Anyone has the clip where CNN said that the British PM Gordon Brown

[malaise]

was returning from his vacation :rofl:

[DURHAM D]

1. Are you serious?

:rofl:

[malaise]

13. Yes - they were discussing it on a local program

Freaking hilarious

[dana_b]

2. CNN, not Fox, eh?

wow...

[HipChick]

3. The Mayor...The PM and the Home Secretary all left the country

Now they all had to come scuttling back..

[Ruby the Liberal]

4. What with the Murdoch debacle, who doesn't know who David Cameron is?

[DURHAM D]

5. Apparently someone in this thread.

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. Most Americans don't know that the UK is more than England, either.

Considering that a third of Americans polled couldn't name the current vice president of their own country, this doesn't come as too much of a shock really.

[HipChick]

7. I am often asked if England is in London...

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. I've had a conversation with an acquaintance after moving to the UK that went like this:

Them: "So, how's London?"
Me: "I assume it's still there, I think I would have heard if anything happened to it"

[Ruby the Liberal]

9. Hey - are you guys starting to get some sense

of what is driving this over there? All I keep seeing on Twitter from UK peeps is that the police are outnumbered, fire patrols are no where to be found and that it is breaking out everywhere, but with no apparent organization.

:wtf:

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. Long-simmering tensions between urban minority populations and the police mostly I'd guess

stop and search laws, perception of unfair treatment, things near a tipping point for quite some time and it just takes something like the shooting the other day to set it off and give people an excuse (see: Los Angeles, 1992; see also: riots in Washington DC, Baltimore, Chicago, Boston, Kansas City, and many other US cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr).

[HipChick]

12. yep..you hit on the nail...and that its mostly been driven by 'hoodie' youths..

[malaise]

14. This one started as a result of the execution of a citizen

by cop and the attempt to cover it up by suggesting he had a weapon. Everything else is correct.

[Spider Jerusalem]

16. He did apparently have a weapon; however there are now reports...

that said weapon wasn't drawn or fired; see this piece in the Independent, for instance:

Investigators yesterday refused to confirm reports that initial results from the tests by the National Ballistics Intelligence Service suggested that the bullet fragments were from police-issue ammunition, meaning they could not have been from a weapon fired by Mr Duggan and casting doubt on claims that he was killed in an exchange of gunfire. According to reports last night, the suspected gang member was carrying a starter pistol modified to fire live bullets.

The Independent understands that the shrapnel being analysed was from a hollow-point or dumdum bullet found in the handset of a sharpshooter from Scotland Yard's elite CO19 firearms unit, whose officers use this type of ammunition.

Similar ammunition, favoured for its devastating effects, is also circulating among criminal gangs and has been seized in raids against underworld quartermasters in recent years.

(snip)

Evidence that the father-of-four did not brandish a firearm and that a CO19 officer came close to killing one of his colleagues will only worsen the tensions that have brought violence and looting to the streets.

[Ruby the Liberal]

17. Ok, this is the first I have heard that it is racially motivated

I wonder why people aren't talking about that. Taboo?

[Spider Jerusalem]

18. It's one of those things that's not mentioned because it doesn't really need to be?

"Riots in Tottenham/Haringey/Bethnal Green (and most of the other reported locations of violence)" to a UK audience says the same thing that "Riots in Watts/South Central LA/Detroit/Southeast DC" would say to an American; the racial element isn't explicitly spoken because it doesn't need to be. Although "racially motivated" is also wrong, strictly speaking; we're talking about an economically and socially oppressed minority population who've been on the receiving end of police brutality and deliberate targeting by police for quite some time after all, it's more the bubbling over of a long-boiling resentment. Action and reaction, and again very similiar to similar instances of violence in the US.

[Ruby the Liberal]

19. Gotcha. Thanks for taking the time to explain

Lord knows our media isn't covering it (and won't until they figure out how to frame it).

[krispos42]

10. I don't get it.

Stay on target...



What? What target?




Stay on target...




Look, guy, you're just confusing me now.





Stay on target...





There is no target.





Stay on target...




There IS no target!






Stay on target...





:think: Oh, Gordon Brown isn't the PM anymore, is he?



:facepalm:

[malaise]

15. LOL

:evilgrin: