Where London leads Birmingham follows…..

So, I was in the centre of Birmingham last night, planning to attend a social event that I run at Scruffy Murphys pub in Dale End. I had been seeing convoys of police vans blues and twos going for a couple of hours when at 19.45hrs I got a phone call from a friend who I was meeting advising me to look at twitter and maybe think about not being in town. Out came the trusty Blackberry and a quick shuffty at facebook, twitter and tumblr brought me to this site which has subsequently been providing me with information on the ongoing situation. Having seen the trouble in London over the past three nights it came as no surprise that opportunists would see a chance to do a bit of free shopping in the second city. The decision was taken to tactfully withdraw from the city centre and wend my way home instead. I got out just before the public transport network shut down.

It is quite an interesting situation, in that it appears that the city centre was over-run by multiple gangs of youths intent on looting rather than rioting, and that the looting was organized to the extent that mobile phone messaging appears to have been used to co-ordinate activities. Reports suggest that the police deployed mobile phone jammers in some areas, and that the network providers and Blackberry were working with the police to limit use of mobile devices and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if message logs weren’t subpoenaed and used in evidence, and if you don’t think that is possible, think again. It was probably a consequence of shutting down the mobile network that led to the looting of Maplins Electronics, not a natural choice I wouldn’t think, but useful if you have a sudden need for, lets say, two way radios and scanners. Just a thought.

With the police otherwise engaged in the centre of Birmingham, trouble flared in the usual hotspots of Lozells, Handsworth and Perry Barr as well as more unusual areas like Walsall and Wolverhampton. It appears that the worst of the trouble was in Handsworth but this has always been a bit of a tinderbox. The next twenty four hours are, I think, crucial. We need to see if this blows over, or if there is more trouble tonight. It may be quite hard to track as it appears that the media are under at least a partial D notice with reporting limited to occasional mentions on the main news networks. This is understandable to an extent, but doesn’t really help in terms of confidence in our boys in blue or in our political leaders.

The next few days will be interesting I think…..