Three things let me know I was back home and the holiday was well and truly over; I had to do housework, I had an argument with my mum, and there was a shooting in Brixton.
Clarkie and I were shopping in Brixton at the time of the shooting. I had popped down there to look for a new washing machine, and buy some meat from the market. I also ended up buying a new bike. Brixton was mad busy. There were lots of schoolchildren walking in posses looking smart in fresh new uniforms, and eating chips and takeaways on the road(not my child).
The shop that sells washing machines is about five minutes from the main high street in Brixton, and when we came back to the central area to go to Iceland, the road outside Brixton was cordoned off with police tape. A now all too-familiar sight. According to the Evening Standard, a man opened fire on two teenage boys who were in the queue in McDonalds, in front of children and families. Suzie Wong said one of her co-workers daughters witnessed the whole thing, she called her mum from McDonalds.
This gun shit is getting well out of hand. Apparently while I was away there a number of shootings around London. Why I find it so disturbing is because my daughter is at an age where she commutes to school by herself, and to places nearby, like Suzie Wong's house. Now I'm feeling more and more obliged to get a car and ferry her around more, as I just don't feel it is safe for her to travel about on her jacks.
What must the parents of those teenagers be going through. The government needs to do more to get the guns off the street, and to protect the people. But I doubt that they will. Things are so bad, that despite paying a tax which is supposed to provide these services, people are paying out of their own pockets to hire private security firms. Tony Blair owns a £3m house in Connaught Square, just off Edgware Road (ten minutes from Marble Arch). The residents there are paying a security firm to ensure their safety after muggings and burglaries. If these rich motherfuckers don't feel secure on their own doorsteps, what chance do we have.
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1 comment:
DAMN. That's brutal. Very similar though to a lot of the debate here in Toronto the past year. Canadian guns laws are very stringent and yet we're still having families of both perpetrators and victims dealing with this nightmare. One thing being discussed is that the cutbacks of after school programs in the 1990's are now coming back to haunt us. But I think it's a bigger overall problem and the arrests of black teenagers are the only ones making it to the telly.
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