A boy, dripping with blood, stabbed in the chest and back, staggered along, banging on doors. ‘Help me! Help me!’ No one dared to answer. They had watched him being chased into their estate by other boys. They didn’t know who to trust. One person opened the door but seeing the blood slammed it shut, not knowing if he was perpetrator or victim. His coat got caught and he could run no further. Eventually someone did venture out and called an ambulance. At least he did not die alone …
A scene from a horror movie? No, just another day on our London streets. This one, for some reason, has affected me more than others I have read about. I think it was that it was in NW London, the detail, the fact that they stabbed him twice, front and back, with huge long machetes, and then ran away screaming and laughing … or maybe it was that no one would answer their door to him. But it just seemed so close to home, too real, and too sad. A 16 year old boy ripped apart and bleeding to death on our streets. And everyone too scared to help.
On the way home after reading about that, I saw a man sitting in the street surrounded by police. Some witnesses were being interviews. Obviously some sort of mugging. I hurried home and shut the door. And then, the next day, an incident in Harrow in broad daylight, police with shields, the area shut off, a car surrounded, and people being asked to stay away from the vicinity. What now? I hoped not to find out, it was all too much. But I found myself feeling more nervous. I must surely pass people carrying knives on my walk home, I thought. They’re not interested in me, it seems to be about gang and turf war, mainly drug related. But there are instances of people getting caught in the crossfire.
And I worry more. Seeing 2 boys standing behind a fence, I cross the road. I hide my phone when passing other young men. I’ve long operated a policy of not walking on the pavement at night, preferring to stay under the streetlights, but now it doesn’t seem enough. I’m starting to wonder about everyone when travelling late at night. We may all feel safe on the tube if we all look benign, but what about when we get off? A few years ago there was a stabbing at my station, a fight between young men, but I passed it off as a one off. And since we now have ticket gates and security it has improved greatly, no one hanging around anymore.
A couple of months ago, the trouble across my borough was nonstop for a whole weekend, to the point that acquaintances who live up north commented that we hadn’t been out of the news for 3 days. Stabbings, shootings, fights, it was every day. We block it out because we don’t actually see it, but it is just around the corner. Eventually it came to slap us right in the face. Trawling the news I saw a double stabbing in broad daylight. Turned out to be in the park in a close friend’s street, and she saw the boy lying on the road. Heads removed from the sand, we reeled at how this could be happening in a quiet suburban road. Was it no longer safe to walk in a park on a sunny afternoon? Apparently not.
While we are going about our business, young people are living in a parallel universe of gang (postcode) rivalry, drug dealing, baiting each other on youtube videos, laughing and stabbing and shooting, accruing weapons, and patching themselves up in their bedrooms from knife wounds so they don’t have to go to hospital and answer questions. Sounds like I am exaggerating but I am not. If anything I think we are underestimating the extent to which this is taking place. How on earth did so many young people become immune from normal feelings of abhorrence at violence and death?
Even young people who are educated and have a bright future are being dragged into this life, by dint of where they live. It seems unavoidable. Just walking down the street can instigate gang rivalry, it seems. Young men drive round the streets in cars full of weapons, looking to maim or kill their rivals, real or imagined. And we are like sitting ducks in the middle, as oblivious of them as they are of us, until one of them lays bleeding outside our front door, or an innocent bystander gets caught up in it and killed. The violence breeds more violence too, with random, senseless attacks on ordinary people becoming more and more common, as today when a man was murdered in broad daylight outside a shop by boys as young as 14 using screwdrivers. To know what was going on inside their head would be even more frightening.
I have always considered myself to be a streetwise Londoner. I am born and bred. I have travelled alone, day and night, across every part of this city that I love. I know the drill. I don’t dawdle at night, don’t make eye contact, have my door keys ready. I walk in the light, don’t turn into my road or towards my home til the last minute. I don’t get into empty train carriages, I put my bag under my coat, and if I see a crowd ahead of me I keep up with them. The other night I got chatting to a woman I didn’t know but who was walking home the same way. ‘It’s changed, hasn’t it?’ she said. I agreed. The streets feel different now. People aren’t as friendly. No one knows their neighbours. The news is full of violence. Nothing violent has happened to me on my way home, but I feel ever more fearful, and who could blame me?
Should I stay or should I go? I love London, but I am worried and the streets are soaked with blood. Can we reclaim them? I hope so. And if a blood soaked boy banged on my door, would I answer? God only knows …
How much of this problem is down to the refusal to ban Face coverings.. Ever since the Hoodie era things seem to have got worse and unchecked.
The 2 main reasons why our towns and cities are now mostly unsafe places to be and our capital no longer looks, feels or sounds like an English City:
1. Mass, uncontrolled immigration. Something that has been forced on us by our corrupt governments since at least Blair and possibly before him even.
2. Cultural Marxism. Our education system is corrupted to the core by CM. Teachers and lecturers for the last 40 years at least, have brain washed this Country’s children, with their ideology. Turning out people who have a loathing of this Country and hate everything about us. These people really have been brainwashed into believing that we owe the rest of the world everything.
