'R' is 4 Riots

Last night I attended the Radio 4 Riots debate, run by the today programme. Fortunately when the riots kicked off in Birmingham I was in London staying at my friends house getting ready to take the Eurostar to Brussels the next morning (lucky I was! Had we gone with our original plan of getting the train up late that night we wouldn't have made it!). I watched it avidly on the news, amazed by sights of a predominantly male crowd throwing petrol bombs at buildings, smashing in windows and attacking businesses. 


The next morning our initially pleasant, but distinctly racist taxi driver of unspecified Eastern European origin, took great delight in telling us that the problem was black people and we should treat them like they treat their gypsy population (i.e. badly). We took equal delight in telling him that from what we'd seen on the news this wasn't a race issue: the live reports clearly showed Blacks, Whites, Asians and pretty much every community in-between was represented amongst the thieves, vandals and aggressors. It was a closed minded attitude to blame one racial group. This was not an old school race riot, and this was the major issue I had with the R4Riots debate. 


It seemed to me that a fair few questioners and a few of the panellists were blaming race, calling it a race riot, insinuating that it was just young black men rising up against an institutionally racist establishment. Given that less then half of the 600 people arrested during the riots were black and the primary targets were places like primark and corner shops this sounded, quite frankly, ridiculous to me (at this point I, somewhat nervously, posed a question about why if the issue was frustration with the establishment the rioters were attacking their own communities: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9581000/9581914.stm listen in at about 2min 25 ;) ). I'm not ignoring the fact that these riots started because of the death of Mark Duggen and strained relations between the community and the police in Tottenham. Race may play a part but the issues, and the composition of the rioters, are far more complicated then this. The BBC really need to stop rolling out this old chestnut and, if they must, at least include speakers from Asian and White working class backgrounds too. Times have changed.

Aside from that there were a lot of lefties chatting about how it was all environmental factors and poverty to blame, if we, the wider community, solve that we'll solve criminality and antisocial behaviour (completely ignoring the fact that only a minority of the 'working class' was involved and some rioters were from more privileged backgrounds) one recorded righty blaming the breakdown of morals and respect culture started in the 1960's and a whole host of people simply viewing the whole thing as confirmation of their already firmly held beliefs, picking and choosing the evidence they cited and generally talking pointless nonsense. 


Then there was, of course, the expected nonsensical, illogical rant about how it's all the banks and the politicians fault. No other reason. If just one of the (very vocal) audience members and panellists who maintained this belief had proposed a single reasonable argument other then 'all of the rich are immoral! Bankers greed made people steal televisions! Down with rich people!' I'd be inclined to give this view a chance...but unfortunately I didn't find a sea of unspecifically directed anger and resentment convincing.


Having said that it was very interesting listening to the different opinions and there were some nuggets of insight that seemed to resonate with both the present audience and those on the twitter-sphere. My favourites were:


1) Shaun Bailey suggesting that part of the problem is that we've redefined what government is for in recent years, we've become too dependent on it and those that have the least to do with it (i.e. aren't dependant on benefits/government programmes) are the happiest, stating: "The welfare state started as a safety net, became a hammock and is now a noose". 
2) Shaun Bailey promoting the idea that young people need to be educated in how to raise children before they become parents and it's too late, and stating that young people in prisons are a 'captive audience, lets educate them'
3) Shaun Bailey (yes Shaun Bailey again, that man talked a lot of sense!) stating that parents in this day and age have an incredible tough job fighting against the negative gender stereotypes presented in such places as 'Nuts Magazine' and MTV.
4) Dr Les Henry imploring the audience to recognise that grassroots organisations do a lot of good getting people out of gangs and helping young people turn their lives around before they reach a point where they think it's perfectly normal to engage in a riot, and to help them find the funding they need.
5) Javed Khan quite rightly asking people to stop bashing the police, stop focusing on the rioters and whether they need sympathy or a slap round the face (my words, not his to be clear!) and focus on helping the victims, some of whom have had their whole livelihoods destroyed and been shaken to the core.

...I could go on about how I was unimpressed that the issue of whether the glamorisation of gang violence and violently disrespectful attitude towards the police vocalised in certain popular genres of music (i.e. 'gansta rap') and certain hyper realistic video games could have played a part in bluring the line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, or the idea that maybe the police were underinformed because people warn eachother but not them (even I got a txt about trouble in my area and I wasn't in the country) weren't mentioned but I suppose there's only so much you can fit into three hours...and this blog post is already excessively long. (Btw if you're interested in other short quotes, views and reviews of the debate check out the #r4riots stream on twitter).


There are a lot of complicated issues surrounding why these riots started. I don't pretend to have a simple answer. All I do know is that with the destruction of the local economy in certain areas, destruction of recently renovated low income areas, the massive cost of police operations, court proceedings, the inevitable appeals and the clean up, any idiot who joined in the riots based on the fact that 'they can't get and job and the economy sucks' has shot themselves in the foot: now there's even less money to go round and the chances of those actually deserving groups who desperately need help (and weren't involved in the riots) getting it are even slimmer. Well done.

H.B.
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Exploration Article Archive: Spiders and Locusts and Bugs (Oh My!)

