Not To Despair

Social networking and the Internet in general have certainly changed the world in profound ways. Contact with others of like mind and inclination has never been more easeful. Accessing data generally frowned upon by polite society has never been simpler. Through FaceBook or Twitter one can readily inform crowds of acquaintances and 'friends' of proposed assignations under the very noses of municipal security dazzled by the amazing speed by which crowds gather, riot, loot, then disperse.

We're informed that it's young people from squalid ghettoes, unable to find paid employment and resentful of being regarded as inferior, and certainly outside the mainstream of society who are happily engaged in the fun of crowding night-time streets, tossing cement blocks and flaming cocktails at police, torching vehicles including police cars, then rampaging through the neighbourhoods of cowering residents to give them five seconds flat to evacuate before setting fire to their homes.

Now those are the poor people who have been impacted so dreadfully by these nights of rioting and police confusion. The people who watch, mesmerized with fear from upstairs windows as the mob slowly advances, shouting and revelling, popping into one store front and residence after another to light them afire after looting, then proceed to the next, until they've reached the incredulous onlookers realizing that they too must flee for their lives.

Making instant decisions about what to take with them, and selecting their vulnerable pets, rushing out into the streets and attempting to escape from the predations of the rioting mobs. This "pure criminality" is proceeding night after night, with the police, whose restraint the first night helped immeasurably to convince the rioters there would be no penalties for their youthful public indiscretions, have spread to other London areas and to Birmingham.

Isn't it odd that poor unemployed youth have in their possession costly BlackBerry devices enabling them to join in the game? All is not lost: Scotland Yard's new commissioner has called upon parents to restrain their offspring, to bring them back home, get them off the streets, compel them to stop making other families homeless.