Both these groups are fertile foot soldiers for and willing adherents to Common Purpose.
Sadly many of us, have only just started to realise these factors and to recognise how our once great Country is in terminal decline.
I think it is too late to reverse this decline and in any case, our traitorous political class would not allow us to change our direction as that would not please our politicians globalist masters.
My word Janice, you have opened a Pandora’s Box of emotion. So many heart felt comments. But remember at the bottom of the box was hope.
i know i will be called a racist. people who say it as it is usually are. Out of all the shootings and stabbings in London what percentage of the victims and perpetrators are black? How many times do we hear the parenrs of the victims say what a good boy he was then find out he was part of a drugs gang, ordinary people who mostly live out of our cities finf it hard to have much sympathy. It’s the same with mass shootings in the USA. There is an old saying “If you live by the sword you will probable die by the sword “
Black or (more likely?) brown.
Listen to this young lady.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBo_W1HQqeY
Just hear her out. She may not be articulate how you would like. But listen her out. What is the message? I’m sorry Janice your article, all your articles are great, and I now feel opportunist, but it is about local communities. We cannot rely on the crap politicians we have to take control at a local level. Here is the selfish sounding punchline. LOCALISM! It can be done anywhere!
Hang in there Janice the local community needs you.
There is nothing new about this. In the fifties Glasgow there was poverty, depravation, disenfranchisement, no ownership, no responsibility, bullying, violence and s**t. Same as London with gang fights etc. There were knifings in the sixties ‘up the road’. Daylight was reasonably safe. I don’t live in London any more. People are people don’t give up on them it is those who lead and are disconnected, they should not be leading. The only people who know are the locals.
Thankyou Kim. I won’t give up I promise. But I am getting tired of it. My article is meant to serve as a wake up call
Not only have our politicians no intention of doing anything about the bottom of the barrel quality of immigrants they are letting in, they have doubled down on it (see Marrakech.) Our oh so empathic electorate support that by voting for the Monster Raving Loony Party above any reasonable party trying to do anything about it like Ukip or For Britain. It’s therefore only going to get worse particularly in London which is not an English city anymore. It’s gone. Look in through any primary school gates. Whilst the majority of the foreign colonists who now live there are nice, decent people there are far too many who are naturally criminal and violent particularly Black and Muslim young men. The worst seem to be Somalians and Albanians – how are they even allowed in?
Maybe you should consider moving out? Where I live there are no Muslims or mosques or black gangs and the only Africans here are a few “asylum seekers” dumped out of London to save money. Hopefully they hate it and are just biding their time before they head back to London. It’s still England as it was pre Windrush with so little crime there aren’t even any police officers stationed here. The parks have only kids playing with their parents, dog walkers and brass bands every Sunday – no intimidating ethnics smoking weed and playing hiphop. House prices are half those in the ridiculously multicultural and increasingly dangerous LB Harrow. Yet Central London is a mere 30 mins away. There must be hundreds of similar towns commutable to London where you can go back to living in real England again. Best to be at the leading edge of the white flight while the house price differential is still massively in your favour.
I feel for you and others like you. Your life, my life and the quality of all our lives is nothing but collateral damage on the road to utopia. Those responsible will never listen and have convinced themselves they are beyond reproach. I love visiting London but I couldn’t live there.
Have you noticed that pack of lies mentioned by Flyer and the streets of London given over to violence started in the last three or four decades, since we joined the European Union, whose warped human rights policies have protected the bold and aggressive outsiders freely able to enter into our once safe, peaceful and caring neighbourhoods to wreak their uncouth and unschooled attitude on our polite society. We should be glad when we could shed those thousands of ridiculous EU rules and regulations, including the European Water framework directives and return to British values.
£39 billion demanded by EU’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, retained by Boris Johnson will continue to reinforce our Police force, Border security and putting unruly criminals into prison for longer periods than is possible at present.
With everybody’s vigilance and help, Britain can, eventually, return to some semblance of our pre-EU fair and lawful country, where every proud home-owner could look after neighbours and people living around them. It has taken 45 years of obeying EU laws to recognise their four freedom of movements do not agree with our way of life, and although it would take us another twenty years to put our systems back in place, it will be worth it to wait and bear it, for the UK to revert back to its idyllic, green and peaceful land.
Mrs Jean Ramsey – three cheers (No – make that four!)!
Plain simple English. Plain simple common sense. Plain and simple an English attitude and comment. It is also about time that parents (single ones or otherwise) should be forced’ yes forced, to answer for the lawlessness of their children and if the children don’t pay the proper equitable price for the crimes they commit, then said parents ought to foot the bill.
“boys as young as 14 using screwdrivers” If they are old enough to commit crimes normally reserved for adults then they are old enough to be sentenced as adults. We need such people to be locked away for a very long time to remove the possibility of their offending again.