My second article on the phenomena of viewing deep fried tarantulas as a delicious delicacy in Cambodia:

Deep fried bugs. To most Westerners this is the stuff of a food hygiene nightmare but in many far Eastern countries they are something of a delicacy. I first encountered them whilst traveling around Cambodia in 2009 and I was horrified. Of course I had heard that deep fried insects were perfectly normal out there but it hadn’t quite prepared me for the sight of large groups of locals hanging out on street corners, casually chomping on locusts.

Most of us have probably seen that HSBC advert where the Cambodian farmer catches the flying insects to keep them off his crops, then cooks them and sells them (as you do), but the bugs that Cambodia is actually most famous for are its edible spiders. About 47 miles North of Cambodia’s capital city Phnom Penh lies the market town Skuon or, as it’s more commonly known by tourists, Spiderville. As I was told it, in this part of Cambodia locals have long used huge tarantulas in traditional medicine but during the horrors of Pol Pot’s regime they were forced to eat them in order to avoid starvation. Out of this many locals discovered a new found love of this curious snack and they are now considered a regional delicacy.

Most commonly found fried whole in garlic and sold by street vendors these spiders look ferocious. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what they taste like from personal experience. During a rest stop in Skuon I did have the opportunity to try some spider, or ‘a-ping’ as the locals call it, but I chickened out…mostly because the giggling Cambodian man behind me in the queue told my friend and I that ‘yeah they taste nice, but sometimes you get a bad poisonous one and ooo you don’t want to know happens’. I’m 99% sure he was having a laugh but that, combined with the sight of kids eating hairy spider legs, was enough to put me off. However one of our group was brave enough to give it a try and he summed up the taste of the surprisingly meaty on the inside arachnid as ‘kind of bland’ with a texture ‘somewhere between that of chicken and fish’. I think I’ll stick to chicken and fish, but in the spirit of this month’s focus on East Asian food if you would like to try this at home check out this delicious sounding recipe:

Ingredients:

Whole A-Ping Spiders (Haplopelma albostriatum)

Garlic (Crushed)

A Heap of Salt

A Heap of Sugar

Vegetable Oil

Preparation Method:

1. Dribble some oil over the spiders and toss them in the salt and sugar

2. Fry the garlic in the remaining oil until fragrant

3. Fry the spiders in the oil until the legs are completely stiff

4. Enjoy!

Exploration Article Archive: Made in...UK?!

To keep all of my writing together in one easily accessible online archive I've decided to post my Exploration articles here too :) Here is my first one on the subject of the Aromatherapy industry and how it's reversing the trend of Chinese production-UK consumption in unexpected ways...

Everyone knows that China exports to the world. They make everything. From cheap to top of the range electrical goods, clothes and even food, ‘Made in China’ products feature prominently on our shop shelves, homes and everywhere in between.  Everyone also knows that the UK is in economic trouble, partly due to how much we import and how little we produce and export. So it seems unlikely that China would be importing en-masse from the UK, right? Wrong. Well, in the aromatherapy market that is.

Case Study:

Shirley Price Aromatherapy Ltd seems an unlikely candidate for exporting mass produced goods to China. It’s a tiny firm consisting of five employees based in an old warehouse in Hinckley (hardly a town with a reputation for being at the forefront of British innovation). Yet this small business exports tens of thousands of its products to China and the Far East every year, and demand is growing.

Why then, if these products would be much cheaper to produce and purchase in the Far East, do Chinese consumers turn to UK produced goods? Especially in a market (complementary medicine) that they themselves have an international reputation for? According the Shirley Price’s Managing Director (and, as it happens, my Dad) Ian Brealey it’s all about quality control.

When it comes to domestic production and sales the Chinese cosmetics industry has distinctly lax regulations. When dealing with natural chemicals like essential oils, wealthier Chinese consumers don’t want to risk potentially harming themselves by applying domestically produced products to their skin and would rather turn to far more rigorously regulated foreign imports. As Mr Brealey says of Shirley Price Aromatherapy’s best selling Organic Camomile Eye-Drops ‘if you are going to put something in your eyes, you want to know it’s 100% safe!’.

Another key factor in Shirley Price Aromatherapy’s success in China is the well recognised brand name. The company has been around since the 1970’s and has a wide variety of well regarded publications and how-to guides associated with it. However, one of the results of this is that they sometimes encounter Chinese retailers selling fake Shirley Price products. Knowing the miniscule size of the company as I do it is almost amusing to think that someone somewhere in the Far East thinks it’s as worth while creating knock-off versions of S.P. Aromatherapy  products as fake Versace jeans. However for residents fake cosmetic and complementary medicinal products can be a genuine issue.

This phenomenon isn’t just associated with Shirley Price Aromatherapy; savvy aromatherapy and cosmetics retailers across the UK are cashing in on the Far Eastern demand for quality assured products. It’s a dramatically expanding market and one that British retailers are beginning to take advantage of in expanding numbers.

By the way, for those who I’ve now put off buying ‘Made in China’ cosmetic products sold in the UK, don’t worry, Chinese exports are thoroughly tested, it’s only those made and sold in the Far East that can be a little bit dodgy.

H.B.
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Something worth exploring

This is Exploration: http://www.eruditiononline.co.uk/exploration/profile.php?profile=3
It's an online travel magazine featuring some witty, interesting, fantastically well written articles about people's experiences of travelling around the world, thoughts and feelings on international topics and various other interesting anecdotes and facts. I think it's brilliant...although the fact that I happen to be a regular contributor to the Asia section might make me a little bit biased of course :p

H.B.

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