LAW OF THE JUNGLE

I don’t normally write these little pieces of nonsense “off the cuff” as it were, preferring usually to collect what I call my “thoughts” but, after yet another night in which huge swathes of the rest of society seems to have taken to running thoughtlessly headlong into its own kind of public madness, I’m really starting to wonder whether I should bother either. If reckless, ill-thought through action and knee-jerk responses is what the country wants, then why not?

I could tell you.

Of course I could.

Yesterday morning Manchester was getting a certain amount of respect from certain quarters for not joining in with the madness seen in other cities. Not any more, though, eh? Instead of rising above such idiocy and showing the way, the idea seems to have got into people’s heads that if it’s alright for the thugs and hooligans of London to grab themselves a load of “free” consumer goods, then it must be perfectly okay to trash your own city, and to hell with the loss of homes and jobs it might bring along with it.

I had the 24 hour rolling news burbling away in the corner yesterday and watched and heard as the stories developed through the day. I saw the young girl complaining that she “never got any respect” so why should she respect the forces of law and order. Well, listening to her speak, I didn’t have any respect for her either, so no doubt she’ll be coming around to get my telly anytime now.

Respect has to be earned, sweetie, and you get it because of what you are seen to do by your thoughts and words and deeds. “Sweetie”, by the way, is used here in its ironic sense, in case you hadn’t realised...

I think what you’ve got to ask yourself is that, when you decide to sweep aside any semblence of that law and order that find is treating you so disrespectfully, and you choose to leave yourself with only anarchy instead, would that then be a place where you yourself would want to live?

After all, all that valuable stuff that you’ve just nicked for yourself would now be only as safe as you can make it yourself, and you’ve got to wonder whether you are big enough and strong enough and tough enough to protect your stuff from the bigger, stronger, tougher person who might want to take it off you.

Are you prepared to fight for your right to hang on to that iPod? Are you prepared to take the beatings? Can you bear the long, endless sleepless nights you’ll need to have to protect what you think of as “your” stuff? Do you trust your “mates” not to take it off you? Do you really have the right to claim that anything is “yours” anyway, when anything that anyone else has is considered fair game? Equally, are you prepared to create a society where your mother, father, brothers, sisters or your grandparents have to live with that kind of fear too?

Sweep away what you think of as an old fashioned idea of a force of law and you have to lose all the benefits it brings you too.

An early candidate for the most dreadful image of the day was the young lad having his rucksack ransacked as someone appeared to be coming to his aid, although the circumstances that brought both of these moments together still remained suspect. Earlier on, raging fires in London really did resemble the stock footage I’ve seen for years taken during the worst nights of the blitz, but this time it is being done by the people of this country against itself.

Then there’s the other side of the coin. Scratch the surface of a liberal and you’ll find a fascist lurking within. I heard so many calls yesterday for sanctioning the use of water cannon, issuing plastic bullets and deployment of C.S. gas, or even calling in the Army, which might very well seem like the answer to many, but an escalation of violence seldom does anyone any good and an excess of police brutality would still, hopefully, appall the vast majority. Still, when you have a police “service” which is subject to enquiries, checks and balances, instead of a police “force” you get the kind of protection you deserve. Those same checks and balances, incidentally, are what are currently being used to investigate the very incident that seems to have sparked things off in the first place.

How quickly we are prepared to sign away our civil liberties which were so hard earned by generations before us and led to the growth of what we once thought of as our civilisation.

The most depressing moment for me though came from a short interview with two seventeen year old girls that I first saw broadcast on the one o’clock news and then posted a link to on other sites because I was so flabbergasted at the ignorance on display. They were looking forward to the prospect of another night of looting and decided to justify their actions by claming that they were “showing the rich that they do what they want” and assuming that anyone running a small business was “rich” by some unfathomable and criteria that simply involved no real thought at all.

I was told that I mustn’t believe that this is a majority point of view, that these were just idiots who didn’t know any better, but they are still people I have to share the streets of this country with and, if they are the future, then it is, quite frankly, terrifying.

I did also finally find something to laugh about during the madness as it erupted again in the evening: the observation from the manager of a Waterstone’s store “We’re staying open. If they steal some books, they might just learn something.” Perhaps laughing at the cretins is the only way to shame them into realising some sense that what they are doing is wrong. Perhaps I would laugh if I wasn’t already filled with a deep sense of sadness at the senseless violence, the fear, the damage and the homelessness and the inevitable deaths now being reported.

There remains hope, of course. Enough people are so disgusted and appalled that they are coming together to do something about it, and whilst I could never advocate any kind of vigilantism, because that way does lead to anarchy and the fall of empires, the fact that communities are coming together to clean up, repair and rebuild must surely give us some hope that the tide will turn.