London Riots Were Bonfire of Consumers’ Vanities: A.A. Gill

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-12/london-riots-were-the-bonfire-of-consumers-vanities-a-a-gill.html

I know what caused it, if you’re interested. Despite the wisenheimers’ head-scratching, garment- rending, finger-wagging and tooth-sucking, I actually do know the reason that out of the clear blue sky we were afflicted with a Biblical, mythological, medieval plague of rioting.

(Don’t you agree, by the way, that of all the retrospective experts’ tropes and tics, it’s the tooth-sucking that’s the most offensive?)

It was all the fault of the clear blue sky. It was hubris what done it. We’d actually begun to believe our luck had changed, that we’d cracked the fate thing, the auguries were all promising.

We’re not in the euro area -- phew. We’ve dodged the U.S. downgrade. All the government’s “cuts with care” seem to be slowly working, or at least not not working. There’s a scintilla of growth. The coalition government felt grown up, the Olympics construction is coming in ahead of time and budget, even the bloody old weather was good. And England is beating India in the test series, we’re to about become top nation at cricket, and that’s never happened in living memory.

UK riots: Paul Lewis's five-day journey

Paul Lewis charts the journey from the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan to civil unrest on a grand scale

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/12/uk-riots-paul-lewis-five-day-journey?CMP=twt_gu

Incendiary prose.

'That state of deprivation though is, of course, the condition that many of those rioting endure as their unbending reality. No education, a weakened family unit, no money and no way of getting any. JD Sports is probably easier to desecrate if you can't afford what's in there and the few poorly paid jobs there are taken. Amidst the bleakness of this social landscape, squinting all the while in the glare of a culture that radiates ultraviolet consumerism and infrared celebrity. That daily, hourly, incessantly enforces the egregious, deceitful message that you are what you wear, what you drive, what you watch and what you watch it on, in livid, neon pixels. The only light in their lives comes from these luminous corporate messages. No wonder they have their fucking hoods up.'

The point is that society really ought not expect much from those who are excluded from its benefits.