London burning to the faraway towns

Wednesday, 10 August 2011 comments 28 comments so far...

This will only make sense if you’re familiar with The Clash and, specifically, their 1979 album London Calling.

28 comments so far...

  1. Jacoba says:
    10/08/2011 at 09:58

    Mark Duggan was shot when he resisted arrest – he was a thug and a criminal & the taxi in which he was travelling refused to stop. It’s not as if the cops shot at an innocent man … had it happened here, nobody would have batted an eyelid.

  2. Jerm says:
    10/08/2011 at 10:13

    Is that good enough reason to get shot? http://www.guardian......olice-ipcc

  3. Jacoba says:
    10/08/2011 at 10:24

    You know Jerm, it’s very easy to sit and read the papers and dish out criticism willy nilly. We don’t know what happened but once the Brits have done their investigations, they will make a statement and we’ll know what happened.
    I do not, for one minute, believe it was a male fide shooting. Of course every single life taken is one life too many but at some point one has to accept that ‘if you live by the sword, you have a pretty good chance of dying by the sword’. The man was armed (in a country where not even the cops are armed) and he was a known gangster … excuse me if I don’t have as much sympathy for him as I have for the hundreds of people who have had their lives and the livelihoods destroyed but all the little mini-marks trolling the streets right now …

    I have had it with thugs and crime – here and there and everywhere.

  4. Jerm says:
    10/08/2011 at 10:26

    “Mark Duggan, whose shooting by police sparked London’s riots, did not fire a shot at police officers before they killed him, the Independent Police Complaints Commission said on Tuesday.”

    - http://www.guardian......olice-ipcc

  5. Jacoba says:
    10/08/2011 at 10:29

    Did I say he did?
    I shot a man once, in the foot and he hadn’t fired a shot at me – in fact, he wasn’t armed (I think).
    He attacked me in front of my home & in front of my children from the back. I was scared and the only bit I could see was his feet, so I took my gun out of my bag and shot him in his foot.
    It was that or get raped – I am not sorry that I did it at all.
    He could have died if I’d missed the foot and got the artery because I assure you I wasn’t aiming for the foot …..

  6. Jerm says:
    10/08/2011 at 10:43

    So, are you saying that he shot the cop in the foot?

  7. Jacoba says:
    10/08/2011 at 10:45

    Funny Jerm – no, the cop killed the man, no doubt about it. What I am saying is that people sometimes whip out a weapon in the heat of the moment and often, the results are disastrous. To err is human … take it or leave it.

  8. Grey says:
    10/08/2011 at 11:26

    All this speculation….
    In the UK the Independent Police Complaints Commision will carry out a full and thorough as well as informed inquiry using experts. They will publish their findings which will indicate whether or not the firing of the shot was justified and the police officer will face the music as and when the results are published. What we do understand is there was a degree of “geweld” trying to stop the mini-cab he was in. We also know he was a gang member and drug dealer who was carrying a gun after the death in a gang related shooting of his “cousin”.
    Does this justify a protest? Yes – certainly in South Africa we would need to have a march to get the IPCC equivalent off their arses. Perhaps it is not as critical in the UK although yes perhaps the family would like to have some march to get closure – everyone has someone who loves them no matter what they may do to the rest of the world (the Eva Braun syndrome).
    Does this justify the criminal thuggery and looting that the thugs are commiting against the shopkeepers on the High Street and Sony’s CD and DVD warehouse all under the guise of protest? No this is just the gangsters trying to take a chance while the police are embarrassed.
    Will you be doing a cartoon about the family who lost their furniture business that had been serving the community since 1857 (thats even before I was born!) or the innocent by-stander teenager punched in the nose and then lifted off the ground and held up so the buddies could go through and empty his rucksack of his valuables? Nope – thats not funny at all.

  9. Jacoba says:
    10/08/2011 at 11:42

    Thanks Grey – a voice of reason in the desert of hysteria.
    What about the injured policemen and three people that died this morning as a result of the violent thugs actions ….

  10. Brian says:
    10/08/2011 at 11:42

    Jacoba has shot a man! lol… why do you keep a gun in your bag?

  11. Jacoba says:
    10/08/2011 at 11:45

    I was alone, had had three burglaries at night and had three children whom I needed to protect. You don’t mess with a mother who’s protecting her kids and you certainly don’t attack her …

  12. Jacoba says:
    10/08/2011 at 11:50

    Interesting: http://www.guardian......blackberry

  13. Jerm says:
    10/08/2011 at 12:17

    Jacoba, there’s no hysteria going on around here, sadly. Keep in mind that my cartoon is a parody of The Clash’s album cover, coupled with a comment on a particular moment, which was a cop shooting first. My cartoon makes no judgement about the overall situation.

    Grey, your points are good and, no, I won’t be doing a cartoon about that furniture business. (It’s really just a bit boring.)

  14. Jacoba says:
    10/08/2011 at 12:18

    Hi – my apologies, it came out wrong. I wasn’t referring to hysteria on this page; I was referring to the hysteria about it in general, especially on the the news channels.

  15. Adriaan says:
    10/08/2011 at 12:56

    Jerm, I think what people are reacting to here is the fact that your image implies that the riots are in direct reaction to brutal and oppressive policing, and in that sense, warranted. Violent policing and oppression is not the cause of these riots and to imply so seems a little naive.

