Letter From An Earthquake Zone

I came across an article at Crampton's place which I was going to include in Saturday's link tank but - while I was hammering the hell out of some pork loins* - thought deserving of more comment.

I'll let the Kiwi author describe why it is relevant to those of us who are the right way up.

Dear UK rioters

If ever I question my faith in rebuilding our beautiful southern city, I will think of you and this last day and remember why Christchurch matters and why we bother doing what we’re doing.

I spent the day today at our city’s earthquake damaged stadium. Here we are agonising over how to fix the damage nature has done. You’ve spent the same day incinerating shops and homes, looting, trying hard to find new ways to burn down the place real English citizens call home.

We have fallen victim simply to gravity and we will rebuild stronger and better here. You who are striking down your cities are nasty little neanderthalic two bit muppets with too much time on your hands and pathetic hate in your hearts, the waste products of drugs, laziness and chronic dependency. You don’t have it in you to build. You only have it in you to destroy.

That's just a taster. I can recommend popping over there and reading the whole thing, juxtaposing as it does a citizen in an earthquake-torn community struggling to get everything back to normal, with a cosseted and destructive mindset on the other side of the globe.

It must be as heart-breaking as a starving African reading about a lardy American's tantrum over a McDonald's Drive-Through getting their order wrong.

The only part I'd take significant issue with is the suggestion that we citizens collectively created these people. So I'll just edit that bit a tad.

Dear UK Citizens – for you I mourn, I grieve, I send my love and compassion. Your rioters are a vile minority, but you your politicians have bred them and fostered them and unless you change the way you your politicians nurture them they will be with you for generations to come.

How we are supposed to do that in a three party state which has no intention of changing its line on ineffectual education, PC-led inertia and a lily-livered judicial system, I don't know.

But when even lefty blogs are admirably appalled, there is a tangible national will to do so. You just know it won't happen, though.

Just as we know that if, like Christchurch, London did suffer an earthquake tomorrow, the tax leeches who were on the streets for hours in London on Monday would be the very last ones to leave their homes to do something useful.

* Coat in chopped lemon and parsley, breadcrumbs, fry two minutes each side in olive oil on a high heat - lovely.