Well to say its anarchy last night was an understatement. It was chaos. Rioting, Looting, Stealing, Mugging, Mass Arson, petrol bombs and overall destruction. All the belligerents are young people as young as 7 as old as 25+ Mostly teenagers from impoverished locations or families.
The riots kicked off after a man was stopped and searched in Hackney... Tensions were already high due to the events in Tottenham a couple days before when Police shot and killed Mark Dugan, after which protest ensued... in where Tottenham rioted/looted/burned etc.
The MP and Mayor are back, and now It's feeling like the country is back under control. Social Networks, Text messaging, and BBM services are all on 30min delays going live from when you post them. In an effort to slow down the rapidity of social networks being used to rally attacks by the criminals.
A Mass clean up around some of the more posh areas of London have been underway.
Rubber bullets, an additional 16,000 Police, armored vehicles deployed, talks of watercanons, curfews etc. Its like nothing i've ever seen before.
The sad part is, its moved so far away from the initial event that sparked it all off. Now its become just mindless attacks everywhere on everything. We're ALL (countries West of Dubai) in a massive economic strain, what good will burning down rows of buildings, looting shops, destroying homes, destroying stores and shops around the City, and around the country do? (Its spread from London to Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol). Talks of Manchester planning to make their move tonight.
Its terrible and massively embarrassing, especially as we are 1 year away from the Olympics. This is NOT the image of social unrest London needs nor wants to portray to the rest of the world... and as such. Only BBC in London is showing all the facets of the events that have happened where as outside of England, to the rest of the world news have been relatively mum, about it all downplaying the events.
Parliament gets back on Thursday. This week stands to be very interesting. We're on break from University, My job interview was just cancelled... So yeah... the search for a summer to winter job becomes more difficult now, because businessses are apprehensive.
I am safe, away from all of that chaos. But only time will tell, because when the government ups the ante and tensions are already high, the criminals will up their ante as well. Needless to say, my credit card is ready to be on the next train to Paris, or the next flight back to Miami.
