The Rusty Wire Service

We thought we’d wait a while before returning to the subject of the recent disorder in English cities.   There have been column miles devoted to the subject and still, the only narrative that really emerges is polarised between the ‘hang ‘em high’ brigade and the ‘poor misunderstood urchin’ camp followers. Even the Economist , which I would always have credited with a more nuanced approach, painted the same black and white picture and ultimately offered the same sort of realpolitik solution favoured by 19 th century Prussian Chancellor Bismarck in his struggle with socialism amongst the proliferating proletariat. Whips and Sugar Plums, or as the Economist put it: “The things that might work include both nice and nasty measures....” The Economist was on much surer ground when it posited that we’d been here before; that the paroxysms of disillusioned working class youth culture and the morbid middle-class fear of the same stretches back almost as far as newspapers ...

After a week of grim tidings up and down the country, it was heartening to receive an email that actually had some good news about that little piece of London that stole my heart and never gave it back. In April 2011, TRWS ran a brief story about Betfred’s failure to get planning use altered from building society only to include betting shops in a vacant high street premises. Just what Deptford needed; yet another turf accountant on the high street. Sanity prevailed and the bookies were turned down. But that wasn’t the end of the affair. When it came to taking the matter further, Betfred were as good as their word. They appealed to the Planning Inspectorate. Sue Lawes has campaigned passionately against Betfred’s plans and it was a real pleasure to open her email this evening; informing TRWS that the bookmaker’s Deptford planning appeal had failed on 16 August. The whole story has already been well-covered by several blogs in the locale so I’ll not go into too...

You get bailed if you live here.....   London Magistrates’ Courts  today  were predictably awash with those arrested as rioters and looters since the weekend. Amongst the stories that caught the eye of several news outlets was the case of the millionaire’s daughter who was arrested for looting.  Laura Johnson, a 19-year student from Kent, appeared in front Bexleyheath Magistrates today charged with along with two others, in connection with the alleged theft of £5,000 of goods from the Stonelake Retail Park in Charlton, south London. Johnson indicated a plea of not guilty to five counts of burglary. It is alleged that the stolen goods were found in a car being driven by the St Olave's Grammar School old girl (founded in 1571 don't you know). Johnson, who studies English and Italian at the University of Exeter, was granted bail on condition that she does not associate with her co–accused. She must also wear an electronic tag, submits to a curfew betwee...

News International flunkey (and current Prime minister) David Cameron has been playing to the mob in his calls for the use of baton rounds and water cannon on the streets of England's cities.  Has it really come to this? I’m not so sure. And I say that as someone who was attacked and robbed during rioting on my own high street this week. Now let’s be clear, I’m not really the turn-the-other-cheek type and I don’t necessarily buy in to the ‘they’re just poor misunderstood urchins with no stake in society’ schtick. If I’m completely honest, there’s a part of me that yearns for these scallies to suffer the kind of backstreet reprisal that is altogether more reminiscent of the Irish Troubles. OK, I’m still really angry now and sometimes we say and think terrible things when we’re angry, right? Let’s take my cat as a trivial example, when I trip over him on the stairs, I want to kill the fat bastard but that’s not an impulse I’ll ever act upon and I’d regret it deepl...

We live in strange times indeed when Milwall fans can pose as the forces of sanity and law and order and not be laughed out of the room but here we are... Eltham, earlier this afternoon   Large numbers of vigilantes have apparently been gathering all day in Eltham and there is ample evidence on the social networks that this particular coalescence has the fingerprints of the hard right all over it.  Certainly, the disorder has been manna from heaven for every racist and right-wing crank from here to Berchtesgaden. The usual coalition of footfall fans, the BNP and erstwhile Daily Star darlings ; the EDL, banded together today to protect Eltham and now they are apparently taking their gospel on the road... At the time of writing, reports on the social networks suggested hundreds of people were marching from Eltham to Lewisham in order to reclaim the streets. I had this confirmed by a source in contact with one of the marchers who put the march at ‘may...

TRWS was contacted by a reputable source with the following items.  That notwithstanding, the reports are in the main, unconfirmed and part of a fast-moving story. It is not our intention to add to speculation; it is rather an opportunity to hear from sources in Lewisham who may be able to offer a different perspective. It is understood that there may have been serious disorder at HMP Brixton today. TRWS was told that outside contractors reported a strong smell of burning at the prison this morning when they turned up for work. By mid-afternoon after the smell of burning got steadily worse, the decision was apparently taken to escort the workers off-site for their own safety. There are also reports of social networks being used to organise a mass meet-up at the Bowl in Crystal Palace. Unconfirmed (and I stress unconfirmed) reports have also reached the TRWS to the effect that a police officer was stabbed today in the Grove Park area of Lewisham Borough. We wi...

Civil unrest can be a very difficult subject to cover as a journalist. Too far away and you may as well be watching it on television; too close and you end up being one of the grisly screen-grabs for the ten o’clock news. There’ve only been a couple of times in my working life that I’ve been genuinely frightened. Covering a Bloody Sunday March years ago here in London, we were attacked by Combat 18 supporters: that was one. I was in real danger of a hiding that afternoon. The other was being lowered 40m into a Belfast sewer shaft in a steel cage on the end of a crane cable (but then I do have vertigo). But tonight, we had a winner. I’d heard reports of rioting in Lewisham so I determined to walk down and see for myself just how bad things were. My wife had warned me against it and Christ knows, I wish I’d heeded her. Round about 6.15pm, I got as far as the turn off for Ladywell Road on Lewisham High Road when I saw the first incident. Over at the swimming pool, a bus ...

A couple of weeks ago, TRWS advised punters that gold was the best place for their money (if indeed they had any). Run bear, run!   This advice is apparently proving more and more prescient with every passing hour. Yesterday, both the Dow Jones and the FTSE indices tanked spectacularly, the Eurozone continued to spread panic and lose credibility. Overnight, the stock markets of Asia also started tanking and this morning, it’s ground hog day; when the markets opened in London, the FTSE lost more than 3% in six minutes. Spain and Italy are rallying but late morning trading suggests that the FTSE is still down around 2.2%. Some of these Billy-Big-Balls city boys really do seem to be behaving as if their trading floors are being attacked by gangs of blood-thirsty grizzlies. Well, I can only hope. There’s plenty of bad news to feed this already bowel-loosening market sentiment. This afternoon, we’ve the US government jobs figures to look forward to. While a rise o...

There was something almost tragically inevitable about Senator David Norris’s withdrawal from the Irish Presidential campaign yesterday. Something about the whole affair that was so bleak and inescapably absurd that it rendered all the more epigrammatic the withdrawing contender’s choice of parting shot. For a moment like that, it had to be Beckett or Cervantes. Support for the academic and gay rights activist drained away dramatically after it was revealed earlier this week that the Senator had advocated unsuccessfully against the conviction of his former lover, Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi, in a 1997 statutory rape conviction involving a 15-year old Palestinian boy. While this information regarding Nawi’s sexual offences had been in the public domain since 2007, the Irish media are citing the publication of a story on a London Irish blog – The System Works – on 24 July as the genesis of this particular episode. Here’s an Israeli story from 2010 updating the s...