… in downloads of this song

November 1st 2004, and young unknown band from Leeds release a single entitled ‘I predict a riot’. The song, and the album from which it was taken, rocket the band to stardom way beyond their native Yorkshire. I have just been watching the song again, and wondering how often we shall hear it over the next few days. Certainly it has a kind of inescapable irony to it.

The thing is, the most violent thing in the song’s video is a pillow fight, pictured below. If only that were the case in all the towns and cities of the UK where riots have not only been predicted but perpetrated. Just before listening to the Kaiser Chiefs again, I listened to two young women in Croydon, slightly drunk on looted wine at 9.30 in the morning, saying that the riots were “fun…and showed the rich we can do what we like…and the government too…Conservative or whoever they are”.

Click on the image below and you will see an image of what the riots are really all about – fun is not the word which comes to mind. (Croydon photo from thenews.com.pk)

Prayers go out to all who have been on the streets – to protect, to flee, and also to those whose misdirected greed and rage has led to such callous acts of destruction.