Thursday, March 22, 2007
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When you're a builder, you're a builder all the way!
Whose side are you on?

vs.

On my way home from work yesterday without anything to read, I resorted to having my intelligence insulted (then insulted some more, than spat and defecated upon) by picking up one of London's terrible free daily newspapers (see what I mean here). Turns out that it reported a news story directly relevant to my new neighborhood, where a large number of teenagers violently clashed in an after-school frenzy of fighting, stabbing and who knows what-all.1 There's coverage in our local newpaper here, but it fails to mention the most curious part of the story I read yesterday in the lighter-than-light free newspaper (which curiously seems to have only appeared in print, not in the online version available now [unless I hallucinated the whole thing. I know, I know, I should have kept a copy.]). According to my memory of this article, they reported that the conflict occurred between two main groups, one Turkish or Kurdish and the other Jamaican. Further, they reported that these groups were distinguished not only by their national origin, but by their choice of fashion accessories; one group favored Bob the Builder hats, and the other Thomas the Tank Engine.

Perhaps this detail is not factual, but I really like to think it is: thugs self-identifying with popular characters for the preschool set (for reasons completely unknown to me). And I'm very much looking forward to the extension of this trend to other groups and other characters. Care Bear Crips? Weeble Latin Kings? My Pretty Pony El Rukns?


1Readers of a nervous disposition may be relieved to know that this didn't actually happen on our doorstep, but instead near the movie theatres at the main shopping centre area some 15 minutes' walk away. Shopping malls are evil and dangerous; that's a take-home message we all can live with.

Thursday, March 22, 2007 5:45:32 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [3]  |