Crumbling society or sheer vandalism?

I can't stop watching the news. I am not against uprisings. Many necessary and vital changes have been made in the World by mass civil unrest when people have gone to the streets and shouted out that they wanted change now. However, why innocent victims' and small businesses are being targeted is beyond me. Staff in Pizza Planet and JD Sports are hardly earning enough to live on, and the owners might not be able to claim insurance for 'civil mobbing'. Everybody loses. Why not target the banks? If kids today have absolutely nothing to live for then maybe the government should consider creating more jobs and allowing people to go to uni. Give them a chance in life and see how things change. Also, the government needs to stop cutting police jobs! Tories, see what you have done?? But kids, really, if you want to make a point, don't victimise small businesses, people's homes, your own neighbours and electronics shops. Londoners will have no sympathy for TV looters.  Sure, go out and demand change, but do it nicely and you will be supported. Do it with violence and you get no respect. "There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it." Martin Luther King Jr


Here are some of my favourite comments and quotes from Londoners, picked out from Facebook and Twitter: 
-'Peace appears to have broken out in London. Have parents barricaded their children indoors or are the looters busy playing on their new PS consoles?'
-'Stuck indoors!!!'
‎-'Dirty, thieving bastard scum, you make me sick. Any excuse to loot shops for your white trainers and a new tv. It's about time our police were allowed to deal with scum properly.'
-'Wow a lot of Police around. What happen to the skanky idiots? They are either doing the following: watching the news and laughing their ass off boasting that they've finished stealing or are they doing a peek a boo game.'
-'I could understand if they were looting food, but TVs and DVD recorders??? These are just opportunistic bastards!!'
-'Hackney has burnt to the ground!'

Seanhanna: hairbutchers of the year

This year I decided that I should spend more money on my hair. Hell, I have a stable job, a boyfriend to share the bills, and no kids to feed, apart from my aged cats, so I should be able to treat myself once in a while. So I said goodbye to the Russian lady who had been my faithful hairdresser for over five years, always getting it right, or at least highly acceptable cut and colour, despite washing my hair upside down in her bath. Well, it was cheap, what do you expect!  
Following on the success of my BKT, I went back to Rush Victoria to have my hair coloured, whilst sipping proper coffee and listening to something other than Russian pop music. I deserve this, I thought, feeling quite smug. I asked the colourist for warm milk chocolate with copper highlights and gave her a photo. Easy, I  thought. 
After some fakery, the colourist dried my hair. I looked myself in the mirror and saw jet black with red stripes. No, no no! It would appear that NOTHING in the world wide hairdressing is easy. Open to interpretation more likely. I took a deeeeeeeep breath. "This is not what I asked for, this is black, jet black, not milk choc". The hairdressers, being such patronising beasts, tried to convince me that jet black was the colour I asked for and even tried putting the photo I had brought on my hair to compare. I snatched the photo way and told them that they could stop right away trying to pretend this was choc, when it so clearly was J-E-T B-L-A-C-K, and that I was not colour blind, you so called hair colourist! They offered to fix it, but subsequently messed up my next appointment to 'bleach' my hair (which was probably just gonna go terribly wrong) and I had to look like a WAG for months. Needless to say, I have not gone back.
Try number two: Seanhanna in Canary Wharf, which, it would appear, won a hairdressers of the year award. Surely these people will be able to do something right, right? WRONG! Disaster number 1: The first time I went for cut, I specifically said NO LAYERS. What did I get? Layers upon layers upon layers. I am starting to doubt my ability to speak English. Did I somehow learn Russian from my old hairdresser and now can only talk Russian to hairdressers??? They offered me a 50% off haircut next time, after I had a chance to grow the layers.
Disaster number 2: two colourists, yes, two of them, which looked no more than 15 years old, had to do my colour three times. Four and a half hours later, I went from a somewhat faded chocolate brown to blond with orange highlights, then red with red highlights to auburn with red highlights. I am a brunette, people, BRUNETTE! Not blonde or ginger or red! Is milk chocolate with copper highlights such a mystical colour to baffle these teenagers in such a way??
Disaster number 3: on the same day as colour, my 50% off haircut as an apology from the previous fuck up. I just didn't know that they meant I was going to leave with 50% less hair. As soon as the 'senior hairdresser', who looked 13, started cutting my fringe I knew I was in trouble. But I doubted myself, you see... I thought "Is this a new technique from the hairdressers of the year"? Wrong again! The child started to chop and chomp my fringe vertically and disaster ensued. He just could not get my fringe straight! The very basics of hairdressing! How can they be hairdressers of the year? Which year exactly, 2045?  No one cuts hair like that!  STRAIGHT fringe!! I am not asking for much here! The result was awful, a chomped fringe, two inches above my eyebrows, wonky, badly drawn (and quartered!) Ridiculous, stupid and plain wrong. 
AND they wanted to charge me! The very cheek of it! I asked the receptionist if she thought my fringe was straight, she didn't reply. She instead asked me if I was happy was my colour. "Do I look happy after spending five hours of my Saturday sitting here, hungry and deeply annoyed, whilst you tried to fix my colour three times whilst repeatedly hacking my hair with a blunt axe? Are you going to pay for my wasted time?" She kept looking at my fringe. Needless to say, I am not going back. 
At this rate, I will run out of 'establishments' that will see me by the end of the next year... Deeply frustrated, demoralised, hungry, feeling sorry for myself, I texted my boyfriend ahead of getting home to warn him my hair looked stupid, so he would be sympathetic and not say things like "is that what you wanted?" I got home and had to hear a 'sympathetic' "oh dear... " from my boyfriend. Yes, oh dear indeed. Back to the Russians then....

Post Office special delivery maths

Monday 9am and I am already wound up: a Post Office cashier spent 5 minutes arguing with me about how to give me change to £10.07 for a £5.67 transaction. She kept trying to give me 3p back as she "already had 4p"!!! I cannot even imagine what she wanted to do with the 4p. After a some time of shuffling 3p back and forth under the protective glass, I had enough.  I really do try really hard to be nice but i just HAD to tell her that, as "a cashier", if she can't work out how to give change, she should use a calculator, and that it should be £4.40. She gave me a blank stare; her manager, who had apparently witnessed the exchange, found it very amusing. Well, I just had to roll my eyes to him! Good luck, mate! Me, on the other hand, can only despair...

Spending Cuts Protest- Photos

"Is this a revolt?" (Louis XVI)  "No, Sire, it is a Revolution!" (La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt)

How I wish it was! Amazing to see people coming from all over the country to show their anger: Tories, take note, we are angry!!!

Lady of the Dump

Walking around the back streets of Shadwell today, it suddenly dawned on me how deprived the area really is.  I mean, you can see that it is a dump any day, but there are lots of places in London that are a real dump without feeling poverty stricken, like Bayswater for example.  No, Shadwell is a proper, Tower Hamlets par Commercial Road, dump. And it has always been.  It has hardly changed for over a century, it is too close to Whitechapel for comfort and has the characteristic "streets in the sky" council flats.  Apart from being full of rubbish and stinking of human pee/greasy chips, Shadwell has the feeling and look of a deprived area.  However, what made me realise how poor the area really is, is that you see no beauty whatsoever.  There is not even the beauty of a dilapidated graffitied urban house, the sharp beauty of modern glass or even crumbling historical buildings.  No, just grime.  Grimy people, wearing grimy clothes, going around with grimy faces, doing grimy business.  No smiles.  No laughter.  No civility.  Just grime.