It's Only Teenage Wasteland

Well, as more and more reports come out about the riots in the UK I'm not surprised to read about who some of the young looters were
The middle class 'rioters' revealed: The millionaire's daughter, the aspiring musician and the organic chef all in the dock

Take this young lady on the left in this photo

According to the Daily Mail
this cocktail dress clad young lady is the desperate, downtrodden and obviously disenfranchised
Laura Johnson who lived a Dikensian existence

at this horrible country house - tenement with a tennis court

Millionaire's daughter Laura Johnson, 19, was charged with stealing £5,000-worth of electronic goods, including a Toshiba TV, Goodmans TV, microwave and mobile phones.The goods were allegedly found in a car being driven by Miss Johnson after a branch of Comet in Charlton, south-east London, was raided.Bexleyheath magistrates heard that a 'public order kit' of balaclava, gloves and a bandana was also found in the car.Miss Johnson attended St Olave's Grammar School in Orpington, Kent, the fourth best performing state school in the country, after transferring from its sister school Newstead Wood.
She achieved A*s in French, English literature, classical civilisation and geography A-levels, and is now studying English and Italian at Exeter University.

Yeah, the millionaire's daughter probably needed another microwave oven...
don't they all...

opportunistic looting by so many well fed but obviously not well bred students
they should be ashamed

Teenage Wasteland indeed

London - Letting Barbarism Win

If you haven't heard the audio of these riot girls bragging that is attached to this BBC video you need to listen to it now.
Showing the rich we do what we want

Oh yeah girls, you really showed them didn't you!

Linked by Instapundit.com
Brian Micklethwaith on Samizdata.net has this to say about self defense and the trouble with letting the UK police handle the situation.

One of the more depressing things about these riots is the way that the only thing that the Police can think of to say to us non-looters and non-arsonists is: “Don’t join in” and “Let us handle it”. If the bad guys start to torch your house, let them get on with it. If they attack your next door neighbour, don’t join in on his side. Run away. Let the barbarians occupy and trash whatever territory they pick on and steal or destroy whatever property they want to.

There was a fascinating impromptu TV interview with some young citizens of Clapham last night, not “experts”, just regular citizens, one of whom stated the opposite policy. Law abiding persons should get out of their houses, he said, en masse, and be ready to defend them.

The trouble with “letting the Police do their job” is that in the precise spot in which you happen to live, or used to live, their job probably won’t start, if it ever does start, for about a week. In the meantime, letting the Police do their job means letting the damn looters and arsonists do their job, without anyone laying a finger on them, laying a finger on them being illegal. This is a doomed policy. If most people are compelled by law to be only neutral bystanders in a war between themselves and barbarism, barbarism wins. The right to, at the very least, forceful self defence must now be insisted upon.

Here in armed Los Angeles we know something about self defense.

Do you know who these guys are?

These are Korean shop owners and employees defending their business during the LA riots in 1992.
K-town wasn't going to put up with wholesale looting and arson.
Either was Beverly Hills where the local police basically shut down access into the city.

A curfew was implemented and the National Guard was called up
and the US Marines were brought in to patrol South Central

Even with the police and National Guard, there were 53 deaths, a thousand some injuries and more than $800 million in property damage.
I can't even imagine what the damage will cost in the UK.


Here's another interesting comment about self defense on Instapundit.com

The problem with comparing London and Korean shopkeepers is two fold. First, all the property owners and law abiding citizens have been disarmed. So unless a man is going to stab all these felons to death, there really is no self defense. And it’s hard to defend against flying molotov cocktails. And Second, the British Government has made it perfectly clear that they’re willing to incarcerate anyone who defends himself. They have proven this time and again by prosecuting the law abiding citizens who are afraid for their lives.

So in essence, the British government has effectively defanged their first responders in favor of their own police forces who are obviously inadequate to deal with this circumstance.

So what does a business owner do in London, Croydon or elsewhere when they don't have the right to defend their homes and property
and when the police do basically nothing?