Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

Riot police in Gloucester

Living in a York with no Internet and little access to BBC News (our TV alternates between best coverage of Channel 4 and ITV and is mostly used for gaming), I only heard about the riots plaguing city streets across the country two days ago. Once we had finally managed to tune into the BBC however, the news coverage made compulsive watching.

I could not understand what was going on.

As a fairly liberal-minded and left wing student, I usually find myself sympathising with the various causes protesting about whatever they want at any given time; this, however, is not protest. This is just violence for the sake of it. In the slightly paraphrased words of a favourite film character of mine, it seems like some people just want to watch the world burn.

I find myself, making use of my newly acquired Internet, trawling through news story after news story, trying to find something, some motivation – any action that makes any sense to me in all this ridiculousness. There were a few stories that stuck in my mind.

Some girls in Croyden apparently boasted that in the riots on Monday night they were showing the police and “the rich” that they “can do what they want”. This is stupid for a large number of reasons. Firstly, these girls were drinking looted wine, obviously not hiding their faces… going to be arrested much? Yes, my dears, you may be able to steal wine from a shop rather than buy it (because obviously things like that are automatically your right and you shouldn’t have to work for them like everybody else) but that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to get reprimanded for it. Anybody can do what they like, we don’t need to have riots to prove that, the point is that there are consequences to our actions, and that usually deters people. Most people would rather earn money and buy things than risk a criminal record.

Secondly, and this kind of ties into the point above, in what way are you showing the “rich” what you can do? The majority of “rich” people have money because they have, wait for it, earned it. They also had a choice whether to earn money or be lazy and just take stuff, they just chose to get a job and work for the advantages money can get them. In a word, all you are showing the “rich” my love, is that you can get arrested. In fact, most people will be gladder you have affirmed their life decision to earn money, rather than intimidated by you doing what “you want”. I don’t want to be offensive, but basically it proves they are cleverer than you.

What really disturbed me though, was the news that rioting had spread to my home city of Gloucester. A relatively small Cathedral city, it was like reading that rioting had spread to Wells, or Cambridge. It was bizarre. I mean, come on guys, I know Gloucester’s not a particularly nice place to live, but please, what is the point? The point, according to one boy, was to “get” the police. According to a local news site, one boy yelled out that he had “done his job today” because he had “hit a police officer”. Oh, for God’s sake, grow up! Grow up, get a job and stop pestering the police with your petty boredom. While you are forcing the police to play with you, their time is wasted and they cannot be helping to tackle actual crimes.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not normally so pro-police. I especially don’t like feeling like I’m agreeing with the government. But against such blatant stupidity from these rioters, I don’t feel like I have much choice.

Maybe that’s one good thing to come out of all this. These rioters are uniting the rest of society against them. The rest of society who may have previously been divided on many issues – maybe with this unified front we might actually be able to get something done about it.

The views expressed in this article are of the author alone and do not in any way reflect the views or attitudes of theyorker.

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