Summer Resumed

It’s been two weeks since parts of London seemed at war. Not necessary with the police, but with their own morality. One of my colleagues is from Tottenham and lives in Enfield and he said it broke his heart to see the neighbourhood of his youth as if it were a Baghdad suburb under siege. He told us that he and Mark Duggan used to go to the same gym. It sure is different when a news story is just a news story and when that same story touches the lives of people you know. Then another colleague who I will call the Office Peculiarity as his gnome-like appearance and manner – not that I have genuinely seen a gnome in action, but imagine one with no hat and no beard who is continuously on a mild space cake and occasionally has shots of imaginary strong espresso to give him a kick- puts him in a different league of people. He tells these stories that no one really believes, but they are a form of weird office entertainment. Office Peculiarity lives in one of the neighbourhoods effected in South London and when he arrived home after an evening’s work two weeks ago he ‘looted’ the local KFC. Tory justice would probably given him a life sentence, but apparently it is not his turn yet. Now life has resumed to normal for most, for some it hasn’t as they have lost properties, livelihoods, husbands,fathers and sons. The government states police has failed – well done, Sherlock- but continues cutting police budgets. The government states that rioters and looters will face the full force of the law. So now youngsters with no previous record receive ridiculous sentences for petty crimes. Just what we need; fill our already overflowing prisons with fake criminals so real criminals remain on the streets and we make real criminals out of the fake ones inside. Then Cameron is stating that parts of our society are not broken, but frankly sick. Rather ironic that those ‘sick’ kids will receive a proper beating and former newspaper editors and executives and bankers with pretty sick practices themselves are not being dealt with at all. Well, they are actually; they remain besties with those in power. The truly sad thing is that besides a tough treatment of the symptoms no one bothers dealing with the root of the problem. If those bits of Britain are sick, do they really believe tough sentencing is the cure? Really?

For the majority of Londoners who were barely effected by the riots it’s one week left for the August bank holiday weekend. Summer’s last convulsion to show itself off as a proper summer with good weather, lots of partying and no work to think off – depending on the sort of work you do, but for a part-time office twat like me who regularly does over time at the weekends- it’s all about good ol’ summer fun. After that the summer is officially over. We can whine about the summer we were deprived of weather-wise and don’t expect any more sunshine and summer fun as it is September. Schools, colleges and unis are resuming their b*llocks and there will be something decent on telly rather than reruns of old shows.

As August is the harvest month England has reaped what it as sown. The thing is no one is taking responsibility for the sowing and while they think they cut out the weeds with tough sentencing, the roots remain. As long as they’re not to be seen we don’t care. We just wait for those weeds to bloom in full for the sh*t to hit the fan all over again. Hopefully it won’t, but some people find it difficult to learn from previous actions. Politicians especially.

top image: hovezak.com