London Riots 2011…

I’m disgusted, ashamed and embarrassed to be a Londoner. 

I work hard and have done all my life – trying to better myself every step of the way with the opportunities presented and I’m surrounded by other people doing the same.

Never forgetting for a moment the struggles my grandparents went through when they first came to London, England – The Mother Land – from their native Jamaica.  Coming here for a better way of life only to be greeted by hate and abuse and shut out of the very society they were led to believe they were a part of back home through colonization. 

When my grandfather came here he couldn’t rent a room, couldn’t get a bank account and could barely get a job.  Suffered racial abuse daily but still managed to buy a house and hold down a job by saving up money in a ‘pardna’.  He suffered hardships and difficulties the youth of today wouldn’t even know where to begin to comprehend.  But he struggled through raising his family here to the best of his abilities.  When he was alive I was reminded that things have changed greatly since when he was first here – but there is still a way to go.

The violence that has erupted on the streets of London over the last few days upsets and angers me because it is incited by greed.  Hoards of youth running around stealing trainers, computers and mobile phones.  I’ve been told to see the bigger picture and it’s about them fighting the system and the attitude of the police towards the youth and ethnic minorities.  If they have a problem with the police and the government and the “system” why are they shitting where they eat?  Why not take this fight to the doorstep of your local Police Station or Downing Street or Parliament or run amuck through

Oxford Street

?  Places where the powers that be will have to take note and listen sharpish to your voices.  Because they’re not stupid – trash any of those areas and they will be water cannoned or shot or hogtied before you can fart.  If people have points to make and concerns to voice, now is the time else this will have all been pointless and all this chaos is going to do is set the divide between the disenfranchised youth and the rest of society even further apart. 

The only victims of this madness so far have been innocent hardworking people – small business owners, homeowners and terrified residents afraid for their homes and their safety.  Once the dust finally settles and the cost of these riots has been calculated Council Tax and Insurance costs will soar, house prices will fall and these same already deprived inner city areas, will have even less funding for regeneration and an even bigger lack of investment for the future.

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