We drive in silence beneath the grey dawning skies

[venta]

All quiet on the West London front. A peaceful night, really, with all the trouble heading up to the Midlands and North :(

This is the street I photographed yesterday morning:




I presume the boards are preventative, although I don't know how many of them are repaired underneath. I'm also curious to know how many of the shops are open today: Tesco seemed open this morning, and a couple of the cafés, but I wouldn't expect most of the restaurants to be open at 8am.

Restaurants are allowed to shut when the police tell them, but pharmacies are providing an important service and are meant to be open. The chemist (with the beautiful, old-fashioned fascia) settled for shutting up early, but letting you know the nearest alternative:



I presume Premesis is some sort of avenging god who retaliates after shops are damaged.

Mind you, it wasn't a patch on this notice in Manchester (found via TheWestLondoner's blog).

I'm curious as to how long these shops will remain boarded up for. How long before people declare the current riots to be "over" and normal service can be resumed (and assumed)? It's amazing how different the street looks with all the shops' windows covered.

The streets (and roads, and even trains) still seemed quiet this morning as I walked to the station, though I don't know to what extent that was just my imagination.

And my favourite tweet from last night... someone posted "I've just heard the clock tower is on fire in #Leicester. Is this true?" The response came shortly after from @leicsclocktower: No I am not.

Comments

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I presume Premesis is some sort of avenging god who retaliates after shops are damaged.

Hehe! I've been wondering about how we will decide whether or not this is all 'over', too. If it is indeed basically opportunistic crime based on a belief that the police don't have the manpower to stop it, then theoretically it could just keep on popping up every time the police scale back to more normal-scale operations. For that reason, I suspect that over the next few days there will be some pretty ostentatious displays of exemplary justice meted out to those looters who've been arrested, to convey a strong general message that it isn't actually consequence-free. I just hope the legal system doesn't get too carried away with that, as it could cause problems of its own.

[condign.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what you mean by "exemplary justice." I'm all for the idea of using the technology that the looters themselves used against them. In the sense of, "Look, you got a Blackberry message saying 'Go to X,' you went there, and we caught you on camera. Maximum penalty for what you stole is 9 1/2 years. You're going to serve every minute of that if you go alone. Shop the six friends you were with, and we'll make it five. Nothing lower than that, though."

I'm really afraid that attempts to do that are going to get boiled down to, "But they're creations of our society, they're our fault, we can't really punish them like that, a few months is enough."

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

By "exemplary justice", I mean handing out punishments with a view to making an example out of the looters, and potentially going beyond the normal punishments laid down in law in the course of doing so. In fact, two things emerged over the course of yesterday which I would place into exactly that category - calls for people caught looting to lose their benefits, and calls for them to be evicted from social housing. I'm perfectly happy for the normal provisions of the law to be used to their fullest extent, as you describe. But I'm very concerned about both the practical and the ideological implications of inventing extra sanctions in response to public anger over these particular events.

[condign.livejournal.com]

I suppose that doesn't concern me very much. So long as the punishments are duly enacted, and would apply to all further riots, I think those are reasonable proposals. Very public punishments meant to sent the point that this is not acceptable suit me fine. I suspect that enforcing the full punishments possible might do without having to engage in those actions, but removing benefits might be cheaper and easier to enforce. (Not saying it's a wise policy, just one that I don't find ethically problematic.)

I thought you might mean extrajudicial punishments (e.g. beating rioters unnecessarily), which I would think a problem.