It's been headline news here for days - English politicians, social commentators, sports commentators, charity workers - all have been interviewed on radio, tv and online in Australian media outlets to 'make sense' of the apparently senseless. Today it was the turn of Conservative David Davis MP on ABC Radio; the other morning it was Labour's David Lammy (MP for Tottenham). It's been a popular topic in class, too: "could it happen here?" being an intensely contested question amongst my Year 10 classes. The answer? Well, probably, no: not least because I'm quite sure that the police here wouldn't be so hesistant about going in forcefully.
It was awful to watch the footage of the riots; especially seeing familiar parts of Croydon on fire or trashed. The images, and interviews with some of the kids responsible, brought back memories that I had conveniently forgotten in my more rose-tinted retrospective of life back home.
Here is an interesting opinion piece from the Sydney Morning Herald from a British ex-pat - and he is absolutely right about the lack of perspective amongst some Australians in the context of our current political, economic and social climate.
This blog - Penny Red - was the front page of the SMH a couple of days ago, and is a well written piece too.
I have a solution: don't lock them up in already overcrowded prisons - stick all the criminals, down-and-outs and troublemakers on boats and ship them off to some far-flung, god-forsaken country on the other side of the world....
You'd still hear them whining two hundred years later.
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