Saturday 13 August 2011

London's burning - the London riots reflect years of contempt by secular liberal fundamentalists for ordinary values


London streets have been the scene of rioting and havoc which are plainly the result, not of poverty, but of decades of contempt for ordinary human values, particularly on the part of secular liberal fundamentalists.

The innocent are punished by the riotous children of sloth, envy, greed and arrogance. The police have not handled matters ideally, either.

Events have unfolded as follows, according to London’s Metro magazine:

August 4: 29-year-old Mark Duggan was shot dead by police in Ferry Lane, Tottenham.
Officers had stopped his taxi to arrest him as part of a pre-planned operation, according to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

August 6: Around 120 people march peacefully from the local area of Broadwater Farm to Tottenham police station, demanding "justice" for Mr Duggan's family.

However the initially peaceful protest turns ugly after missiles were thrown at police, cars, and buildings and a double-decker bus are set alight by rioters.


Rioters attack police horses

August 7: The looting begins in the early house of Sunday morning, with a mob taking things from almost all the stores in Tottenham Hale Retail Park half a mile away.

Mr Duggan's family state that they do not condone the action of the rioters, which left property in Tottenham damaged and rendered a number of people homeless.

On Sunday evening, trouble flares in Enfield, North London, with further violence and looting in the high street, and in Brixton, south London, with shops and buildings ransacked and damaged.


A rioting yob kicks in a window

August 8: Reports emerge of “copycat criminal activity” in several other parts of London.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Kavanagh blames Twitter for fuelling looting and violence as the website is used to organise riots.

The Home Secretary Theresa May returns home from holiday to deal with the crisis, followed several hours later by the Prime Minister who returns from Italy.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson announces he will also return from his family holiday to help deal with the crisis.

Scotland Yard apologises to the family of Mark Duggan for the “distress” caused to them following his death. His fiancée, Semone Wilson, says the riots had “got out of hand” and were “not needed at all”.

As night falls, mayhem grips London with riots and looting on the streets of Clapham Junction, Ealing, East Dulwich, Bethnal Green, Newham, Lewisham, Camden, Enfield, Croydon, Peckham and Hackney.


A department store in Croydon is burned out

The violence also moves out of London for the first time, with thugs going on the rampage in Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham, Reading and Kent.

A 26-year-old man, Trevor Ellis, of Brixton Hill, is found with gunshot wounds inside a car in Croydon.

August 9: Scotland Yard announces it has had help from 11 other forces in policing the streets.

The Prime Minister chairs a 9am meeting of the Cobra Committee to discuss the unfolding emergency.

Acting Met Commissioner Tim Godwin calls for all special constables to be allowed on duty and announces 16,000 police officers would be on duty in London, with all leave cancelled.


A woman jumps to rescuers to escape being burnt to death

The Football Association announces that England's friendly match against Holland at Wembley Stadium, due to take place on Wednesday night, has been called off.

Mark Duggan's inquest opens and adjourns after hearing the father-of-four died from a single bullet to the chest.

The Ministry of Justice confirms there is enough room in jail for anyone sentenced to custody as a result of the violence and looting. Meanwhile David Cameron announced Parliament will be recalled from its summer break on Thursday to discuss the crisis.

Trevor Ellis, who was shot in Croydon on Monday night, dies from his injuries.

Riot clean-up sees members of the public take to the streets to clear up the damage caused to parts of London in Monday's night of violence - with the campaign quickly gathering momentum on Twitter. This “broom army” restores tidiness to many streets.

Businesses in London close early in anticipation of a fourth night of violence - but the capital remains quiet. However rioting spreads to Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Wolverhampton and Gloucester.

A police station in Nottingham is fire-bombed by a group of 30 to 40 men. Cars are burnt and shops looted in West Bromwich and Wolverhampton.


A bus is set alight and explodes

August 10: A murder investigation was launched after three young men died after being hit by a car while trying to protect their community from rioters in Birmingham.

Tariq Jahan, whose 21-year-old son Haroon Jahan was killed alongside Shazad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31, made an emotional, dignified plea for the violence to stop.

Police charge a number of people for using social networking sites to incite others to commit acts of disorder.

Boris Johnson calls on the Government to reconsider plans to reduce police numbers in the wake of the widespread rioting.

The first people to be arrested during the riots are fast-tracked through the courts, with judges sitting around the clock in order to hear all the cases. Among the first to be convicted is Alexis Bailey, a primary school learning mentor from South London.


A "hoodie", a youth wearing a hooded top so that he cannot be later identified, walks past a burning car

David Cameron insisted the "fightback" by police was succeeding adding that contingency plans were in place for water cannon to be available at 24 hours' notice. He said: "It is clear there are things that are badly wrong in our society".

Six forces - the Metropolitan Police, West Midlands, Nottinghamshire, Avon and Somerset, Greater Manchester and Gloucestershire - drafted in extra officers from other constabularies amid fears of a fifth night of violence.

The streets of London and other cities affected by the riots remain calm.


The burnt out department store

August 11: Parliament is recalled to discuss the emergency and Mr Cameron vowed to do “whatever it takes” to restore order to the streets.

He announced £30 million in central government funding to help businesses get back up and running and councils to clear up the riot damage.

An 11-year-old girl appears in court charged with criminal damage after she was caught with a group of youths smashing store windows in Nottingham.


An anarchist sloganises and waves the Black Flag of the Anarchists.
The "small print" on the sign says "One War - Class War", the cry of every Marxist or anarchist revolutionary

A murder investigation is launched after Richard Mannington Bowes, 68, who was attacked by rioters as he tried to put out a fire during the riots in Ealing on Monday, dies in hospital from his injuries.

The IPCC appeal for witnesses to come forward a week after Mr Duggan's death.
Scotland Yard said a total of 1,009 people had been arrested in connection with violence, disorder and looting in London since Saturday, of whom 464 have been charged.

Greater Manchester Police said they had so far made 147 arrests in connection with the riots and more than 70 people had already appeared in court.


The Right "Honourable" Harriet Harman MP
blames it all on government "cuts" - cuts that became necessary because of the waste and mismanagement of the spendthrift government of which she was deputy leader and, for a time, interim leader


The Rt Hon Harriet Harman MP, Deputy Leader of the British Labour Party, comes from an upper class family and has no idea about living in poverty or on the margins of society. She is a radical, “pro-choice” Feminist of the most typecast kind and a typically rich, self-interested “champagne Socialist”. Her aunt was Elizabeth Pakenham, Countess of Longford, and her cousins include writers Lady Antonia Fraser, Lady Rachel Billington, and the Hon Thomas Pakenham, 8th Earl of Longford, all theoretically Catholic.

Harman attended a fee-paying public (i.e. private or "preppie") school, St Paul's Girls' School. In 1982 she was found in contempt of court by Mr Justice Hugh Park - see Harman v The Home Office [1983] 1 AC 280, the conviction for contempt being upheld on appeal.

Documents were released by the Home Office for use in court, Harman having indicated that she well knew that she was forbidden, by her implied solicitor’s undertaking, not to use them outside court.

Instead, she handed some of the documents to a journalist to use and, when he used them to criticise the Home Office, Harman was accused of contempt and found guilty.

She appealed to the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords and lost. Her appeals were dismissed and she remains a convicted contemnor.

She seems to fit neatly into the category of persons whom Bob Dylan criticised when he sang of "law-breakers making laws".

Now she claims to tell us that the riots are not due to crime, injustice or immorality but rather to "cuts".

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