UK Goes Mad
August 10, 2011 1 Comment
And so I jump on the proverbial ‘bandwagon’.
My ACS Presidential predecessor of years gone by (2006-7 I think Alfred? – check his blog post on it all) told me the other day I should blog about the riots/looting/hooliganry currently engulfing the streets of England’s grey and pleasant land. I thought I’d not. But after having just returned from attempting to clean up the streets of Manchester after the thuggery moved northward, I decided to whip out my pen….keyboard!
Firstly I do not apologise for using the words: hooliganry and thuggery, for the behaviour we have witnessed over the past 4 days has been just that.
While I maintain that our country is in a sorry state, while I maintain that some young people are harassed by police, while I maintain that vital services for youth are cut and decimated; I maintain the following:
A political revolution looks like the millions who marched on Washington in 1963 to defend the civil rights of 15 million African-Americans.
It looks like the million who marched on London when we went to Iraq in 2003.
It looks like the thousands who peacefully (mostly) marched on London against the rise in tuition fees in 2010.
It looks like the thousands gathered in Tahrir square in 2011 demanding the resignation of former Egyptian president.
A political uprising/revolution/demonstration/insert other favourite word does not look like hooded gangs setting fire to Miss Selfridge in Manchester city centre with a few free clothes.
It does not look like the Bullring Shopping Centre in our 2nd city being mobbed
…and it certainly does not look like a 150 year old family business going up in flames in Croydon.
- Manchester Riot – Miss. Selfridge
- Police and the public stand outside the Bullring in Birmingham, England on August 8, 2011. Riots and looting have broken out all across Greater London and are now spreading across the country following the shooting of Mark Duggan by police in Tottenham, North London on Friday, August 8th London, England – 08.08.11 Mandatory Credit: Kate Woolridge/WENN.com
It doesn’t matter whether you are a middle class Tory with your “head in the clouds” (something similar to what I’ve heard said), a disenchanted youth who lives slightly above the bread line, or you’re an average student who is neither middle nor working class but in between. All ‘people of goodwill’, to use the phrase of Martin Luther King Jr. must see that this is pointless/mindless/ineffective foolishness!
What about the kids who want their EMA? What about the kids who hate the police?
Let’s get two things straight. This is not simply about young people (a few older folks are involved) and furthermore neither is it – irrespective of the rantings of the lunatics who assign themselves to the BNP/EDL or other senseless organisations – about race! To use the words of one Mancunian counsellor last night (9 August) ‘I’ve seen white youth, asian youth, black youth’.
At the end of the day it comes down to my personal opinion, based on the actions summed up when I analysed what I believe a true revolution/political statement to be; and it is that on the whole this is a case of people jumping on ‘hype’. Let’s be honest, most of what has occurred outside of London – outside of Tottenham for that matter – is simply a case of what one young yob said last night when he showed his face on Sky News and what some young girls in London said – an attack on the police, the so-called rich, a bit of fun and a chance to fill a vacuum of police presence!
I truly believe that most of this is ‘hype’. Equally we ought not to dismiss the concerns of many of the rioters and others r.e. cuts, but at the same time remembering that much of this is indeed mindless hooliganism, borne out of a nature that is so estranged from authority, government…and personal property!
We must look at ‘Why?’ We must do something about the deeper issue, the question is not, ‘Why don’t the government stop the cuts?’, the more prudent question is ‘Why do these people find pleasure in destroying homes and livelihoods?’
People are destroying their own communities. They are destroying homes - in any other time this would have a phrase attached to it - attempted murder.
The man with the grocery store, the man with the independent clothes shop, the lady who runs the off licences are not the rich!
It’s Mr. Smith, it’s Miss. Jones, the guy down the road who gives your mum a lift to work as he opens up his corner shop where he labours 7 days a week!
And so to conclude…
Yes the cuts are bad. Yes the removal of youth services removes access for young people. But let’s get used to it, the government are not going to do a U-turn and so it turns to us in society to engage, to start up what we can, help where we can, get engaged with young minds and be a society, a community – put the ‘Big Society’ into action!
