Monday, August 8, 2011

London Riots - The Blame Game




Wow, the proliferation of excuses for the mindless violence over the past couple of nights has been impressive even by our media's standards.

So far I've read or heard the London riots being blamed on the Coalition's "cuts", the state of the British economy, too few police on the streets, the local Chief Superintendent being on holiday, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and George Osborne being on holiday, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson being on holiday, a street festival that took place yesterday and the shooting of an alleged armed drug dealer by police.

No doubt there will be some saying all of the above are contributory factors. And some may well be, but the main omission from the list are the selfish thugs who actually committed the violence and vandalism. God forbid we should hold them accountable for their own actions. We should all be preparing to admonish ourselves just as soon as someone can conjure up a half arsed narrative explaining how the rioters can't be held responsible. How it's all down to some kind of social exclusion of democratic disenfranchisement. It's got to be down to the middle classes, and certainly the police. They keep arresting drug dealers for example. The insensitive bastards.

And of course the looting that took place must be related to financial hardship or anger at being ruled by people who didn't go to a comprehensive school. It can't be down to mindless greed and thievery.

It won't be long before it's all explained to us. Probably via The Guardian and BBC. It's at times like this I miss Hari whose social theories were as contrived as his interview quotes. But there are plenty more of his kind writing tweets and articles as we speak that will explain it all away for the poor downtrodden rioters of London.


No comments:

Post a Comment