Why didn't we riot?

I’m young. I’m a student. I’ve grown up with today’s British Culture and I am a part of ‘Today’s Generation’. So why didn’t you see me running around London setting fire to furniture stores and stealing carpets? Oh that’s right, because I’m not a complete and utter idiot.

What started out as a protest turned into a catastrophe only two months back. Windows were smashed, shops were looted and hoodies were worn. So why weren’t we (the Imperial student body) a part of this? I mean hey, free stuff – who doesn’t want that?

Perhaps you shouldn't wear your Currys uniform when you're about to go and loot... Currys

Firstly, let’s be honest: every single one of us did consider it for that tiny second. You took a lingering look at your old hoody and thought, “A new Macbook sounds nice, let’s head down to my local Currys and see what I can come back with.” At least we’re sensible enough to realise that perhaps you shouldn’t wear your Currys uniform when you’re about to go and loot… Currys.

But after the brief moment of temptation, your logic kicks in. We are civilised individuals and well, frankly, we have a bit more than an ounce of self-respect for ourselves. We know the difference between right and wrong and the difference between breaking windows and breaking the law.

You hear people blaming our ‘sick’ society on parents, gang culture and a lack of community. To some extent I agree, there were many factors. But they forgot to blame the actual kids themselves. I mean, I’m pretty sure a 13 year old knows what he’s doing when he walks into a rioting crowd with a hammer. And I’m definitely sure a guy knows what he’s doing when he steals something from the backpack of an injured boy. That’s beyond sick and twisted; you’re entering the stages of mental psychoses if you’re willing to go that far.

The truth is that half our generation, the half we like to make fun of, ‘the chavs’, have lost their moral compass, their sense of dignity and their minds. When you hear some of the reasons these people came up with – like showing the police ‘we can do what we want’, or ‘cos the government is crap innit’, or my personal favourite ‘cos everyone else is doing it’ – it actually blows your mind. Are these people for real? (And did no one ever teach them of the infamous saying ‘well if everyone jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?’)

I’m not trying to say that we are superior to the hoodies, but we are living proof that we have grown up in this day and age as relatively normal human beings. Instead of going out on a rampage against the law every night we stayed in and ‘liked’ funny Facebook pages about it. We signed petitions to bring in the army, to support the police and to help clean up the streets of London.

So when politicians look back on why these riots started, they shouldn’t be so generalised. We shouldn’t be clumped in with the rest of ‘Today’s Generation’ just because we were raised in the same era. Politicians should focus on the differences between the split within our generation. Why do some people turn out as ‘chavs’ and others turn out like us? They should know that when it comes to growing up in this society, at least some of us got it right.