Mine is not to reason why

I literally can not get over this photograph. It's a woman jumping from a blazing building in the midst of the rioting and looting carnage that's been overtaking the capital and other cities across the country these past few days.

Thanks mostly to timing and me being nowhere near a news report for a couple of days, I have to admit that I was pretty ignorant about the scale of the destruction until late last night. That was when a friend of mine, who is visiting the city with her family, sent me a text to say: "Things are really bad, but we are fine. The riots are a few miles up the road and all the local shops are shut. Street lights are out too and sirens are going all over the place. We can smell the smoke."

This morning I took the time to read some of the media coverage of the trouble and, honestly, it's un-fucking-believable. If the photographs weren't in colour, you'd swear that some of them were taken during the WWII London blitz. No, these photos aren't a result of some evil Nazi party plot to take over the world. They're a result of British people whose actions surely can never be rationalised.

Well, as it happens, some of the more intellectual types among us have been trying to do exactly that, by proposing reasons "why" this is all happening in the first place. But to be honest, the reason why is unimportant to me right now. Right now I reserve the right to feel whatever the hell I feel about the subject without being forced to play devil's advocate. How about I leave all the theorising to sociologists, politicians and bloggers who don't tag their posts with labels called "Ranty McRantpants", shall I?

I know that there are underlying causes to *any* civil unrest, but in this instance, if "why" provides even a quarter of a percent of legitimacy to their actions, then you're onto plums if you think you're going to convert me to your way of thinking. The reason behind the peaceful protest which took place on Saturday - the uncertainty surrounding the death of Mark Duggan, plus everything else associated with that issue - is one thing. Senseless violence and looting is quite another. Nothing excuses that kind of behaviour. Nothing. And I hate the notion that, somehow, if I fail to understand the rioters' underlying motives for burning down the buildings in their own communities and stealing from their neighbours, I'm somehow an unforgiving, elitist, right-wing arsehole with marshmallow for brains.

For the record, it's not that I haven't tried to understand. I did try... and I just don't. Of course some of these people are "disengaged", "angry" and "unhappy" at the cards they've been dealt in life. But that's no excuse. If it was me, I like to think that I'd be one of the *other* people in my community, i.e. those that have been dealt the same cards but have a healthy sense of what is right and wrong and, therefore, chose not to wreck and endanger the lives of other people to make their frustrations known. I am also perturbed by those who are comparing the violence to uprisings in Libya, or the frickin' Stonewall riots for that matter, to prove that violence can sometimes bring about a positive solution to the problem of inequality. They're *not* the same thing, period.

No, if these rioters want change - something more meaningful than a new television set without having to pay for it - then they're going the wrong way about effecting it.