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169 of 175 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Cuts looters off at the knees, 9 Aug 2011
By
Harry Fish (Bristol, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Rucanor Aluminium Baseball Bat, Silver - 60 cm (Sports)
This bat is perfectly weighted and will suit any UK shop-owner looking to protect their property.
Thanks to the ergonomic handle, one easy swing should be enough to shatter patellas, skulls or any other bone on your targeted looter. Personally, I would recommend also investing in some fingerless gloves for extra grip.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/09/u-k-sales-of-aluminum-bats-up-5000/
Several days of rioting and looting in London have turned into a temporary boon for the sporting goods business.
Figures from Amazon.co.uk show that sales of self-defense items like bats have skyrocketed in recent days.
The Rucanor Aluminium Baseball Bat was at the top of Amazon's "Movers and Shakers in Sports & Leisure" list, showing a 5,149 percent increase.
Paywell's Military Police Telescopic Tonfa also saw a rise of more than 5,000 percent.
Some wooden bats were up as much as 3,664 percent.
Other items like tents and headband lamps also benefited during the period of unrest.
Londoners began cleaning up their city after a third night of riots on Tuesday, aided by a Twitter and Facebook campaign which rallied people to the most damaged areas.
Fires broke out across the capital on Monday night as looters smashed up and set ablaze buildings, shops and cars, while violence also broke out in the cities of Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol.
Prime Minister David Cameron recalled parliament Tuesday and promised to crack down on protesters if the riots continued.
"You will feel the full force of the law, he said. "And if you are old enough to commit these crimes, you are old enough to face the punishments."
Update (1:40 p.m. ET): Amazon.co.uk now lists sales for the Rucanor Aluminium Baseball Bat as being up 6,541 percent.
Bruce Dazzling wrote:
British columnist: ‘I don’t call it rioting, I call it an insurrection’
Posted on 08.9.11 | By Stephen C. Webster
Interviewing a black columnist and broadcaster from south London this morning, a BBC host was called an “idiot” for neglecting to confront the root causes of social unrest currently rocking the U.K.
Speaking to 68-year-old Darcus Howe, the former editor of Race Today magazine who not long ago became the focus of a campaign to highlight high rates of prostate cancer among black men, the host asked if he was “shocked” by the rioting and violence that has gripped London for the past three days.
“No, not at all,” Howe replied, saying that he’d even expected it, noting that his grandson cannot count the number of times he has been stopped and searched by British police.
“Our political leaders had no idea,” Howe said. “The police had no idea. But if you look at young blacks and whites with a discerning eye and careful hearing, they have been telling us — and we would not listen — that what is happening in this country, to them, is wrong.”
But the interviewer interpreted his analysis as an endorsement of violence, so she asked why he would condone rioting and violence.
He replied by telling the story of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of four, who was killed last week during a traffic stop, by Scotland Yard officers toting assault rifles.
“He has parents, he has brothers, he has sisters,” Howe said. “And a few yards away from where he lives, a police officer blew his head off. He blew his face off with –” and the interviewer cut him off.
“Mr. Howe, we have to wait for the inquiry before we can say things like that,” she replied. “We don’t know what happened to Mr. Duggan, we have to wait for the police report on it,” adding: “That is not an excuse to go out rioting and cause the sort of damage that we have been seeing over the last few days.”
Howe shot back: “I don’t call it rioting, I call it an insurrection of the masses, of the people. [...] That is the nature of the historical moment.”
Then the interviewer went full-bore after his credibility: “Mr. Howe, you are not a stranger to riots yourself, I understand, are you? You have taken part in them yourself.”
“I have never taken part in a single riot,” he replied. “I have been on television stations that ended up in a conflict. Have some respect for an old West Indian negro and stop accusing me of rioting. [...] You just sound like an idiot. Have some respect. I have grandchildren.”
Watch this video from BBC News, broadcast Aug. 9, 2011.
Dracus Howe wrote:“I don’t call it rioting, I call it an insurrection of the masses, of the people. [...] That is the nature of the historical moment.”
“I have never taken part in a single riot,” he replied. “I have been on demonstrations that ended up in a conflict. Have some respect for an old West Indian negro and stop accusing me of rioting. [...] You just sound like an idiot. Have some respect. I have grandchildren.”
gnosticheresy_2 wrote:Lol. Ok can you just wind teh patronising back just a little?
