Monday 8 August 2011

SlowRiot for...

In which I lazily/drunkenly copy-past a few meandering thoughts from conversations had during today, and act as if a cohesive journal update is created...



Amongst the things currently pissing me off is the massively retweeted omgimsofuckingsmartandrighteousijustmightcumism that reads, more or less, "To idiots comparing [Enfield/Tottenham] to Egypt revolution: there were 2 million protesters at Cairo's Tahir square and the weren't stealing DVDs"

I'm not seeing many tweets making the comparison. Lots refuting it/them.

It strikes me that Egypt more than has eighty million people, England about fifty million, and Egypt is the better part of ten times poorer as a whole.

The media seems to be focusing on the idea that an initially peaceful protest was carried out after the police shot an alleged petty criminal and that this was then hijacked by violent thugs.

Passing reference by the Beeb -not so much anyone else so far as I've noticed- that this is one of the poorest wards in the UK (in Tottenham, not Enfield so much).

The peaceful demo may have been about the slightly suspect police shooting. The violence is about the fact that the last time anyone cared about Tottenham (not-spur) was during the last riots quarter of a century ago, and the grievances they had then haven't been addressed, and a whole new generation has grown up in the same neglected backwater.

Granted, a lot of people now are just jumping in to get free shit, and have a good ol' ruck, but that's again because they don't have much else going on...

Otherwise, they'd be at home relaxing after work, tweeting about it.