tahariel: (Arcessitor - clutching head)
2011-08-10 08:46 pm

(no subject)

A friend of mine who lives in Manchester told me this story today:


“I have just left Manchester city centre … A lady with a number of Big Issue Magazines approached me with tears running down her face. She said “I don’t want you to buy one, could you just protect me? I am so frightened.”


I really hope these destructive bastards get what they deserve. There’s a petition calling for anyone convicted of rioting in London to be stripped of benefits on the epetitions website that’s got over 78000 signatures as of 5pm tonight. My name was on there two minutes after I heard about it.
tahariel: (Obama missile)
2011-08-09 12:14 am
Entry tags:

(no subject)

A lot of people are talking about how this is just about criminality, and people feeling like they can steal things with nobody stopping them. I’m not going to disagree that that’s a huge part of this whole thing, and I'm not going to claim that this juvenile assholes are political or that they're 'protesting' anything, because they're not. But personally I think a lot of the why is this happening now is because the recession has been going on so long that we all feel weighed down by it, and that young people in this country have been told all their lives that they deserve to have a giant TV and to be famous for no reason and roll in money and have games consoles and luxury goods and not to have to work for it. And they don’t have that, because it’s ridiculous to expect that they should, but they do because that’s the way they’ve been programmed, and so they feel like they’ve been deprived of these things and so now they’re taking them because they feel like they’re owed and because of these riots they can.

We live in a culture where it’s never our own fault, it’s always somebody else’s, and it’s always somebody else’s responsibility to raise our kids to be polite or earn money or report a crime or build something good for our communities. I’m sure most of you have commented at some time or other how rude kids are these days, and how disrespectful, and selfish. And this is the result.

As ever, please feel free to disagree with me - I won't be offended! I love a good debate.

Everyone in London, please be safe and let us all know you’re okay. We didn’t let some assholes blowing us up stop us from being strong and caring about each other and working to make things better, and we shouldn’t let this stop us either.