Wheelie Wacists.

It says something about the sorry state of the world in 2024 that the streets of Britain can be filled with hatred, fire, venom, violence and, inevitably, idiots for an entire week and yet it somehow doesn’t seem to be all that disturbing. Naturally, I write this from the perspective of someone who hasn’t seen a spot of bother on the high street, and it is very safe to assume that if a spot of bother did suddenly start to bloom then I’d be one of the first to baton down the hatch and wait for quite a while after the dust had settled before coming out again, but even then there is something almost par for the course about what we’re seeing; it’s almost as if this has become the norm. And when rioting becomes the norm you know that life isn’t really as cosy as it used to be. In the last few years we’ve had Brexit and Covid and possibly the most unsettled period of financial and political hullabaloo since World War II. Add onto that all the extra steaming piles of shit giving off an almighty pong in the Middle East and the USA and on the Russian border and what you end up with is a level of desensitization that would have been unthinkable a quarter of a century ago. I suppose the experts will say these things tend to go in cycles, which is a fat lot of use, because rioting is quite a different thing to putting on a washing machine.

The greatest tragedy about all this fuss and bother in the streets is that it has all sprung out of the senseless deaths of three girls and the injury of several more in Southport. The news reports seemed to fixate on the fact it happened at a Taylor Swift themed dance class, but when you give that information more than half a second of consideration it renders itself utterly irrelevant. Children were murdered and injured. Innocent children were murdered and injured. Taylor Swift has got nothing to do with it; you may as well talk about which Carpenter’s tune Peter Sutcliffe liked to whistle as he went about his work. I digress. These murders were horrific and all that was needed was some some swift (and appropriate) justice and some space and time for family and friends to grieve, but instead the agenda has been rewritten by the far right, as represented by hundreds of bored stiff, pig-thick, stoned and half-cut morons who probably couldn’t even muster the energy to flush a toilet, let alone do something useful like vote. Or work. This is a grim-faced, tawdry, foetid army, drawn from the very bottom of their own gutter. It would be foolish to even describe it as a gathering of mercenaries, because at least mercenaries are, more or less, worth hiring once in a while. This lot can’t even shit straight.

And who do we find behind this army of glass-eyed, gormless, slack-chinned fuck-rings? Well, the first turd that no-one seems to be able to flush away is that Yaxley- Lennon chap. You know, little Tommy Robinson, a man who chose to change his name to make him sound more loveable and cuddly (after who – the humble trench Tommy, the Who rock opera Tommy, mass murderer Tommy Lynn Sells, Smokey Robinson, Anne Robinson, the Robinson jam gollywog?) but failed to address the small problem of him being a nasty little racist. I wonder what you’d find if you traced his tree back far enough – Lord Nelson, Robin Hood, Alfred The Great? Unlikely, but the way these things usually work there’s a good chance that Mummy and Daddy didn’t stand at the docks and wave HMS Windrush in with Union Jacks and a warming smile. Whatever Tommy Robinson thinks he is, or thinks people ought to think he is, he clearly doesn’t have a problem with Cypriots (unless they come over here and take ‘our’ jobs, jobs that no self-respecting neo-Nazi would ever dream of doing anyway, usually because it’ll be jobs they are thoroughly unqualified to perform in the first place) because he’s been hiding by the pool in his shorts in Cyprus and whipping up angry, confused legions of the right wing variety, men who have been trained in such specialist skills as throwing bricks badly, pushing over policemen and then running away, pretending they know what the Nuremburg rallies were and, of course, setting fire to stuff; the ability to set fire to wheelie bins seems to be something the far-right are particularly keen on, possibly because many wheelie bins are black or brown; though in fairness quite a few that I’ve seen ablaze have been blue, so well done the far-right for not being discriminatory towards council property.

Watching wheelie bins being set alight and windows smashed and heads stamped on may look terrifying but these riots can be boiled down to not much more than a gaggle of very badly informed, almost un-educatable idiots letting off some anti-migrant steam – hot dumb in the summertime, as Sly Stone might put it. They are daft racists guided by marginally less daft racists from the comfort of a sun lounger. As the French know only too well, these things flare up every once in a while and then something else happens (a gold medal, an interest rate drop, another Strictly contestant announced, etc) and everyone goes home again to beat up their wives and scratch their tiny nuts. More worrying, even than Tommy bloody Robinson, is that across the pond (or on some tropical island, slowly morphing into his own idea of Ernst Stavro Blofeld), Elon Musk is taking it up a gear in his efforts to become the biggest wanker in the galaxy. It was Musk who restored Tommy’s X account and it is Musk who is now using his own company to spout utter rubbish as and when he pleases. Why an American should feel qualified to comment on the social problems of another country is quite the conundrum and he should be reminded to watch his own back yard for signs of a civil war before he spots one here through a crowd of Burberry caps and George crosses. Only a deluded, sociopathic billionaire with a wax face would find it fitting to stand, for no clear reason, next to men who regularly ask for a framed photo of Heinrich Himmler as a Christmas present.

The next couple of days will, I suspect, see things slowly fizzle out (that said, there are 100 protests planned for today so I could be very wrong, but I’m going with a hunch). I’ve never had a huge urge to visit Hull or Rotherham, Southport or Blackpool, Darlington or Tamworth, and now I know why. No doubt there will be some flare up closer to home before long but I’ll be happy to lock myself away and watch it from a distance – like Robinson and Musk, I suppose. I’m glad that Kier Starmer is offering swift justice (who knew that our prison system could be so stuffed and yet able to find accommodation for so many extra arseholes so quickly?) but putting these people in prison will only make them grotty little martyrs to their grotty little cause. In my head the best way to deal with this lot is to make their lives that little bit more difficult, to put things into perspective. Cut their water and electricity off at random moments. Quadruple their car insurance and deny them access to the NHS for the rest of their lives. Impose a crushing tattoo tax. And yes, you could also set fire to their wheelie bin, preferably after putting them in it. Watching these clueless, bitter tits vent spleen on the streets is an embarrassment. Chasing an ideal of England that doesn’t exist anymore. Chasing ghosts and whispers and plastic bags in the breeze. To me they certainly don’t represent any sort of England I’d be proud of (I’m struggling to think of what does). Instead of stroking each other off outside a burning mosque they could be at home watching the Olympics, but then there are a few too many foreigners in the Olympics to make for comfortable viewing. And watching the Olympics in 2024 gives you a sturdy idea of what good can come from migration. Migration vs a right wing England with Tommy calling the shots and Elon working the loud speaker? Give me migration any day.

G B Burton. 07.08.2024