English Riots (with retrospect)

It was vile sitting in our hotel room in Washington as information slowly filtered through, initially it took a long time for any accurate details to reach us. There was little coverage on America news networks (who seem to believe that the world does not extend beyond the fifty States), until the very last days of rioting. All information we could obtain was via the Internet and those social networking sites where blame was positioned for mobilising these idiots in the first place; even the usually accurate BBC news website seemed to play down the whole thing. Earlier in  the week we had visited the 9/11 Ground Zero Museum and workshop, and the images of a Nation attached (even from within) were very pertinent.

The whole thing was characterised by the image below of a lady jumping from a burning during one of the first nights of violence and looting.

We were seeing familiar areas being destroyed and of course thought of loved ones living & working in close proximity to the violence. We all felt numb and detached being away form the UK at this time, matters were certainly not helped by the seeming impossibility of obtaining any accurate news reporting.

A terrible time.

Whilst the aftershocks continue, there seems to be a general return to normality, we returned to our Green and pleasant land on Sunday and saw little evidence of burnt out buildings and anarchy travelling back to the Midlands from Heathrow. Thankfully Staffordshire was not affected; unusual as a County we are usually all to keen to jump on any band-wagon, if a little slow. Bearing that in mind perhaps our teens will kick off in  a month or so, just as things have truly died down?

Of course the true English character rapidly came through once dawn broke, bringing the arrival of hundreds of riot wombles to clean up their communities, redressing the balance in contradiction to the very small percentage of yobbo's.