Firstly, I’d like to apologise in advance. There may be some swearing in this post as I’m so angry!
Everyone who knows me, knows I’m a very opinionated woman, with very strong values. I find it difficult to accept that other people can’t have good values or morals as I don’t think it’s that hard, nor do I think you necessarily need to be raised with these morals and values.
I didn’t have the very best start in life. I suffered abuse and neglect. I was taken into care aged 3 and I never felt loved as a child, in fact, I rarely felt ‘liked’. I had a very low self-asteem and I thought I’d amount to nothing. I lived on my own in a bedsit at 16 or 17 still under social services ‘care’ and was deemed ‘institutionalised’ and ‘at risk of being overly dependant on men’. I dabbled in drugs, committed some petty crimes and ended up pregnant at 17.
In fact I was a single mum of 2 by 19 and living in a flat on the 8th floor of a tower block on a shitty council estate.
None of this is an excuse to raise my kids like feral animals.
Last Thursday, Specialist officers from Operation Trident were involved in the pre-planned attempted arrest of a man from Tottenham, 29 year old father of 4 Mark Duggan, which led to him being shot dead by police. There are allegations of the family having to wait 36-48 hours to see the body as well as other issues between them and the police. I don’t want to speculate on the death of this man as I really don’t know the cold hard facts.
Do I think the police were justified? My thinking is that he must have been under surveillance for some time and he ‘allegedly’ had possession of a handgun, and I do believe in ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’. If someone chooses to carry an illegal firearm, they have to be willing to use it. And somewhere down the line someone will shoot at them, whether it be the police or another criminal.
Do I think he fired it at police? I don’t know, though evidence suggests not.
Do I think the police can make mistakes? Of course. They are human the same as the rest of us.
The bottom line is that because of this, the family and friends of Mark Duggan and approximately 300 people had begun a peaceful protest to demand answers from the police, this erupted into violence…
From there it seems, every youth in London that claimed to be ‘disadvantaged’ has jumped on the bandwagon and instigated violence and vandalism across our country’s Capital city.
Many town centres have been destroyed… shops smashed up, looted, and raised to the ground. Cars smashed up, overturned and set alight. Bricks and missiles being hurled at the police.
There is no reason for this now, I keep hearing phrases like ‘mindless vandalism‘… this isn’t mindless!! It’s a premeditated, pre-planned operation! Kids have been using BBM, Facebook, Twitter and suchlike to organise rioting and looting across our great capital and the police just haven’t had the manpower on the street to deal with it! People are frightened, youths are going feral and there seems to be no stopping them.
Here is a video of an injured Malaysian student. Ashraf Haziq was attacked and robbed randomly in Barking. He is now in Hospital with a broken jaw, and broken tooth and awaiting an operation. He’d been on his way to visit a friend when he was beaten and had his bike stolen, then this happened and he also lost his mobile phone and wallet.
Please be warned, it is VERY distressing.
It’s hard to escape talk of the riots, it’s been 4 nights now and if you take a walk down any High Street in practically any town you’ll see the damage that these thugs have done. Once they finish looting they set what’s left on fire. It seems that every JD Sports, Foot Locker, PC World, music shop, games shop, phone shop, designer clothes shop etc. has been looted… Waterstone’s, the book shop has amazingly remained unscathed.
More seriously, people’s homes have been destroyed, their businesses, cars, everything. The bustling shopping areas of London look like a warzone.
These are from Barking, one of the lesser hit places.
But then amazingly, out of this devastation, a new community spirit is emerging… People are vowing NOT to allow these thugs destroy our city. Monday night, a few people on twitter decided that they were going to start something new… #riotcleanup began! Communities were coming together and planning clean-up operations everywhere that had been destroyed. Yesterday morning armed with brooms, gloves and black sacks, thousands of people came out and swept the streets clean.
The Wonderful People of Clapham!
Of course we have the fabulous Emergency Services to thank for the relatively quiet night last night, a few towns outside of London were targeted… Manchester, Birmingham and a few others, but the presence of 16000 police on London’s streets may have scared the little thugs back under their rocks!
And I HAVE to mention the wonderful Sikhs of Southall! Hundreds of Sikh men, patrolled the streets outside their Gurdwara (and also stood guard outside the local Mosque while Muslims were worshipping!) Peaceful and dignified but not willing to put up with thuggery from British youth.
The British Asians of this country showed the EDL (English Defence League) what defending England is all about!
Though the EDL haven’t done much defending at all! In fact they sat in a pub in Eltham getting drunk all day yesterday, tying up police resources as they were risking public order!
As was tweeted last night… ‘ Bloody immigration. We let these Sikhs into our country and all they do is defend our boroughs and communities’. ;0)
This brings me to add a bit of humour to the post, this wasn’t about the riots but it always makes me smile. ;0)
Memories Sew Precious 