London riots - the reason why...

Like Columbo after asking "one more thing' or Sherlock Holmes standing up after his third pipe Richie Littlejohn has cut through the smoke of burning furniture and the fog of looting to nail down the root cause of the madness that's engulfed the country over the last few days.

Unfortunately he's hidden this pearl of wisdom in an enigma of random thoughts each purporting to have some vague link to the last one. It's like reading the notes from a nutjob's word association test.

It seems to all stem back to an Ikea opening that went wrong in 2005. This is obvious because it's just down the road from where the fighting kicked off and therefore there must be people who got a bit pushy for a cheap occasional table involved in trying to burn down Tottenham. This angry shopper theory is much more likely than there being a link to the riots that actually occurred in Tottenham in 1985. The riots that were probably attended by the parents of today's looters who told stories about their night of notoriety - their one big night where they mattered and people sat up and paid attention to them.

Or maybe not. Dick explains how it might actually be down to racism - not the BNP type that he hates so much but the Turkish or Albanian on Black racism - brown on black - which shows they're as bad as the BNP themselves. Then he goes on to explain how it's down to unemployment, or really it's benefit scroungers who don't want to work like the upstanding Polish who come over here willing to work and in no way stealing our, erm, shops.

Or it could be flooding deprived areas with money instead of razing them to the ground, or a culture of greed or spiritual poverty or magic for all he knows. He doesn't care what the cause is really, in fact it's an exciting time for him. This is the day he's been waiting for to show the people he's right, we really are going to hell in a handcart.

Sniff these...

What's obvious to most people is that the violence has nothing to do with the shooting of drug dealer Mark Duggan. This incident was the catalyst that many bored and greedy kids were searching for in order to add a little excitement into their empty lives. Lives that normally revolve around getting caned and finding excuses to have beef with other no-marks. People who want to be rich but don't want to start by cooking fries in McDonalds. People who've realised you don't need to? The first night of violence showed that if you took a bit of a risk you could get away with plasma TVs and crap trainers for free; the coppers couldn't keep up with it all. Isn't that what life's about? Taking risks to make cash, everybody has the right to be rich, take what you want - not what you need. Just because you didn't know or care what was happening when you were at school that's no reason you shouldn't be successful. Setting up a small business giving local people what they want - crack or hookers - gets you the cars and cash and you never have to go near a name badge or mop.

The Broadwater farm riots of the 80s were provoked by social inequality, poverty and racism, they were an expression of anger and a desire for revenge against sleights both real and imagined. The riots of 2011 haven't been provoked by anything political or social they're an expression of a desire to have a laugh, be a big man and get whatever you want.

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Journalism in action

The funniest thing Richard Littlejohn's ever written was in his column this week.

About halfway through his rant against the police - he has got it in for the police for some reason, maybe he's been done for speeding or he's dreading a 6am knock at the door and scrambling to flush who knows what down the U-bend - he pulls this rabbit out of the hat...

"...yesterday when I was checking the facts and figures behind the liquid bomb plot..."

Litllejohn checking the facts and figures. Classic, he's a cad that fella.

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Big Dick joins the fight

Earlier this week I blogged about the the schools sports day fiasco as reported in the Mail. Obviously the big swinger himself read this (Ahem) took the theme and ran with it, like the big fat asthmatic pudding his photo byline depicts.

Like most things in his Broken Britain vision of the world kids not running in a race is down to Elf n safety and/or Yuman rites however the local education spokesman wouldn't say which, probably because he wasn't asked. Salt was rubbed into the wound by replacing the Egg & Spoon race with an Egg balancing competition; which is exactly what an Egg & Spoon race is isn't it?

The headmaster, Chris Knowles, of the school in question is furious - really furious, not pretend furious like the made up parent that was quoted in the Mail story. He defends the accusations of lazy kids guzzling Irn-Brew, sitting on their backsides and paedo paranoia with a straight bat, but there's one thing that really gets his goat. They only went and bloody used a photo of the wrong school, amateurs.

To deliver his revenge Mr Knowles is releasing the big dogs on the Daily Mail. Some of the kids intend to write to the editor letting him know of their disgust at the way their school's been portrayed. There's a big risk they'll get missed though. The number of badly spelled pieces written in green crayon that pass through the editor's hands every day must be mind boggling.

It's all for nought anyway, as Big Dick points out our chances at the 2012 Olympics are already irrevocably damaged by this lack of competitive sack racing at junior schools. Apparently this definitely means that

If there was a gold medal for cowardice and petty-minded stupidity, Britain would clean up.

And if there was a Nobel prize for shiterature  he'd be in Oslo with a big shiny medal.

PS - Can't not mention the demise of the NOTW. What the hell kind of special services does Rebekah Brookes offer Rupert that mean she keeps her job at the expense of a whole newspaper? Wowsers! Tweet

Littlejohn - political heavyweight

 Eddie Izzard is campaigning for a yes vote

Littlejohn has heaved his bulk into the firing line and laid out his reasons for voting No. He's also (maybe for comic effect) misunderstood how AV works (Like the PM on the Today show this morning) and then peddled out some made up stuff to take up page space.

Let's look at the fatman's ramblings below

Just say No to those Alternative comedians

I've tried not to bore you with the arguments for and against the Alternative Vote system.

Because he doesn't understand them, but after jizzing over the killing of Bin Laden he still had a couple of hundred words to fill.

The only reason it is being put to a referendum on Thursday is to keep the Lib Dems happy.

Otherwise there wouldn't be a coalition government. We'd be preparing for another general election.

