Summary - The riots in quotes

Summary - The riots in quotes:
Title: The riots in quotes
Author: Fern Tomlinson
Publisher: Mirror Online.
Date published: 08 Aug 2011 11:58.
URL: http://www.totalpolitics.com/blog/176607/the-riots-in-quotes.thtml




Key quotes:

Monday:

• David Lammy MP: “For every person on camera throwing stones there will be 1,000 others off camera rebuilding what has been destroyed. This is the Tottenham I was born in, the Tottenham I grew up in and that I live in”. (Mirror)

• Diane Abbott MP: “Just as with the original riots, parts of the community seem to have been a tinder box waiting to explode. Haringey Council has lost £41m from its budget and has cut youth services by 75%. The abolition of the education maintenance allowance hit Haringey hard, and thousands of young people at college depended on it. Again none of these things are reasons for rioting and looting. But with these and other cuts in jobs and services, it is difficult to see how areas like Tottenham can become less flammable soon”. (The Independent)
• Nick Clegg MP:  Rejected "completely this notion that somehow this government hasn't been functioning very effectively". (Sky News)
• Ken Livingstone:  "I am concerned that there is growing social dislocation in London and a threat that the police will be forced into escalating conflict with some London communities. We do not want to go back to the 1980s".  (Labour List)

Tuesday:

• Steven Kavanagh:  It was a “shocking and appalling morning for London to wake up to” (BBC News)
• Lynne Featherstone MP:  “The bloody scenes of violence, peppered with raging fires, indicate that we have people in our communities who care nothing for the rule of law and order, nothing for human life and nothing for peoples’ livelihoods. And there can be no justifications and nowhere to hide from such behaviour. We all need to stand together on this and condemn all those who perpetrated these acts. No ifs – no buts”. (Lynne Featherstone)
• "Chuka Umunna MP:  “It is ordinary people’s lives who have been harmed by these events; the independent shopkeepers who have had their premises looted whom I have spoken to today, the people who struggled to get to work this morning due to the disruption caused and the people who were afraid to leave their homes last night. We stand beside them with a clear message that our community will not stand for this”. (This is Local London)"     -> This contradicts many sources that note that the 'looters' in fact tried to help the innocent or "..ordinary people..." and intentionally avoided smaller shops, opting to focus on larger, corporate owned shops. 

Wednesday: 

• Steve McCabe MP:   “Of course it raises questions about the cuts we have seen in police numbers.”  (Birmingham Mail)
• John Hemming MP:   “The looting and vandalism is done by ill-disciplined youths.”  (Birmingham Mail)
• Hazel Blears MP:  “This is copycat behaviour. There’s a sense that some people don’t have the kind of barriers and discipline that people in the past have been brought up with”.  (Metro)