle to show them the value of working for £5.90 an hour when they reach 16, and blame them for not having a good work ethic. They know politicians never talk to them, they talk about them. Every bit of authority they should look up to, they don`t, because they can`t.
I don`t want this happening ever again. It was f**king embarrassing to see people who look like me and talk like me act like scavengers in the very streets I grew up in. Maybe, it`s too late for some, this is the way they`ll live their life forever and we`ll be locking them up forever - that`s nothing new - but we need to hear the voices of the ones who want a way out, not shout them down because they`ve broken the law. Once they`ve paid their debt, they need to be able to make a plan to get ahead and move forward .. otherwise guess what it`ll happen again to US .. not to the politicians but to OUR property. when they shout down someone who is trying to dissect the motivation behind the riot, they are not serving our best interests.
Personally, I think they`re twats, they`ve hurt soooo many working class people, some losing their jobs or their homes or their lives. They haven`t hurt the authority they were kicking against, they`ve hurt their own communities. But let`s learn from this, learn from them and get on with earning our daily crusts on this treadmill we call modern life.
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