DISTANT ECHOES – Reminders from the Template News, Current Affairs and Sport Website.

If the television pictures are to be believed Britain is burning.

A post 9/11 generation aware of the power of the media image have attacked their town’s iconic buildings setting them alight.

Trouble began in Tottenham’s Broadwater Farm Estate when a young Black man called Mark Duggan, was shot dead by a policeman.

When the dead man’s family approached their local police station to get some answers – amazingly the police had not spoken to them -a young girl was alleged to have been pushed aside.

Suddenly there was a night of looting.

The police did not overact – that was the one thing they have got right in this very sorry saga. Small scale rioting – awful for the people trapped in this – followed in some of the poorest boroughs of London, and has touched Liverpool and Birmingham also.

The police will get criticism for everything – but they should have acted fast after shooting a young BLACK man dead in an area where twenty years ago there were riots.

Of course most police officers are nothing like they way they were perceived then.

But appearances count for everything.

Today’s youngsters are very young and those who are rioting have grown up in a background of poverty in the sixth wealthiest country in the world.

Ironically in what is also the world’s first democracy they also have no voice.

(published 8 August 2011) https://nayabchohan.com//?s=britain%27s+burning&search=Go