News from England

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A friend of mine with whom I hung out when I lived in Stoke-Newington just wrote me about the rioting. Now, Howie is a long-time resident of Stokey, who lived in squats for much of the eighties when he was playing in punk bands -- in other words, this isn't a rich aristocratic looking down his nose at the masses from his mansion:

"Stokey's ok I think. Hackney Central copped it a bit. I'm so ashamed of how my country looks. Buildings that escaped the Blitz have been burned down by these little shits. This ain't about poverty. It's opportunistic greed. Poor people don't steal Nike's. They make them for a buck a day. It ain't about politics. The Brigado Rossi didn't clean out the corner newsagent. These fucks ain't never, and will never work, they claim the dole and the rent, and hold their hands out for more. Then they do this to their own communities. Shopkeepers are getting tooled up now and defending their patch."

Comments

  1. Silas Barta2:41 PM

    Now, Howie is a long-time resident of Stokey, who lived in squats for much of the eighties when he was playing in punk bands -- in other words, this isn't a rich aristocratic looking down his nose at the masses from his mansion

    Wow, those are some good qualifications to refute a charge of elitism! I'm sure no one ever suffers a sharp rightward shift in worldview a quarter century after their youth.

    What _is_ your friend's homeownership position, by the way?

    (This isn't to defend the rioters or disagree with that quote; I just thought that was a strange way to cast him as an authority on this.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. gcallah2:44 PM

    I'm not saying he was an "authority," your doltedness. I'm just giving his background.

    "What _is_ your friend's homeownership position, by the way?"

    It's really none of your business, but last time I stayed with him he was renting a very small flat that did not even have its own toilet (there was a shared toilet in the hallway).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Pedro9:42 AM

    Daniel Hannan is more or less of the same opinion as your friend:

    "(...) a surprising number of people will break the law if they can be reasonably certain of getting away with it. (...) The trigger was not a power cut or an earthquake, but the television images of police in Tottenham standing by while shops were plundered. (...) What we saw, in other words, was not some howl of protest against the system "

    Here's the link:

    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100100793/ed-miliband-wants-an-inquiry-into-the-causes-of-the-riots-let-me-save-him-the-trouble/

    ReplyDelete

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