Beware the votes of cyclists

London agenda for Wednesday 7 December

Who gets chosen to switch on the Christmas lights says a lot about a place

London agenda for Tuesday 6 December

The Thames is terrifying. Don't fall in

The Guardian riots study is in. "Fuck the police" is the gist of it

Today The Guardian goes big on its co-study of the riots with LSE. They spoke to 270 rioters. It’s an impressive piece of work. Points to note:

Lots of rioters say it was about the police. There’s plenty of self-serving bollocks quoted in this report, which lets the rioters speak for themselves. Don’t forget, while reading it, that in some cases they’re justifying smashing up corner shops. But clear too the the police are seen as the enemy. And that stop and search contributes to this.

There’s an excellent pdf with a breakdown of the results. Of note: 79% of rioters were male, and 51% were under 21.

From the same pdf, 74% rioters named social media as a contributing cause to their actions, while only 32% named gangs as a cause. This probably means we should BAN SOCIAL MEDIA?!?

This being The Guardian there’s some nonsense up there as well. The riot commute data visualisation is very silly. “Riot commute”? Really?

Reading the Riots series homepage
English riots were ‘a sort of revenge’ against the police
Survey results
The England ‘riot commute’ mapped – an animation

London agenda for Monday 5 December

Nick Griffin has a Hitler moustache cat

London agenda for Friday 2 Friday

London agenda for Thursday 1 December