Adopting AV would be a disaster. At best it would be a recipe for permanent coalition government.

Why? That's not happened in Ireland and other countries it's used, why would it occur in the UK?

This Lib-Con pantomime horse was the only way to go last May, given the size of the deficit and the imperative to get rid of a clapped-out and cynical Labour administration.

But we can live without the puerile bickering and political sclerosis coalition inevitably creates.

Coalition governments occur when no one's popular enough to gain the majority of MPs, it's nothing to do with the  issues of the day.

Under AV you can end up with your third choice candidate eventually coming first. That’s how Labour got lumbered with Ed Miliband.

And the Torys got lumbered with David Cameron, what's the point?

At worst AV could produce freakishly large majorities, another bad plan. Governments with slender majorities tend to behave better.

So it's landslides only now is it? Two sentences ago it was permanent coalitions.

Finally, if we’d had AV  last May, Gordon Brown would still be in Downing Street, propped up by the Lib Dems.

I'm pretty sure he's thoroughly investigated this claim and not just banged it out off the top of his great big heed.

Since the principle of  any strong democracy is the ability to kick the bastards out, I’ll be voting ‘No’ and would urge you to do the same.

And what exactly does this last sentence mean? Where does FPTP let you kick out the bastards? How does AV stop you kicking the bastards out? Who are these bastards and why is there so much kicking happening.

What's he talking about?

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It's not guns that kill, it's letting idiots have them

I do like, no wait a minute like's a strong word, I do read Big Dick Littleboy's column padding. You know the bits at the end of his main rant about speed cameras or BBC2 documentaries or whatever he's noticed in the 25 minutes before his deadline. He must ping up an idea in that cavernous head of his and then bang it out on his Amiga word processor.

He could and he does.

"Hmmm, word count function shows I'm a couple of hundred short of cheque collection. That leaves me with two options. One; I can look deeper into the topic I'm writing about, perhaps do a little research and see if there really are 3 billion Polish carpenters living in Slough who all claim on the sick and yet still manage to undercut British chippys by 20% while eating swans and stealing church roof lead. I could, perhaps, start by speaking to a Carpenter perhaps see what the real deal is..."

"Actually as I've only 17 minutes until deadline bites I'd better plump for option two. Make up an opinion about something I half caught on the news and, seemingly, know jack-shit about."

And so that's how we get this pearl of wisdom about the horrendous shooting in the Netherlands last week.

Being a vigilant top-drawer journalist for a quality publication he keeps abreast of world events and so managed to catch the news between rounds - when he remembered to take off his 3D glasses. From this deep analysis of the media reaction he seems to think the world's taking a swipe at the gun crazy moonshine drinkers of America.

Apparently if a shopping mall rampage happened in the States we'd be analysing why these things happen in the US so often and talking about fear driven gun cultures, whereas when it happens to drippy liberals it gets ignored, swept under the carpet.

Not true, the shootings got a lot of coverage all over the world. around 8,000 stories about Alphen aan den Rijn on Google news, from sources as diverse as Latvia, Vietnam and even America. I recall it being on BBC & Sky news in the UK and it wasn't missed by any of the daily newspapers.

The reason there's less debate about the causes of the tragedy is that it's such an exceptional event, the debate following a similar atrocity across the Atlantic would focus around "Why does this keep happening?"

In the US, where guns are seen as a right there are around 7 murders per 100,000 people using a gun. In the Netherlands, where guns are seen as a privilege, there are around 0.4.

It's not less significant that it's happened in the Netherlands, it's more significant that it happens so often in America. Tweet

Stupid Fat Get

Minority Thought's already pointed put what the "BNP's recruiting sergeant" thinks about drowning Japanese children (Seems there are worse things...) but if you plough further through his rants about imams dressing as lady Gaga and his lack of opinion about Libya you'll find yourself a pearl of racism / stereotyping that gives you the impression he's been doing research (Yeah that's likely) by watching cine-films of Love thy neighbour.

They are Siamese if you please, they are Siamese so you drown them...

It seems Mr Littlejohn was a bit put out that he missed the furore around Midsomer Murders as this was right up his street. Had he been in the office I'm pretty sure it'd have felt like Christmas (Had it not been banned by communist vegan bisexuals fighting for to stop the oppression of turkeys by Paxo).


Oh what we can't all be white together now? If I want to wear a pillow case and set fire to my carpentry project in my own back garden etc etc...


Luckily for him though an opportunity to have his say on the subject was presented by the bestowing of a post-code on the Olympic stadium; E20 - the same as Eastenders. That's a TV show too, and it's set where some of those bloody foreigners live. Fire up the typewriter there's rights to be wronged.

The Eastend has a high proportion of muslims, or as some people like to call them terrorists, yet the TV show has white people in it who are poor and downtrodden probably because of that. It is on the right-on BBC and although it did have some gays in it - and they're a bit like muslims or terrorists somehow - Ross Kemp does fight the Taliban in his spare time away from the square. Tricky, how is it possible weave this complex stereotyping into a fluid narrative. 

You know what, I've a new found respect for the talented journalist. It's quite a tricky subject matter to get your head around and not quite as simple as demonising someone and blaming them for all your problems like I first thought. You need to be able to offer up numerous targets to allow as many prejudices as possible to percolate through and leave the reader in no doubt that somewhere, somehow there's someone out to get you 'cos they're all evil bastards and you're alright John. That's worth £700,000 a year of anyone's money.

Barbara gets the Littlejohn world treatment.

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