Dinosaurs with Laser-Guns

You've probably heard that there's been rioting all over London, as well as some other cities. Just thought I'd post a quick note to say I'm alright. The shopping centre near us was looted (Tim, who stayed up all night watching the news, had a look around earlier and tweeted about the damage) but otherwise it was quiet.

I'm really pissed off, both at the people looting, and at all of the people commenting on this on the news harping on about what "pure, senseless criminality" it all was. No-one is excusing the people burning, stealing, and mugging, but just because it wasn't a political protest doesn't mean there aren't political and social underlying factors. Looking at the reasons doesn't make the things going on any less horrible and stupid, or the people perpetrating them any less at fault, but it means that maybe we can try to make people's lives better and make this less likely in the future. The demonisation of youth, poor people, and ethnic minorities people jump to so quickly make me rage.

Anyway, I'm going in to uni for a bit. I need to go to the library, and I want to visit Gay's the Word to buy a book in support after they had their window smashed in over the weekend. I'm going to head home around lunchtime, though, in case there are any transport disruptions later on.

Links that I've been getting my news from:

• Google map of incidents
• Live BBC stream
• #LondonRiots hastag on twitter
• Guardian live blogs for last night, and from this morning (haven't read the latter yet).

cobweb_diamond has some more links, as well.

Obviously be suitably sceptical towards any unconfirmed rumours.

I feel almost guilty about how much attention is being paid to this, when there's war and famine and other worse things elsewhere, and I'm not even affected apart from having to walk to a different grocery shop, but man. This is where I live. Feels weird.

You know how I think teaching kids history is really important? I read in the Guardian today (and I really tried to find a more neutral source to read up on it on, but no-one but the Guardian and the Daily Mail cares at the moment) that the Tories want an historian called Niall Ferguson to help re-write the history syllabus.

I think getting down a general chronology of what order things happened in is probably a good idea, if that's not being done already, but then there's this:

He said the syllabus was "bound to be Eurocentric" because the world was Eurocentric.

I've heard his name for the first time today, and already I dislike him.


In other historical news, I am totally excited for this on TV tonight:

The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister on BBC2 at 9pm! It sounds like it's going to be pretty great. You should watch it, guys.

(Also there's a documentary about Anne Lister directly afterwards presented by Sue Perkins :3)