Lessons having been learnt .... I wonder

So here we are in the aftermath. The smoke has drifted away and the bodies have been counted. Communities are beginning to see the residue of a few night’s madness and the campaigns to reclaim the streets from the evil hoodies have kicked off in the newspapers and daytime TV programs.

Unfortunately we are also hearing the dread term “Lessons will be learned” from our politicians and if anything, this should worry us more than the riots themselves.

‘Call Me’ Cameron cut short his holiday and recalled parliament so now we have 600+ pissed off people with no agenda but to look into the random actions of some mindless thugs. You can already hear the battle lines being drawn up and the points being scored while Cameron and ‘Milliband the Younger’ spout empty rhetoric at each other while both are wishing they were somewhere else. They will set up a ‘wide-ranging all-party committee’ to look into the origins of the troubles and to make recommendations for new laws and tactics and that is fine – it will take years to achieve nothing except to put a lot of middle-England’s minds at ease by the fact of its existence.

Unfortunately the leaders feel that they are expected show that they ‘have a grip on things’ and this means that they will make short term policy changes to cope with what has already ended and they will forget the principle that single actions do not make a trend and put even more draconian policies in place to deal with a an isolated case that has been and is unlikely to be repeated for many years.

The calls have already gone up to ban hoodies and any form of facial coverings while in public – are you going to include beards and glasses in this, people, and how about bandages or baseball caps with long peaks? Are you going to make it like the passport office - no smiling, no glasses, always be against a white background and of a closely limited facial size?

The home secretary has even called for curfews in some areas and the banning of any gatherings of more than a dozen people – so that will outlaw midnight mass and street parties then!

The blame has been variously placed on immigrants, single mothers, the feckless, various racial groups and even, well done Guardian for this one, Hassidic Jews! You name the prejudice and someone has cast their bile at it. As usual the idiots have crawled out of the woodwork – we can only hope that the politicians don’t listen to them.   

Anyone with any sense can see that the police were in a more than tricky situation and did a fantastic job, eventually, by understanding that this was different from the G20 or the student riots. But the trigger for all the pain was the unfortunate death of a Tottenham drug dealer at the hands of the police. As usual in these matters the cock-ups and lies came thick and fast – “He shot at the police”, “His bullet struck a copper”, in fact, as we now know, he was shot with a single bullet (marksman?), never fired a shot and was no threat to the the Police. The bullet that struck the policeman’s radio was fired from a police weapon (itchy trigger-finger?). Then the Police investigated and sheepishly admitted the truth in little segments, pulled like teeth (didn’t they learn anything from Menezes or Tomlinson?). Sometimes you just need to admit that you screwed up and learn the lessons (sorry) and DON’T DO IT AGAIN.

The other opportunity for officialdom to proclaim that they were learning lessons came from the practice bike ride on Sunday. 120 odd cyclists took part in a race on Sunday to test the readiness of the authorities for the real thing next summer and after causing gridlock throughout South and South-West London for most of the day the authorities have gone away to ‘Learn what lessons can be found’.

Lesson 1 – if you close the South Circular from 07:00  until 15:00 you will cause chaos! There, you have learned a lesson, now DON’T DO IT AGAIN.

Lesson 2 – If you man the route with a bunch of people who are not locals and who don’t know what the diversions are, people will chase around like headless chickens looking for an alternative route and take hours to get where they were planning to, getting righteously pissed off all the while. Now you have learned another lesson – train the Marshalls properly and signpost your routes clearly. Simples

Lesson 3 – If you close two of the most popular bridges over the Thames and Marshall them with people who don’t know the name of the next open bridge people will chase around like headless chickens looking for an alternative route and take hours to get where they were planning to, getting righteously pissed off all the while. Now you have learned another lesson – Give the Marshalls local maps and teach them to read them properly.

Lesson 4 – If you blithely think that sending out a bunch of emails to Oyster card holders (most of which will have ended up in the spam folder for unsolicited mail) and doing a mail drop within the area that the roads are going to be closed is enough, you really need to learn lessons about traffic flow and the effects of blocked arteries. The ripple effect of the South London road closures was felt in North London because people travel from North London to the South on a summer Sunday – sometimes to visit friends and sometimes just to go to the lovely areas in South London (and some to watch the cycle race after the radio announced it was happening).

Now you have learned yet another lesson – people are NOT TELEPATHIC and they ARE SOCIAL!

Please tell me which of these 4 lessons could not have been foreseen by anyone with two working brain cells and a vision wider than their own nose. The collective power of TFL, GLA, LOA, Minister for Transport et al failed to work out, in advance, the likely impact of their decisions.
I’ve learned a lesson and I suspect you all have as well – get rid of the bloody lot of them and employ a bunch of primary school students – they couldn’t have done any worse.

This was a ‘practice’ for the Olympics next year – only next year this will happen midweek while millions of people are trying very hard to go about their normal business as well as watch the races. Learn the lesson – have the road race at night, starting at 02:00 and finished by 04:00 and hope to hell that another ambulance, fire engine or nurse doesn’t get caught up in the mayhem LIKE THEY ALL DID ON SUNDAY.