Jonangus Mackay 9 hours ago
1.20 mins into the following documentary clip provides a graphic indication of likely physical circumstances seconds before Duggan's death:
Searcher08 wrote:This review is from: Rucanor Aluminium Baseball Bat, Silver - 60 cm (Sports)
Most popular products in DIY:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/movers-and-s ... g_bsms_nav
Escape ladders up 2,655%
Fire extinguishers up 1,320%
Edit: Grey hoodies up 8,655% in Clothing
Panic on the streets of London
Penny Red
August 9, 2011
I’m huddled in the front room with some shell-shocked friends, watching my city burn. The BBC is interchanging footage of blazing cars and running street battles in Hackney, of police horses lining up in Lewisham, of roiling infernos that were once shops and houses in Croydon and in Peckham. Last night, Enfield, Walthamstow, Brixton and Wood Green were looted; there have been hundreds of arrests and dozens of serious injuries, and it will be a miracle if nobody dies tonight. This is the third consecutive night of rioting in London, and the disorder has now spread to Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham. Politicians and police officers who only hours ago were making stony-faced statements about criminality are now simply begging the young people of Britain’s inner cities to go home. Britain is a tinderbox, and on Friday, somebody lit a match. How the hell did this happen? And what are we going to do now?
In the scramble to comprehend the riots, every single commentator has opened with a ritual condemnation of the violence, as if it were in any doubt that arson, muggings and lootings are ugly occurrences. That much should be obvious to anyone who is watching Croydon burn down on the BBC right now. David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, called the disorder 'mindless, mindless'. Nick Clegg denounced it as 'needless, opportunistic theft and violence'. Speaking from his Tuscan holiday villa, Prime Minister David Cameron – who has finally decided to return home to take charge - declared simply that the social unrest searing through the poorest boroughs in the country was "utterly unacceptable." The violence on the streets is being dismissed as ‘pure criminality,’ as the work of a ‘violent minority’, as ‘opportunism.’ This is madly insufficient. It is no way to talk about viral civil unrest. Angry young people with nothing to do and little to lose are turning on their own communities, and they cannot be stopped, and they know it. Tonight, in one of the greatest cities in the world, society is ripping itself apart.
Violence is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, a smashed-in shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even to those who lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there. Unquestionably there is far, far more to these riots than the death of Mark Duggan, whose shooting sparked off the unrest on Saturday, when two police cars were set alight after a five-hour vigil at Tottenham police station. A peaceful protest over the death of a man at police hands, in a community where locals have been given every reason to mistrust the forces of law and order, is one sort of political statement. Raiding shops for technology and trainers that cost ten times as much as the benefits you’re no longer entitled to is another. A co-ordinated, viral wave of civil unrest across the poorest boroughs of Britain, with young people coming from across the capital and the country to battle the police, is another.
Months of conjecture will follow these riots. Already, the internet is teeming with racist vitriol and wild speculation. The truth is that very few people know why this is happening. They don’t know, because they were not watching these communities. Nobody has been watching Tottenham since the television cameras drifted away after the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985. Most of the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificating about the disorder this weekend have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored and marginalised and harassed by the police, after months of seeing any conceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on the news. In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:
"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"
"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."
Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere ‘’’
There are communities all over the country that nobody paid attention to unless there had recently been a riot or a murdered child. Well, they’re paying attention now.
Tonight in London, social order and the rule of law have broken down entirely. The city has been brought to a standstill; it is not safe to go out onto the streets, and where I am in Holloway, the violence is coming closer. As I write, the looting and arson attacks have spread to at least fifty different areas across the UK, including dozens in London, and communities are now turning on each other, with the Guardian reporting on rival gangs forming battle lines. It has become clear to the disenfranchised young people of Britain, who feel that they have no stake in society and nothing to lose, that they can do what they like tonight, and the police are utterly unable to stop them. That is what riots are all about.
Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis. They are not about poor parenting, or youth services being cut, or any of the other snap explanations that media pundits have been trotting out: structural inequalities, as a friend of mine remarked today, are not solved by a few pool tables. People riot because it makes them feel powerful, even if only for a night. People riot because they have spent their whole lives being told that they are good for nothing, and they realise that together they can do anything – literally, anything at all. People to whom respect has never been shown riot because they feel they have little reason to show respect themselves, and it spreads like fire on a warm summer night. And now people have lost their homes, and the country is tearing itself apart.
Noone expected this. The so-called leaders who have taken three solid days to return from their foreign holidays to a country in flames did not anticipate this. The people running Britain had absolutely no clue how desperate things had become. They thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the possibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing would happen. They were wrong. And now my city is burning, and it will continue to burn until we stop the blanket condemnations and blind conjecture and try to understand just what has brought viral civil unrest to Britain. Let me give you a hint: it ain’t Twitter.
I’m stuck in the house, now, with rioting going on just down the road in Chalk Farm. Ealing and Clapham and Dalston are being trashed. Journalists are being mugged and beaten in the streets, and the riot cops are in retreat where they have appeared at all. Police stations are being set alight all over the country. This morning, as the smoke begins to clear, those of us who can sleep will wake up to a country in chaos. We will wake up to fear, and to racism, and to condemnation on left and right, none of which will stop this happening again, as the prospect of a second stock market clash teeters terrifyingly at the bottom of the news reports. Now is the time when we make our choices. Now is the time when we decide whether to descend into hate, or to put prejudice aside and work together. Now is the time when we decide what sort of country it is that we want to live in. Follow the #riotcleanup hashtag on Twitter. And take care of one another.
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