The Right Reckless Riots

As this is a blog about the things we do, it's only fair that we record the events that affect what we do, good and bad. We are writing this 4 days after the last reported riot in London. You've probably seen pictures on the news, as it was reported worldwide, that local youths decided to riot and loot certain areas of London over the last week. One of the reasons this affected us is Sarah used to live near Clapham Junction, and it is the area we do a great deal of our shopping. On Monday, 8th August 2011, it fell victim to mindless thugs, who selfishly attacked and looted local stores, and set them on fire.

The riots themselves started in East London (like all bad things do) because a gangster was killed by police the previous Thursday- a peaceful protest erupted into looting and trashing the streets of Tottenham, but the worst bit is, by the time Clapham Junction was hit, teens were finding any excuse to riot, and for no real reason at all except 'who says no to free stuff'. The sad result was, among many other horrible things, the loss of our local fancy dress shop. The kids broke in and stole masks to hide their identities, before burning up the place- completely wiping out the entire store, and the flats above it.

The fancy dress shop on the left

Trashed Lavender Hill, Clapham Junction

Awful!

Pictures of some of the seen thugs- they wore hoodies etc to hide their identities, but were laughing and joking like they weren't doing anything wrong.

Because of these stupid kids, we've been unable to visit Clapham Junction for almost a week, but have been following the subsequent clean up of the area via friends' photos who still live there. A group called the Riot Wombles (an old English kid's show about environmentally friendly cute rat things) have been cleaning up the affected areas- the communities have been coming together to show strength over the mindless minority.

Since last week, we've heard sirens pretty non-stop around London. Work lunch breaks are spent watching police vans go by, and the occasional helicopter. Normally thriving businesses have been boarded up- making our usually nice area a bit ghetto looking, and leaving a good deal of London looking like derelict neighborhoods. Lots of small businesses have lost everything- it seems so mindless to destroy the areas you live in and love. We can only hope it's stopped for good, and we can all go back to our normal lives- and the young culprits can be caught and jailed, and scared enough never to do something like this again.