Feral scum - a view of the recent riots

Feral scum? Look no further than our politicians
by Anna Chem (New Internationalist, October,2011)

How was your Summer? Ours was ... um .. interesting.

If you look up the word schadenfreude and you'll likely find an image of the English riots examined by the laughing faces of Chinese, Iranians and other assorted recipients of British democracy know-how down the ages.

With only months to go before the 2012 olympics, based half an hour up the road from Hackney, one of the riot hot spots, the world takes another lurch nearer to the Twiligh Zone. Next year's British sporting spectacular has gone from being merely the austerity Olympics to the take your own life in your hands and see who comes out of this alive extravaganza.

Synchronized fleeing and dodge-the-javelin are likely to be major attractions.

The first rule of Riot Club is that you must not talk about the causes. The second rule of Riot club is ....

What was amazing was to see our politicians who had been dragged back from their August holidays, lining up in Parliament to condemn the looters at the bottom of society. MP's who had been caught with their fingers in the till wrungs their hands over the culture of greed.

If you want to study the genesis of the current cycle of "something for nothing" surely you need look no further than Mr and Mrs Freebie, Tony and Cherie Blair. It was only a short while prior to the insurrection that we'd woken up to the fact that Britain has been run by dark forces for decades. Press, politicians and police fell into disgrace as the full depth of their corruption was exposed by Hackgate. The bankers whose crisis started the recession have been laughing all the way to their annual bonuses while we turn into rats in a sack, head chickens and attention-deficit goldfish.

But now British society doesn't know whether to bang up the biggest or the nearest. And so a bystander to the riots, who picked up a bottle of water from a smashed shop was imprisoned for six months.

It feels like 1930's Germany, with a soupcon of Parisian Communard-baiting as kids are written off as "feral scum" and "rats".

Perhaps the Prime Minister, David Cameron should invite the Taliban to keep control in the Olympic village next year, much as the Hells Angels were employed by the Rolling Stones to maintain discipline at their infamous Altamont concert. After all, Cameron wanted to bring in the head of the notorious L A cops (with their record beating murder figures) for advice. So why not?

Insurrection, calls for a mangled internet and soldiers on the streets .... if I wanted an army turning on its own people, I'd go back to Tiannaman square. Rumours have it that, after years of berating them for their contempt for freedom of speech, Cameron is consulting the Chinese authorities on shutting down the social networks.

Now that is a riot!!