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Yes, I'm angry
Aug. 10th, 2011 07:19 pmMy building was safe, and so were my colleagues, at least the last time I saw any of them at 5 pm. But the nearest looting last night was a hundred metres away, and a shop I often go to to buy my lunch had been smashed up by looters looking for alcohol. That faceless Big Corporation shop isn't faceless to me. It has staff I see often enough to recognise if I saw them on the street, staff who were busy putting their shop back together this lunchtime. The shop that's a local corner shop for several hundred people who work and live in the area, some of whom were showing their support today by being in there buying their groceries.
The route I walked along in reasonable safety to get to my bus last night was this morning a scene of broken glass, and this evening shops were being boarded up for safety *before* the looters arrive. There were more local shops along the route that had been targeted, some individually owned, some big corporation, all of them just serving their local community. Not selling that wonderful excuse of "goods poor people can't afford to buy", but basic staples like bread and milk -- and a pack of beer to go with the evening meal, which is what made them targets.
It was organised looting in Manchester last night, it was being deliberately organised yesterday afternoon by some of the local gangs in order to loot for profit, and I was bloody lucky not to get caught in it. Some of my colleagues had to run from looters when they were simply waiting for their bus home. Some of my colleagues live in flats above shops which were targeted by looters, and were scared there'd be a petrol bomb chucked into the shop. These aren't the rich fatcats who are supposedly the righteous target of the mob, these are people who get paid 16k a year, and that's with Manchester weighting. So I am really not in the mood to listen to justifications based on blaming your favourite political targets and excusing the looters' actions, and if you want to try that on this blog you can fuck right off. Yes, we need to tackle the root causes, but I've seen far too much utter crap in the last 24 hours that didn't just say we need to tackle the causes, but pushed the line that the looters shouldn't be blamed for their actions. And then blamed the victims for being upset by this.
The route I walked along in reasonable safety to get to my bus last night was this morning a scene of broken glass, and this evening shops were being boarded up for safety *before* the looters arrive. There were more local shops along the route that had been targeted, some individually owned, some big corporation, all of them just serving their local community. Not selling that wonderful excuse of "goods poor people can't afford to buy", but basic staples like bread and milk -- and a pack of beer to go with the evening meal, which is what made them targets.
It was organised looting in Manchester last night, it was being deliberately organised yesterday afternoon by some of the local gangs in order to loot for profit, and I was bloody lucky not to get caught in it. Some of my colleagues had to run from looters when they were simply waiting for their bus home. Some of my colleagues live in flats above shops which were targeted by looters, and were scared there'd be a petrol bomb chucked into the shop. These aren't the rich fatcats who are supposedly the righteous target of the mob, these are people who get paid 16k a year, and that's with Manchester weighting. So I am really not in the mood to listen to justifications based on blaming your favourite political targets and excusing the looters' actions, and if you want to try that on this blog you can fuck right off. Yes, we need to tackle the root causes, but I've seen far too much utter crap in the last 24 hours that didn't just say we need to tackle the causes, but pushed the line that the looters shouldn't be blamed for their actions. And then blamed the victims for being upset by this.