Aha! It's Blackberry's fault!
******
In recent public disturbances such as the Student protests, commentary has focused on the role that social networks such as Twitter and Facebook have played in the planning of demonstrations and coordination of protesters. By contrast in this riot it appears the social network of choice is one provided by none other than BlackBerry.
Blackberry's have been produced by Research In Motion (RIM) since 1999. They were originally associated with busy office executives who needed to access their emails on the move, but in recent years they have become increasingly popular within youth and urban cultures. I have to admit that I found this puzzling. It took my far cooler 17 year old nephew to explain that the main reason for their popularity is due to BBM – BlackBerry Messenger.
BBM as it is known, is an instant messenger system that has become popular for three main reasons: it's fast (naturally), it's virtually free, and unlike Twitter or Facebook, it's private.
So what has all this got to do with the riots in Tottenham?
Well, it appears that BBM messages have been circulating since Thursday's shooting of Duggan by the police. These have fuelled the anger of the youths that have taken to the streets. BBM was also the channel used to spread the word that the riot had started, and from what I can tell on Twitter, it appears to be the means by which communications continue to be shared.
The mayor of London is a giant asshole, to be fair.
Yeah, I was going to post that thing about Blackberry. Apparently Blackberries are the preferred phone for young people in the UK and the Blackberry Messenger plan is free, unlike SMS. It's also not public, so any coordination that did take place took place out of the public eye.
Consuela, any chance that the screw of your job filling could leave you with the opportunity to pull out all the stops wrt pointing out nemesis failings?
After I get rehired, there will be a Talk with my boss. And possibly a phone call to the whistleblower line: some of the shit that rumor reports her doing is pretty dubious ethically.
OMG, why are politicians so stupid! Bush not being on the ground after Katrina completely undermined the credibility of his administration. Yet...
There have been complaints that the government did not have a senior minister in London at the weekend when the rioting broke out. But Clegg insisted that senior members of the cabinet had been in regular contact by phone.
'I reject completely this notion that somehow this Government hasn't been functioning very effectively,' said Clegg, who said that he had spoken to David Cameron, who is on holiday in Italy, by phone this morning.
Don't they give politicians a training session on political capital and being seen immediately after a crisis?
So. Fucking. Stupid.
The NYTimes connects the dots in the London riot.
Frustration in this impoverished neighborhood, as in many others in Britain, has mounted as the government’s austerity budget has forced deep cuts in social services. At the same time, a widely held disdain for law enforcement here, where a large Afro-Caribbean population has felt singled out by the police for abuse, has only intensified through the drumbeat of scandal that has racked Scotland Yard in recent weeks and led to the resignation of the force’s two top commanders.
There's trouble in Bristol, Birmingham, and Liverpool also: [link]
It is not confirmed yet, but a woman may have ended up jumping from a burning building. The reason I say "may" is that so far it is in tabloids that are not above making shit up.
Quarter to 11 and it is 96 outside.
Sometimes I just want to do reverse-hibernation and sleep through the heat of summer. (I know there's a word for that, I just can't remember it.)