Is it me or is there a plot ? every white criminal is labelled as far -right. Even though the commies tried and failed to attach the Jo Cox killer to any political group liars like McDonnell claim the daft bitch was killed by the far right .
there is a case in kingston right now. A bloke of low intelligence and drug dependance ( obvious from two screenshots) has admitted racial violence. Against people of indian then Bulgarian background . Who needs defence lawyers ?
Now they are trying to link this semi literate to .. yes the far right .
All this to placate Muslims who think anti terror work is anti Islam.
latest copper killing will still let non-settled people scream racism when told to obey the laws we all do
euge – No it is NOT you. Everything you say is true. I am sick and tired of having to accept every deviation that Muslims try on a daily basis to impose on us. Sharia courts! Halal meat! Mob prayer in our streets and open anti-semitisim – daily inculcation of children in the ways of Islam I.e. Muslims never to make friends of Christians or Jews, and the demand for Sharia Law to be introduced into this once green and pleasant land. My comment from old is – Mo If you don’t like it – lump it!
Ah, The benefits of multiculturism!
Oh the joy of diversity!
This is truly shocking although I live on the edge of the countryside I have family in London and they are getting more and more jittery especially when you add anti-Semitism into the mix. Maybe I’m being a little simplistic but I think we need to being back National Service right now.
What makes you think that our services need or deserve these airheads
Yes, throw your hands up in the air – moan and moan – who to? Until the punishment truly fits the crime then crime will increase. The time is NOW for Lex Talionis. The same applies to Muslim /Islamic terror – all they understand is power and force – all they read about in madrassas is NOT ‘Mary had a little lamb’, they are told NEVER to take Jews and Christians as friends – Oh, I forget – I keep being told that Islam is. ‘Religion of peace’ – utter balderdash – which terrified people keep repeating, in the hope that they don’t offend Muslims and face instant ‘in your face’ violence for ‘insulting’ THEIR supposed prophet – more balderdash. Which of course is the reason you will fail to print this comment – cowardice and submission. Instead of throwing money at obscure parts of the world who suffer corrupt and ‘bent’ Governments, which we do under the guise of ‘International Aid’ – spend the money on more prisons and apply stronger FULL sentences for criminals. Of course I could go on (and on!) but since this will not be printed in any event – WHY BOTHER? Few if any of my comments are EVER printed on your ‘exalted’ site. Ho hum!
Misterpaul5a, I am glad to see your comment in print, so I am able to reply to you. The international aid you spoke of is another EU rule we had to follow, all based on a percentage of our GDP. After 31 October, if the deranged Remainer MPs don’t manage to destroy Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan, our Parliament could finally stop following some of the most harmful EU rules and directives that had been detrimental to our fisheries, agriculture and manufacturing industries.
After Brexit, all our small and medium size traders can start to trade directly with any country in the world, apart from the EU27 members not allowed by Michel Barnier to make direct trade agreements with the UK; he doesn’t seem to have any EU members’ interest at heart. He and his cohorts will rue the day Britain finally leaves the EU without a deal, because the UK can trade with the world, but the 27 EU members cannot trade directly with any non-EU nations.
And the Brexit bonus are: Britain will be sovereign again to make our own laws; put in place a point system for immigration; keep our £sterling currency, trade with any country, help small nations be self sufficient; and enjoy eating any fish our fishermen can catch, without having to throw those not in our quota, back into the ocean. What price freedom? Mr Johnson can spend the £39 billion he saved on our NHS, National Security or Education as he pleases!
Mrs Jean Romsey. Good on you! Our political mad-men and women have completely destroyed our mining industry. I wonder if it is widely known – or indeed known at all – that as we have reduced our coal mining workforce to some 732 coal workers in the mad race to destroy our industrial base – ( but having to import coal from four other countries – with colossal costs of importing) whilst Germany? Germany has 20,000 coal workers. The great folk of our towns and villages who so much depended on local manufacturing in all its glory, have become breathlessly third world and they have been left to rot – actually rot.
Why not mine the coal we need ourselves instead of worsening our import imbalances by enriching foreign firms countries and workers? I am told that the annual amount of CO2 we save is spent by China in but a few days. Insane.
When the State insists that human life can legally be denied the right to truth, accountability, and justice, then there is nothing to stop human life being treated as just another form of animal life.
Janice – I left Brazil some years ago and was glad not to have to look over my shoulder anymore. The year I left, in Sao Paulo alone, over a hundred policemen had been shot dead by the drug gangs because they’d been ordered to crack down on drugs. One night shortly after leaving my favourite Pizza restaurant, six armed men walked in and robbed the clientele at gunpoint while they were eating, they did a restaurant in the area each night for some weeks: all normal stuff.
It seems to me though that London and many other of Britain’s cities are rapidly catching up with Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. This is where decades of bleeding heart, Liberal / Lefty politics has got us, we were all assured that multiculturalism and immigration was good for us. Tell that to the parents and families of those killed, both in the streets and in places like Manchester with its bombing at an arena full of young people and children.
What an absolute pack of lies we’ve been fed for decades!
I do sympathise with you.