The Knives are Out

The knives are out in UK. In so many different ways. The rioters have taken out the literal ones. It’s surprising that it can go on for so many nights, with the police unable to do anything.

Then there all the other types of knives, the non-literal ones. Like from the people who’ve decided to attribute reasons for the riots. The reasons range from had-enough-with-racial-discrimination to feeling-excluded-from-prosperity to feeling-of-hopelessness to simply-looting. Based on their reasons, these people blame the riots on everything from discrimination to non-inclusive growth (sound familiar?) to the recession and cuts in spending to lack of good parenting!

When the British PM said that social networking sites like Twitter were partly responsible because they acted as tools for co-ordinating such riots, another set pointed out how, just a few months back, the Brits were so in favour of Twitter when it was used in the Arab risings. How quickly times change.

The Chinese took a shot saying that such a law and order breakdown didn’t bode well for the security of athletes during next year’s Olympics in London. Not to be left behind, our cricket commentators are pointing out how our cricket team has “magnanimously” agreed to stay on and play as opposed to the Brits who, they say, would have packed their bags and run if the same thing had happened in India. The shoe is truly on the other foot.

And lastly, there’s Internet humour. Like this photo on Flickr titled “Revised London Olympics logo, now with rioter!”

Comments

  1. KumarAugust 13, 2011 at 7:31 AM

    I liked the cartoon in the end! Whatever be the situation - good or bad or indifferent - nothing to light up life like humor.

    I could never make out why the riots. And why so intense. Your blog states more or less what I had guessed: disgruntled youth with a sense of insecurity who also might have racially discriminating ideas. Quite a jumble I am sure. Unfortunate for UK because at least if the cause is clear one might think of a direction to work out a solution.

    On the whole, the situation all over the world seems to be showing some level of negative emotions with the social backdrop from time to time. I suppose it is part of the way of our mind.

    May UK come to peace and may the rioting be a thing of the past. How can riots bring happiness to anyone in the long run, including the rioters?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more