    If the image somehow depicted the cause of the riots as generations of social and economic marginalisation and moral decay due to bad parenting, perhaps the reaction would be somewhat less ‘hysterical’. But then, doing so would get in the way of a cool pop culture reference :)

  16. Jacoba says:
    10/08/2011 at 13:03

    I’ve just watched an interesting discussion on Sky News: it included an ex gangster (who insists that it’s definitely gang inspired), a intelligent-person-that-knows-everything (who says it’s a bit of that plus a bit of dysfunctional parenting, broken homes, poverty and disillusionment) and a journalist (who says it’s all more complicated than that and it’s been coming a while now).

    Fact is, people have no work (and yes, many don’t want to work), drugs are rife, homes have broken down, parenting is shocking, the Brits have a terrible drinking problem in this part of society and yes, the police aren’t doing their jobs in these areas because the legal system doesn’t support them … Mark Duggan’s death was just the trigger they needed to explode.

    But what now? Now innocents have been killed, vigilantes on the rise and they’re not going to play footsie with the yobbos …

  17. Jerm says:
    10/08/2011 at 13:13

    So, basically, a cop didn’t shoot first (triggering a riot). Got it.

  18. Adriaan says:
    10/08/2011 at 13:16

    Nobody said that DIDN’T happen. We’re just saying there’s more to this than your image suggests.

  19. Jerm says:
    10/08/2011 at 13:19

    In other words, there’s a deeper context that shouldn’t be ignored. Fair point.

  20. Grey says:
    10/08/2011 at 15:06

    Yep. I don’t know when I saw one of your cartoons that didn’t have a strong social comment – and not merely remniscent of a 70′s record cover.
    And I agree the shooting was the trigger but what has been unleashed is a viral poison that is based in the criminal underworld.
    Your cartoon portrays police brutality which is still unproved.There is now a hell of a groundswell asking why are the police so soft and blaming parliament for removing the police’s teeth.
    As you say – a deeper context that cannot be ignored.

  21. Jerm says:
    10/08/2011 at 15:30

    Grey, the IPCC have concluded that the cop shot first (http://www.guardian......olice-ipcc). That’s unacceptable and should not be diluted, otherwise a slippery slope potentially occurs.

    Gang violence is unacceptable, but so is police brutality.

  22. Adriaan says:
    10/08/2011 at 15:33

    Yep – and the revolutionaries are illustrating that point by all getting some new trainers.

  23. Sir James vannie Kaap says:
    10/08/2011 at 17:45

    My take on this is simple, much like in LA nearly two decades ago when Rodney King was assaulted by cops and sparked a massive race riot, Rodney, like Duggan wasn’t a law-abiding man, in fact he was a gangster, but that simple act of police brutality spilled over into an event that I’m sure the American public would never have predicted. In the same vein, whether Duggan was the worst possible kind of yob is rather immaterial to the fact that he was a symptom of Britain’s ever growing social ills.

    What we should be asking is, why the killing of Duggan escalated to such an extend that we’re now seeing riots in the streets of London? I’m not naive to suggest that there isn’t a hint of opportunism amongst the rioters and looters, but this event showcases that something terrible must have been brewing amongst the poor in London’s more dingy suburbs. There is [b]frustration there, especially with law enforcement, and that in itself is telling[/b].

    Jerm’s cartoon is spot on, regardless of whether Duggan was a thug, or the worst possible person on this earth, he was a product of British society, yob culture and a symptom of British welfare and policing struggling to cope in the poorer areas of London.

  24. Grey says:
    10/08/2011 at 17:47

    Sorry Jeremy. I’m holding my decision on whether the fact that the cop shot first amounts to police BRUTALITY open until the IPCC have fully investigated the entire circumstances of the arrest which initially was reported as being resisted with violence. I was not there and cannot take the leap to brutality to blame police where a known gang star and drug dealer is the other party.
    Brutality is what we saw in the old days when unarmed men were beaten up and told to run while the cops shot at them, where they were water boarded or had their heads in tin buckets while the cops palyed a drum roll on the bottom of the bucket. The use of force in arresting an armed man may not imply brutality depending on the degree of resistance and the gun going off first might just have been the luck of the draw depending on which side you’re on.Bad luck for old Starr though

  25. Jerm says:
    10/08/2011 at 19:35

    Sir James, are you suggesting that one’s man Rodney is another man’s King?

    (Sorry about that. That was really lame.)

  26. Sir James vannie Kaap says:
    11/08/2011 at 00:12

    @Jerm

    Hahahaha! :P

  27. Adriaan says:
    11/08/2011 at 08:52

    Well Jerm at least you’re right about one thing in this discussion.

    Sir James – the LA police had a long and illustrious history of brutality against black and hispanic citizens. These Londoners don’t have a clue what violent oppression is. The police triggered this, but they are not the cause of it.

  28. Sir James vannie Kaap says:
    11/08/2011 at 18:07

    @Adriaan Merely a symptom of something bigger, but on the issue of police brutality in London (and the rest of the UK), there are quite a few documented cases of the police using excessive force.

    In the following video, the police use a tazer 3 times, now I don’t know about you, but punching someone and tazing them 3 times is not kosher.

    Granted of course, as the reporter says on SKy News, we don’t know what he did, or the events leading up to being tazed 3 times. He’s certainly resisting quite a bit leading up to the first tazing, but still… three times. The guy is lucky he survived.

    http://www.youtube.c.....r_embedded

    Police beating up a war veteran, Lance Corporal Mark Aspinall (caused a huge stink in the UK).

    http://www.youtube.c.....re=related

    Emily Apple assaulted by British Police for asking a police officer to identify himself (i..e see his badge number)
    http://www.youtube.c.....re=related

    Etc. Etc. Etc.