Sonata for loot and violince

I say. Bad form, chaps. This won't do. 

We English, despite our proverbial calm demeanour that got us through the Blitz and all that, aren't without feelings, what? One of your lads seems to have waved a gun in a friendly greeting to the police -- a rough lot, don't you know, egg-and-chips types -- perhaps squeezed off a vibrant round or two, and after some sort of jumble-up was left with his exit ticket collected.

Rum business, that.

Of course I understand that your lot has certain ways of working out grief that are different from ours. Wouldn't dream of trying to impose our value system, much of which goes back to the days when we were trading slaves and hanging pickpockets, on you who've brought so much colour and diversity into our hideously white society. Just a flea in your ear, what: your grieving process is likely to be misinterpreted by right-wing extremists.

Take this ignorant observation by the, er, Telegraph. (Naturally The Guardian is more understanding.)

As youths weighed down with bags and shoes stream out of a ransacked branch of JD Sports in Tottenham Hale retail park, the woman calmly inspects a new pair of white trainers. She even bends down to try one on. 

Ah, youth! Wasted on the young, they say. Not you lot, I'm glad to see. Some day, years from now, you'll look at those shoes and remember this day of mourning and shopping without all that petty bourgeois bit about paying.

 

Education is the key to sorting things out, who can deny it? Those lads who nicked the big screen TV, I'm sure they'll be regular watchers of the evening news and the annual BBC adaptations of Jane Austen.

Love that junk sculpture of the no. 82 London Transport bus. Work your feelings out in creativity! Always admired that about you multi cultures, your exuberance in the face of tragedy. So much better than our long-faced, ashes-to-ashes Church of England rituals.

Just one more thought. Keep it real, as you say in your wonderfully colourful brand of English. Work it out in your own neighbourhoods, I beg you. Here in Kensington, we have all these types who might not understand your ways and would get the wrong end of the stick. Hate to see you getting the other end, what?