Left-Wing Media Struggles Manfully With Disappointment…

…as follow up riots fail to materialise on the anniversary.

First up, the ‘Guardian’. And we must look to the comments to sum up this article:

Wessexboy

Hardly surprising that a study sponsored by the Guardian and the LSE has blamed everyone for the riots except the rioters.

Well, quite!

Widespread anger and frustration at the way police engage with communities was a significant cause of the summer riots in every major city where disorder took place, the biggest study into their cause has found.

And who did they interview to find this little nugget?

Hundreds of interviews with people who took part in the disturbances which spread across England in August revealed deep-seated and sometimes visceral antipathy towards police.

Fancy that! Well, you could knock me down with a feather! Criminals aren’t too keen on the people who aim to stop them committing criminal acts, eh?

Of those interviewed in the Reading the Riots study, 73% said they had been stopped and searched in the previous 12 months.

Another shocker! Known bad ‘uns are more likely to be stopped by the police! Clearly, money well spent on this study, eh?

Meanwhile, The ‘Indy’ thinks that hearing the words directly out of the mouths of the street trash poor unfortunate victims of society will do the trick. So meet Karl Lokko:

Dear Society, my name is Karl Lokko. I'm a young man from south London. In the sight of many of you I may be considered a nobody – you may have walked past me on the Tube or been stood next to me at the bus stop and had your nose so high in the air you couldn't see me. You may not have seen me then, but lend me your attention briefly now....

No chips on shoulders on display there, then…

The alcoholic that sleeps in the park is a human being just like me and you; that cocaine addict in the shelter is a human being just like me and you – they just took a wrong turn. Since when did we penalise an individual for being lost?

We don’t. We penalise them when they break the law.

Some of my peers have made your headlines, your front pages, your tea-time discussions, all for the wrong reasons. And because of the places they have wound up, you feel you have the right to give them labels. You call us hoodlums. Scoundrels. Monsters. Dogs. Animals. But you only know about the incident that got them in the headlines, not the incidents that led them there.

Wrong. We don’t care about the ‘incidents that led them there’. They’ve all got their excuses, their sob stories, their ways of avoiding personal responsibility.

Mostly, they blame it on ‘society’, as if th…

Oh. Right.

Society is supposed to act as everyone's guardian, but society's neglect of the underprivileged has created what you now refer to as "monsters".

*sigh*

From a young age I lacked self-esteem. I was bullied, which contributed to my feeling of worthlessness.

Maybe it’s not just a feeling. Maybe you really are worthless?

Yes I broke the law, but society helped in the breaking of my identity and instead of taking the time to fix it sensitively and with love, all that is thrown at it are more police and more money.

Why would society want to furnish you with love and sensitivity when you can’t fit in to it? No-one’s that daft that they…

Oh.

I myself was a lost child, broken and travelling a road of destruction en route to either death, lifelong incarceration or the mental institution. But I received the right directions from genuine, loving, sincere people like Pastor Mimi and Camila and her team at Kids Company.

Say no more!

Not to be outdone, the ‘Guardian’ invites Daniel Edu to join in the pity party:

"People like you … " These three words, as innocent as they might sound, should be the epitaph for last August's riots. It was 3am when the police barged into my house to search for stolen goods. "We've seen hundreds of people like you before, just tell us where the stuff is and don't waste our time," they said. I had nothing to hide. I stood by and watched them hunt for something that wasn't there.

And why did they raid your house? Mistaken identity, was it?

I gave my side of the story in court and explained that I'd left my house to see all the madness on TV in real life – it looked like history in the making and I didn't want to miss out. I'd followed others into a shop for five minutes and had no intention of stealing anything. I left of my own accord. Emptyhanded.

Well, of course you did…

The judge told me he didn't believe me.

Fancy…

There’s always a jury though. Sometimes, they’ll buy it.

I was released in the end after being found not guilty on all charges.

And now?

Like many of my friends, I still feel the police represent a community that doesn't include me. No one could understand why rioters targeted their local areas, but on that night the shops were owned by the police who had forever targeted us with stop and searches. On that night, the shop I went into wasn't the shop I know well where I regularly speak to the owner. There's rarely a day goes by when the thought of being sent back to the place where they kept me doesn't go through my mind. I live an honest life and have a job. I live by the law. But I know that sometimes isn't enough for people like me.

Have you been dawnraided since? No?

I guess that job and living that honest life are just coincidental to that?