And finally I speak to my fellow Christian brethren and to myself! What a witness we have been left with by Our Lord Jesus Christ until he returns. To love the poor, to feed the hungry, to love our neighbour as ourselves and to ‘do good to all men’ as the Apostle Paul said later on in the New Testament. Let us go forth with this mandate and share His love, His great good news and the great hope that there is in Him and him alone of knowing the one true God and serving Him in this life, in this country!
P
OUR 9/11
September 11, 2011 Leave a comment
The day, the madness, the aftermath.
9/11 served to remind us of the depth of the depravity of the human condition. Obvious point isn’t it? But back to that later.
10 years ago today I was a fresh-faced secondary school pupil undergoing the same weekly ordeal I would endure for the next 5 years – the weekly two hours of “games” where I would (pretend to) play rugby and other sports before the dinner hour.
50 metres in front of the school gates as we rush back for lunch the message filters down through the ranks of scruffy 11 year olds – “Israeli fighter jets have bombed the Empire State Building”
Needless to stay this caused quite a stir and as we proceeded through the afternoon we were in a state of wonder at what had gone on across the pond.
Alas, the day ensued and after school was another opportunity for me to (pretend to) play rugby, this time with the school team. By this time the message was becoming clearer and I was soon back at home transfixed watching Trevor McDonald make sense of the day’s now apparent dreadful proceedings.
With what was perhaps my most prolonged fascination and fixation with broadcast media surpassed only by the recent UK RIOTS, I along with millions of others watched footage of that fateful morning along with reaction and response from all and sundry.
The tragedies of that day displayed the world what the Biblical record states so emphatically throughout its pages. That human beings are inherently sinful, capable of and acting upon all manner of evil and wickedness stopping at nothing to pursue our own selfish and often sadistic desires. We saw that day that 19 men saw no problem with sending thousands to their death without a hope in such a cruel, calculated manner.
One may here rightly interject and protest that none of us (whoever us are) would have done such a thing and yes I would gladly respond to the affirmative.
But before I retreat to the bunkers of intellectual concession I go on to ask you to kindly point out that person (since they so blatantly exist) who does not think about killing others, or who never has that thought of harming another because they are by being or by action an offence to us. Which one of us thinks only good to our fellow man? Who amongst us goes days on end in peaceful bliss with all around them and with their planet? Which one of us can stand and say, ‘I am a human being, I love and never do, think or say harm’?
I thought not.
You see those men but stick out because of one main reason: The actualisation of sick dreams. The power to carry out to an end their hearts’ desire.
They but had power and opportunity to carry out their desires, but I ask were we all given the opportunity at any stage of our life to carry out the harm which we would intend upon one, a few or indeed a few thousand – would we not then see how horribly horrible natural man is. No you may not want to kill millions, but is not one life, is not one mind, not so precious that it ought to be protected with all godly infused might against malicious intent?
Many a time when that most infamous of days is spoken of it is with much reflection, much questioning and eventually much bemusement. But here in closing I would like us to use this day (and I most certainly will), not to question whether it was an inside job. Not to question the rights, wrongs and misunderstandings of fundamentalism. Not to philosophise over what makes men kill on such a monumental scale.
Butt to remember and to honour.
To remember the now grown up young child whose father died on that top floor of the north tower.
To mourn with the father who was left a widower and a lone father because his wife was to be on that flight.
To mourn with the old Afghani lady who has lost both sons and grandsons to war, ‘friendly fire’ and roadside bombs.
To remember the commuters who were on a tube one morning in London 6 years ago.
To remember that young Iraqi boy who had his family taken from him when someone thought that their life counted for nothing in that suicide attack.
This day is for the countless millions who have been directly changed by that tragic day and all which came after it. This is not the day to despair at foreign policy, this is not the day to ask ‘Why?’. This is the day where we remember, where we honour those who have gone, a day where we rally round whom we can. A day upon which we think and we pray for those who are left to pick up those million pieces of a shattered life.
P
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Filed under Social Commentary Tagged with 9/11 Iraq Afghanistan terror anniversary