I have actually watched it, despite my hatred of Own jones.
I found it quite interesting. but not surprising.
What I did note was that it was good that he was there on the ground. But given that he arrived at 6.30pm and the disorder carried on into the night. So people didn’t listen to ‘community leaders’.
Oddly he didn’t mention the bus. He said he arrived and the car was overturned. Describes the crowd as very anger, then angry but settled then accuses other groups of coming in from outside the community from right wing sources and setting it off again. Will be interesting to see where the people live, that have been arrested.
It’s interesting that he refutes the there’s tension between communities there and that the people who live there are upset about the lack of opportunity. Which is understandable. But there is tension between communities.
But again saying things like ‘they don’t have opportunities so have a lot of time on their hands’ is just trying to absolve people of responsibility. I assume he means they don’t have jobs. I can’t work out why the thinking is ‘they don’t have jobs and so become a nightmare for the local community’ rather than ‘people who becomes nightmares for their local communities also tend not to work’.
Money and schemes have been ploughed into that area for decades, to try and improve it and there’s a large minority that don’t want it. Why does ‘having too much time on their hands’ become an excuse for anti social behaviour?
It’s also quite odd because if you look at figures for the area, the vast majority are employed. I don’t know wether that stat comes from HMRC or just surveys using a small number of locals and extrapolating.
And I don’t see how any of this is an excuse for trying to stop neglected children from being removed, acting in threatening ways to social services and police. Tipping up police cars, setting fire to buses etc