Lifestyle Looting

I woke up this morning to find out that the Tottenham riot had somehow jumped on a train south and arrived on Streatham High Road in the small hours of Sunday night. Looting is not a political act, it is thievery.

I found out about it from Twitter. The news was full of rioting in Brixton but no mention of Streatham. Twitter told me what happened in several versions of the 'facts'. So I decided to see for myself and walked up to the High Road to see what the damage was. Two mobile phone shops had been broken into (3 and T-Mobile), JD Sports (with a random car outside left on the path) and, further up Streatham Hill, the computer repair shop. Luckily, that was it. A corner shop owner had been beaten up protecting his shop and was in hospital. This isn't rioting, it's looting, it's lifestyle looting as someone commented on Twitter.

Brixton was worse, with the entire high street cordoned off with police tape - traffic could go through but no-one on the pavements and the tube station was closed. Random windows were either smashed, cracked or boarded up, like Marks & Spencer, Body Shop, McDonalds and Gamesmaster.

Going home this evening was a strange experience, walking down the High Road with police vans with sirens blazing, screaming down the High Road towards Croydon (which is on the news at the moment with a block in flames). There was an eerie moment when I came out of the chemists on Streatham Hill to complete silence - no traffic at all either way on the High Road. Just for 20 seconds or so and then the usual stream of cars and buses started again, but for a heartbeat or two, something was wrong. Exacerbated by some shops closing early, just in case.

One of the odd things is that local communities are destroying themselves. In a recession, this isn't helping people find work or businesses thriving. I was quite heartened this morning seeing tweets supporting the computer repair shop, a local business suffering. Diane Abbot has been on TV saying the same thing about riots in Hackney. This will affect local economies and local communities for a long time to come.

The news has now switched to looting in Clapham Junction with Debenhams (formerly Arding & Hobbs) being looted. Where is the political act in that?

This is all incredibly sad, especially given the successes in the athletics over the weekend in preparation for the Olympics. Whatever the underlying reason for the riot in Tottenham, I can't believe that that's the reason for disturbances in Enfield, Hackney, Streatham and Croydon. This is all copy-cat stuff. This is about looting and disturbance for the sake of it.

And where is the Mayor of London and the Prime Minister?