What You Should Have Read About the London Riots

Whilst in Berlin recently I had an interesting reaction when it came to my identity. I don't feel American anymore-- on a tour largely composed of Americans with a smattering of Canadians, I couldn't talk to these people. They wanted to commisserate about where we are from and how "weird" everything is in Germany and I couldn't relate at all.

At first I thought I felt British but I have to confess, it's not even Britishness. I feel like a Londoner (and ask any Brit, London is not Britain and Londoners aren't typcially British).

As a journalist I hated missing the riots. I was chewing my fingers in envy and in frustration that the isolation that Central Wisconsin (my US 'home') brings. As a Londoner I also regret missing it because as much as I feel like a Londoner I won't have that collective memory that other Londoners do. As a young female, perhaps I'm lucky to have missed it, not having to deal with fear or danger or lasting anxiety effects of the situation.

As a Londoner I have been apoplextic at the government's self-absolution, using language like 'moral decay' to describe the rioting instead of connecting it with the bleak economic situation made bleaker by their austerity budget and (lack of) social program. 

It has always been that things signify but even more so since Edward Bernays began to shape marketing, since we are identified by our things rather than them identifying us.  What happened and the manner of the rioting is unsurprising to me: in a sense, people self-enfranchised by looting consumer goods rather than basic goods. It is those things that enfranchise us and allow us to participate in society in what we have learned is a meaningful way. Think about it: economic growth is encouraged (now lamented by lack of) consumer spending. Perhaps the second thing governments did after bailing out the banks was to cut a number of taxes and emplored people to go out and buy.

As to white middle class kids participating in the rioting something I think that many have failed to appreciate is this: everything we were raised to believe has fallen apart. There has been a lot of media noise in the UK questioning the purpose of a university education. The opening of the first private, exclusive university within (in much annoyance to me, as I attend an arm of) the University of London doesn't help matters. Even when these kids graduate there are fewer and fewer chances for jobs in an economic system that still mis-measures the health of an economy and perhaps that's the reason it can't produce economic recovery.

In perhaps the biggest irony of the situation, the Tories' "Big Society" remains a good idea and if they had bothered to implement it at all (except for, of course, creating the economic circumstances in for it but not the social structure, institutions, nor regulations) the riots might not have happened.

Here are some links to coverage from the Guardian:

Context to the London Riots that Can't Be Ignored

UK Riots and the Psychology of Looting

UK Riots the political classes see what they want to see (excellent post-mortem on how the riots were/are immediately spun for self-interest and self-affirming existentialism)

UK Riots were product of consumerism says City broker

Wisconsin's Unions: Victim of Consumer First Culture?

There is no doubt of the political motivations behind the anti-union actions taken in Wisconsin: as explained by Rachel Maddow on her show Friday night, this is "union-busting" behaviour designed to take the biggest funding legs out from under the Democratic party.

What Maddow failed to consider is why we are so anti-union, anti-collective bargaining in the first place. Indeed, this is part of a larger more dangerous trend in anti-employee empowerment. This is a trend that I believe is an unfortunate side-effect to the 'customer is always right', 'putting the customer first' mottos found in business. I would also like to assert that's it's indirectly related to our system of national accounts. How does a government make its GDP grow? Until the great recession began it was unquestionably by promoting the 'C' part of the GDP equation: consumer spending. It's not that I don't think a service orientated customer service is a bad thing, I rather value American style customer service, but I want to poke at the connection and the idea that customers/consumers first has come at the expense of the way we view workers, employees.

Employees have been second to customers: work longer hours, and suck-it-up when dealing with customers, sell-sell-sell.  Poor customer service has nothing to do with poor management practices. 

Actually, that's not the case. Vineet Nayar has a new strategy that both treats employees like human beings by putting them first, and customers second. Result? Customer service, improves.

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The Arts are the traditional economy, stupid (leave the budget allocation alone)

Slashing Arts budgets is the first thing every government in economic trouble does, which is a bit bass-ackwards because the economies of the future will be driven by a convergence of digital technology and traditional economy (maths, science).  Digital? What’s that got to do with arts?  It’s simple: there isn’t anything that you do online that isn’t highly graphical or that doesn’t require a great deal of planning by someone with a background in arts. Digital technology is communication.

I’m making the rounds to the party conferences for the ’21 Hours Experiment.’  Today I found myself at a NESTA fringe event at the Labour Party Conference entitled, ‘Britain: Creative Highway or Dead End?’

One of the panelists was Ian Livingstone, one of the godfathers of Britain’s digital games industry.  He made a simple but important point:

When parents think about their children’s education, from which school to enroll them in, to enrolling them in extra curricular courses, they often won’t make the investment (either in financial allocation or time) in arts pursuits because they don’t realize that skills like planning and designing digital games are transferable.  Livingstone said it’s much the same with governments in that they fail to realize just how much potential the digital games industry has to earn real revenue for HM Treasury now that games have gone from simply products to being services as well.  He cited Farmville and Second Life, as having thriving online economies in digital goods-- something that no one would have thought of several years ago.

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