The London riots

Obviously this blog is generally used for my blogging about my time volunteering in Peru and my travels but after reading news stories, watching multiple youtube videos, speaking to friends and reading facebook updates and twitter I can officially say that LONDON HAS GONE MAD!!


I could understand the reasoning behind the initial PROTESTS by the family of Mark Duggan, family and friends just searching for answers, whilst Mark Duggan has been painted in two very different portraits by both the media and family people are forgetting that he was a father, a son, a fiancee and a friend to many. For that reason I feel that the protests of the family were necessary as from what I have heard their pleas have gone unanswered.

But what I CANNOT understand are the youths who have used the death of a man to start a riot through out London which has now spread like dominos throughout the rest of the UK. The rioters have tarnished the name of Mark Duggan and the fight of his family for answers. Not only that but thanks to these idiots the name of not only black youth, or youths of an ethnic minority but youths in general, OUR name has been tarnished due to a minority of idiots.

Do you not realise what you are doing is selfish, immoral and just plain wrong? Yes the goverment cut your EMA, yes the university rates have risen and as youth in the UK your voices, our voices go unheard yet are you forgetting what you do have? You DO have a roof over your head, you DO have free health care, you DO have free education and you CAN get an allowance if you are out of education and out of work, and who is this all provided by? THE GOVERMENT. And who funds the goverment? The every day working class citizen, your mum, your dad, your nan, your aunt, uncle, friend, cousin WHATEVER and going around destroying stores, destroying homes and destroying livelihoods which these working class people have created is not going to get you answers, the only thing it is going to get you is a jail sentence.

I´´ve been volunteering which young boys in Peru for a year who will laugh at what you are claiming to be a struggle and claiming to be a poverty stricken life. I´ve seen the tears of boys who just want their mum to love them, I´ve seen the scars of boys sent to work in gold mines and the psychological damage of boys who have had no one to provide them with ONE meal a day let alone a roof over their heads. This doesn´t just apply to teenage boys either, this applies to 5 year old boys. I´ve worked with boys who have been made to sell on the streets all day JUST to buy them a  piece of bread, run away from their families to avoid daily beatings and even to the point where they have been SOLD by their neighbour to work in an illegal gold mine in the jungle and made to think that his parents done it to him. And do you know what? These boys still managed to look past a society that has shunned them, family that have caused them so much harm and do this all with a smile on their faces. To the boys this is all fuel which fires up their motiviation to make something of themselves, look passed what has happened in their past to provide for their future families.

What you are all doing has been and would be a LAST resort for these children, teenagers and youth here in Peru and in any other 3rd world country. If you rioted like this in a 3rd world country you wouldnt just get a slap on the wrist but you´d probably end up shot dead by the police. Don´t take advantage of the "hug a hoodie" approach David Cameron stupidly tried advertise before the police are forced to change their strategies.

So before you decide to step out of your house and grab a brick to throw through the nearest shop window, stop and think what you actually do have and how lucky you are to have what you have. It is already hard enough to get heard as a young person in the UK but you have made it 100 times harder for us and have made us all out to be senseless hoodlums, especially those coming from minorities.

The media need to stop giving attention to these thugs and start reporting on the good that we as youth do, for every thug on the roads screaming "F*ck the pigs" there are 100 other youths who are in university, working to make a living for themselves, volunteering, trying to help their communities, trying to change this streotype that is holding us all back. So STOP giving these idiots what they are craving, ATTENTION and give it where it is truly deserved.

Rant Over