Croydon Maplin (England) boarded up

[StephenGiles]

I had a quick gander at the riot damage this morning and Maplin (that wonderful component supplier!!!) was all boarded up. I don't know to what extent it was looted.

[LFLab]

Wow, is there looting going on as well? Don't think that type of folk would go for tempco's, LM394's and LM13700's though.

[v-un-v]

That's the thing most people in the UK aren't understanding. These riots are for nothing BUT looting, and nothing else. It's almost as if rioting, smashing shops then looting them is the new 'cool'. It's madness.

[Clack]

I live next to tottenham hale retail park (which has a large maplin too, that has been amazing for my work!) were the looting started (and were duggan got shot )

It was a strange night sat people had a 24hour rave in a carpark next door because the police had the riot to focus on. So it was pumping Bass and helicopters all night!

Looters actually skipped maplin ( the best you could probably nick is DJ equipment or computer components ) as they had PC word, currys, JD sports and comet to choose from - but as a precaution all the places that sell electronic parts were boarded up to protect them. Shopping there is like buying things in a war zone! empty shelves and boarded up windows. It was paranoia really nothing has happened since Sunday here. Really I think the reason the looting was sustained was because of this hype, looting is like lighting - it never strikes twice in the same place.

besides all that maplin is not as bad as people think, until I moved next to one I thought the same. Good things iv'e bought are LM3900's and their cheap aluminum enclosures!

[LFLab]

[v-un-v]

But what is going on in Syria right now, hundreds of innocent pro democracy protesters being actually killed, the western press are turning a blind eye to. How many times have you seen that picture of that Miss Selfridges shop window on fire? Is that it?? The press have gone mad too.

[LFLab]

+1

Libya is only too happy to support the looters, as it draws the attention away from their internal affairs. But ideally, you'd expect people in the business of making news to see through those kind of ploys.

[monokinetic]

I'm a Londoner born and raised, I spent a few years living in both Croydon and Hackney, so my sympathies go out to all the locals who must be pretty on edge (I'm a terrible expat currently).

Although I'm not 100 percent sure we should be doing politics here on EM (and especially in the DIY forum), given the discussion here I thought some of the international audience might be interested to hear an alternative voice from the ground in London as a counter to the mainstream media frenzy of this just being a bunch of thugs and mindless violence:



Anyway, I'd suggest any further discussion of the impending collapse of society gets moved somewhere a bit more informal. Mods feel free to move as appropriate....

Now lets all get back to soldering

[v-un-v]

[dewdrop_world]

Flutist and champion of new music Carla Rees lost a substantial music library and her handcrafted flutes, including a couple of custom Kingma-system quarter-tone instruments that are not easy to replace, when her flat (in Croydon) got torched.

It's all fun and games until it hits somebody who's just trying to make something beautiful on this earth.

Anyway, she won't be able to work until she can get new instruments, so donations are being collected:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/14/flautist-carla-rees-croydon-riot?CMP=twt_gu

http://www.justflutes.com/fund-for-carla-rees-page66.html

[DES]

I would think (hope) that she had her flutes insured. That should take a major chunk out of replacing them.

If you have instruments you value - you insure them. Plain and simple.

[dewdrop_world]

Of course they were insured. But handmade flutes can't be replaced overnight -- especially the custom quartertone ones that she needs for a lot of her contemporary repertoire. It's not like a mass produced synth - you don't just go down to guitar center and walk out with a kingma quartertone flute.

In the meantime, her income from gigging is gone -- no instruments, can't play -- probably for several months. I don't think the insurance companies cover that.

[v-un-v]

But you could, if you wanted, walk into a shop and buy a normal flute and play that until you have recovered your quarter-tone ones? if you are a renowned international flautist, I'm sure your audience, if as indicated by the Guardian were so internationally spread, would be sympathetic to your cause? My old friend Piers Adams can coax some pretty awesome harmonics out of a simple recorder!

There is something strangely perverse about this article in The Guardian (which is also may I say it, very 'Guardian') that really wants to make me throw up.

While it is tragic for an artist to loose all of their belongings, what about all the other shopkeepers and homeowners who have also lost their property and personal items? Are the Guardian particually interested in them? It doesn't look like it. And if all these compositions were so valuable, why the heck didn't she have electronic backups of them all? We do live in an age of 'backing up' don't we? This article just smacks of self publicity to me and reminds me of when British institutions such as the BBC dedicate 20 minutes of news coverage to a dead horse during a bombing in London in the 1980's, and about 30 seconds to an incident in South Africa where hundreds were slaughtered by the South African police force.

If it wasn't a newspaper, the Guardian would be a 'cult'.