Originally Posted by mojopinuk

I was in London on Friday and arranged to meet with my friends cousin. He picked us up, invited us into his house, let us take a shower etc after travelling through the night on the coach and then we went and caught something to eat in a little cafe in Hackney. I left on Saturday morning, so just a matter of hours before people really started taking to the streets with force and it is genuinely rather upsetting to be at home watching the very same street I had just left behind being pulled to pieces over the next couple of nights. My friends cousin and his girlfriend had, by this point, locked themselves inside their house.

I don't doubt that theres root causes for unrest and reasons to be angry but I'm sorry, I just won't accept that there are reasons for this kind of behaviour. Certain sources will offer the shooting of the young man days previously by police officers as a "reason" for all this, most sources blame the general state of the country politically and economically for young people up and down the country feeling desperate and angry. There are very few options out there, I understand that well. It is annoying, it can really get in your head and make you mad but none of these things are excuses for what people are doing.

Breaking into, setting fire to and robbing businesses has nothing to do with politics. Attacking people in the street has nothing to do with politics. Confronting and attacking police officers in large numbers, burning down peoples businesses and homes and knowingly looking to scare and intimidate have nothing to do with politics. It's just violence and criminality. Watching all of this unfold, and reading all I could about it, in no way made me feel proud to be English. I dont want to say it made me ashamed, but you're damn right I'm ashamed of those responsible and the harm they are doing to our country.

I do however think it's important that we take any positives we can. Groups of people out on the streets preparing for more nights of rioting from these morons, vowing to defend their communities, may be a strategy with many obvious flaws but it certainly is admirable. Reports of elderly immigrants chasing rioters from their premises and their businesses, defending what it is theirs and the communities around them, while British National citizens are doing all they can to tear it down are truly heartwarming stories to read. London restaurant owners and chefs chasing yobs with rolling pins while finding customers safe places to stay or getting them out safely is another example of good, honest people pulling together.

And these people are true legends. I have so much respect for the large numbers of people who felt the best way to respond to this the very next morning was to get back out on the streets, pick up a broom and start to clean up their city.

These dim-witted, thieving, selfish, delusional, misguided, mind-numblingly stupid fucking stains on humanity make me feel somewhat ashamed of this country, but the large majority of everyone else rallying together around it remind me why I am still proud to live here.