Grey & Once-Pleasant Land

So there are these three aspects of the mayhem that distressed me – one of them NOT that, for two whole days, British newspapers, as if in accord, expunged the ethnicity of Mark Duggan whose shooting apparently catalysed the Tottenham mob. (That was distressing enough and I was forced to perform due diligence on Google Image to confirm my hunch that he was black.)

In no particular order, the three are:

1) in Battersea, warnings to ‘Big Society’ volunteers to leave the clean-up to the council because of Healthy & Safety regulations
2) in Dalston, threats to arrest Turkish shopkeepers who lined up with baseball bats to protect their property and person, action the police force (aka service) manifestly failed to take during the initial anarchy
3) all over London, orders to the police force (aka service) to ‘stand and observe’ the looting, thuggery and murder because of fear of legal action under the Human Rights Act.


My once-pleasant country is now a once-unimaginable shambles.

***