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If I was a shopkeeper, I'd store all visible merchandise away, maybe in a back room or personal home. Then I'd break the windows and trash the place to make it look like it's been looted already.
It's one of two things: (1) rage and a convenient target, (consider jailtime for breaking a window versus what happens if you break a policeman) or, (2) as some have pointed out, giddy opportunism.
I've found myself listening to FM 88.7 for a few months now, these events have been the main story for a day now. First thing that popped into my head was "this wouldn't happen in the states" The police and armed forces would mobilize within a day and there would be a lot of skull busting going on until everything calmed down.
I thought the same thing about our country until a few days ago. The sad thing is, the reason I thought it wouldn't happen is I believed as a nation we were well past this sort of thing, we were a civilized country where this sort of thing JUST DOESN'T HAPPEN!!! The problem is no matter where you are in the world, there are massive scumbags who will take advantage of the opportunity for criminal behaviour with little chance of repercussion and when you fail to punish criminals (our law enforcement and sentencing is a pathetic joke) as we have for so long at some point they see their chance and all hell breaks loose.
Just to update you all. The police have responded by cacelling all leave, and have on duty in London tonight 16,000 officers, 5 times the normal amount for a Tuesday. As a result, the city is fairly quiet, but the problems have now spread to many other cities. Birmingham and Manchester are the main problem areas but issues reported in West Bromwich, Nottingham, Bristol, Nottingham, and smaller disturbances in other areas. Just don't know what to make of this right now, our country is turning into a war zone!!
Glad to see you're safe though, hadn't seen a post from you in a little while. I could just imagine being there right now and seeing the rioting and fires in the streets, must be surreal.
Where is the Doctor when we need him?! Sorry. I've been watching way, way, way too much Doctor Who lately. I've gone through 5 seasons in roughly 10 days... I really hope the violence lets up soon. I also think that its sad that the news isn't really plastered all over sites, the only real news I saw about it was a piece on Gizmodo about it. If you go to CNN or MSNBC it seems like all this gets is a little snippet in the corner. For God's sake this is a first world country experiencing some nasty violence, this should be front page stuff here....
Thanks for your concern. I am about 90 minutes north of London and about an hour from Birmingham, so kind of in the middle of it but out of the danger zone at the same time. No rioting in my town yet, but apparently my area has been highlighted as a "hotspot" at potential high risk of violence if things continue. Nothing for now though thankfully.
We have 24 hour coverage on the news channels of the riots and all the news updates on regular TV are about this. Obviously the only story dominating everything here. This was one of the reasons I started this thread, to see how big a story/how other people were viewing this in other countries. Exactly what coverage are you getting? Is it even being mentioned on mainstream news programs?
I am not necessarily the best person to ask about this. My news sources are the Daily Show, CNN.com, MSNBC.com and the Colbert Report (in that order). What I'm more stunned about it that the two .com sites have little snippets in corners about it, and that's it. When Gabby Giffords was shot, we had all those sites plastered in media of that nature. Don't get me wrong, as an Arizona resident and Gabby Giffords supporter I felt it was appropriate, but shouldn't this be on the same level if not higher? Honestly, if it wasn't for this thread, I probably wouldn't have even knew it happened. I know, the S&P downgrade is also important news, but in the grand scheme of things I think the loss of life in a modern country sort of trumps that. Maybe I'm the minority in that matter...
