DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/m3/may2008/0/7/BEA88AA6-CD00-E05E-DC329B3F5CDB68FF.jpg
Just point your hose thingys over there, ok, super.

lol
xp

Waltham Cross now says twitter.

westfield too

Mate just texted me to tell me trouble in Walthamstow High St and to stay indoors. Haven't noticed any noise, maybe it's the other end? There's a bunch of people on the corner of my road and the High St, but that's not unusual

Just saw that selbourne walk was being targeted in e17. Hearing plenty of sirens now at the top of cryPal

TimGatt Tim Gatt
by OwenJones84
Disturbances in Walthamstow. Shop "smashed up" RT @tomwilliamsisme: Police blocking off area around Walthamstow Market twitpic.com/62n3r7
10 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

Palace sirens have got to be something else surely?

think a lot of this might be bullshit/wishful thinking

just heard something is going on outside parliament http://twitpic.com/hindenburg.jpg

Matt, wind carries the sirens miles and to be honest I hear plenty most nights, just had a couple of bursts of lots though which is unusual. Right now though it's all v quiet, no plane traffic, no helicopters.

Meanwhile David Cameron has gone back to a bar in Tuscany to sort out a misunderstanding about a tip.
http://news.sky.com/home/article/16045391

i guess he's thinking, may as well use this currency as it won't be worth a damn in a week

there are reasons why maybe the PM should not be on holiday right now, but the riot isn't the biggest

http://twitter.com/#!/shobz/status/100353100778438656

http://thewestlondoner.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/breaking-riots-in-enfield-edmonton-brixton/

0017: Update via jc54322 on Twitter, Hemel Hempstead is not on fire.

0208: Yes, the kissing couple picture was from Vancouver, thanks to all pointing it out via Twitter – my fault for not checking it first!

lol http://twitpic.com/62pr98

http://twitpic.com/62pt9a

http://yfrog.com/j19kqz

http://twitpic.com/62m4ox

http://twitpic.com/62q1p0

this is pretty significant now i guess? stratford, edmonton too....someone on twitter says police w/ smgs in streatham

smgs? lol not buying that.

yah that was firsthand but signal to noise pretty lopsided right now....

A
C
A
B

All cops are bastards.

lol

i feel bad for falling asleep through it last night :/

the real root of the riots is not the cuts/coalition etc, its police brutality in the black community, an ongoing issue. so so so fucking weird to see no mention of this in any paper.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/07/tottenham-riot-community-destruction

ok i found one

guess we should get ready for more riots across london and england asap then

xp otm. that's what i was getting at last night. kind of feel like these riots are being appropriated by the ~chattering classes~.

people want to see it as a response to the coalition but its not, or rather it wasnt. most (white) people just arent aware of how deep this issue goes in the black community. they knew there was something dodgy about the shooting so they protested. other people just used it as an opportunity to start something else. im not supporting the riots nor what opportunists did but i dont really know what a more constructive way to deal with it is. fact is this sort of thing explodes periodically and i suppose this weekend was the latest explosion before it bubbles back under again.

2 phone shops... No, just passed a 3rd at Streatham Hill broken into, JD Sports ransacked in central Streatham. Honestly when I went to bed, there were dozens of reports that there wasn't rioting in Brixton so wonder what happened after I went to bed.

teenagers get some free trainers. justice is served!

i think the police being the root of this rings v true. and this is against the backdrop of an erosion of whatever authority the met had over the past few months: violence and thuggery at ground level (tomlinson, smiley culture), corruption at the top (hacking). which maybe played a role in triggering the situation to tip beyond chronic distrust into full-scale rioting?

Well, at least the powers-that-be will be gratified that The Ritz escaped attack in preference to the branch of Aldi. Did someone 'refuse' permission to use The Mall/Picadilly for the protest?

Reports of Walthamstow BHS being set on fire turned out to be wildly exaggerated, I think there was a broken window and the entrance is cordoned off. Barclays bank also had a window put through, but that seems to have been it.

Crowd of hoodies gathered on my street corner around midnight with police vans driving through sporadically, there were sirens going off til at least 3am when I finally managed to fall asleep.

these fucking kids are no anarchists sticking it to the big banking boys, they just want free shit.

why burn/break down M&S in brixton though? unless the kids were trying to get free underwear for their mums and gfs. honestly im surprised at how many areas have been looted (though tbf most of the big chains have enough money to replace their windows etc). bit worried for ppl i know who live in brixton.

That was the quietest riot I ever heard of, I slept right thru it. There's no trail of destruction over Brixton Hill. I would have expected one. (Stolen?) car abandoned on the pavement by Sainsburys tho.

RT @ChrisKeys_11: London's getting mashed cause broke n low life people needed gear. Ladies, ask ur man 4 a receipt if he suddenly gives u a gift #londonriots

xpost - rioters should be more polite, i agree.

starting to think all these tweets are made up by bad itv 'urban crime drama' writers.

(not that one specifically, that one rings true lol)

I don't know if trust in the Met has diminished significantly in the last couple of months in the places that are rioting. It has always been pretty appalling - the widespread idea that the police 'have changed' post-Macpherson might have some truth to it but it's probably overstated and not common currency in a lot of deprived areas.

The danger at the moment is that the organised rioting might spread to other areas with strongly-defined communities. There were apparently reports that Turkish and Kurdish lads were out protecting their shops around Green Lanes last night. The same might happen with Asian-owned businesses in places like Walthamstow.

I think "fuelling" is a poor choice of word, this article makes more sense to me than any of this FIND OUT WHAT THEY DOING ON THE TWITTERZ nonsense John Humphreys was babbling on about on the radio this morning: http://urbanmashup.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/the-unlikely-social-network-fuelling-the-tottenham-riots/

Well, it's the new by-word for 'the population are organising by means out of *our* control'.

Like the RAF could have been all "lol i'm bombing Dresden where U at?"....

There's no trail of destruction over Brixton Hill. I would have expected one. (Stolen?) car abandoned on the pavement by Sainsburys tho.

It's all between Coldharbour Lane and Gresham Road. RIP Footlocker.

Depressing that they had to cancel the Hackney Children's Carnival yesterday because some morons were talking up the opportunity to cause trouble there on Facebook.

Yeah the bus just went thru there. Damage is way overexaggerated, a lot of holes in windows (field day for glaziers vans there right now) but the only serious damage is the torched Footlocker. Nothing lime the scenes in Tottenham. Few anarchy symbols painted on shutters, civilisation as we know it is ended!

HMV Wood Green stripped of everything bar Cher Lloyd's new album:

http://i.imgur.com/0BBjj.jpg

hmv always looks like that or maybe just always feels like that

people want to see it as a response to the coalition but its not, or rather it wasnt.

Who is saying this though? Bit of strawmanning going on here. I only have the news and the internet to judge from here but I'm not seeing much evidence that the anger on the street is directed much higher than the Met at the moment. But recession and cuts are surely contributing factors into making an already volatile situation even more so?

Actually I think that the cuts with the biggest impact haven't happened yet - it's hardly going to help long-term when housing benefit cuts push the poorest people into poorer areas.